Lyric Theatre, Sydney, April 12 YOU know that climactic moment in Strictly Ballroom – the one where National Australian Federation of Dance president Barry Fife has the plug pulled at the Pan Pacifics on Scott and Fran’s music and their illegal steps, and then there’s the sound of one person clapping to get the rhythm…
Macbeth and Cock in Brisbane
Macbeth, Queensland Theatre Company, The Playhouse, Brisbane, April 9. Cock, Melbourne Theatre Company and La Boite, The Roundhouse Theatre, Brisbane, April 9. QUEENSLAND Theatre Company’s Macbeth isn’t set in a boardroom, or in Nazi Germany, or in the fiefdom of the Klingons. The unchanging set (Simone Romaniuk, who also designed the costumes) is a thicket…
Bernadette Peters in Concert
Theatre Royal, Sydney, April 2 “ISN’T it bliss? Don’t you approve?” These lyrics from Stephen Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns, from A Little Night Music, could not be more apposite when it comes to the Bernadette Peters effect: her concert is indeed bliss and yes, the audience approves to the point of adoration. As for…
Five plays
The Pride, Side Pony Productions, Bondi Pavilion Theatre, March 25; Fight Night, The Border Project/Ontroerend Goed, Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company, March 26 (matinee); The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, Lambert House Enterprises, Gingers at the Oxford Hotel, March 26; Clybourne Park, Ensemble Theatre, March 27 (matinee); Stitching, Little Spoon Theatre, TAP Gallery, March 27….
The Drowsy Chaperone
Squabbalogic Independent Music Theatre, Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney, March 18. HE has no name other than Man in Chair, this cardigan-wearing musicals tragic, for he is Everyman, screaming inside at the bombast of the modern sung-through show – and yes, he means you, Andrew Lloyd Webber – while maintaining an exterior of mild exasperation. Well,…
Interplay, Sydney Dance Company
Sydney Theatre, March 17 WHAT a rich, diverse evening this is. Sydney Dance Company’s Interplay offers three works, any two of which would have given a stimulating experience, but who’s complaining? Each makes a strong appeal to a different human need and shows the SDC dancers in shape-shifting, magisterial form. Rafael Bonachela takes on Bach’s…
Lucinda Dunn – a tribute
IT is not a great surprise that Lucinda Dunn has chosen to retire from The Australian Ballet next month, but it is a great loss. While she has had some recent injuries and has been selecting her repertoire carefully, these are not unusual circumstances when a dancer has had as lengthy a career as Dunn’s….
ABT is Brisbane-bound
ONE way of looking at the repertoire for American Ballet Theatre’s Brisbane visit in August and September – its first to Australia – is with absolute pragmatism: there’s Swan Lake, of course, which is for many audience members the ballet gold standard, and there’s a triple bill made up of pieces the company is currently…
The Winter’s Tale
Bell Shakespeare, Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, March 5. “A SAD tale’s best for winter. I have one of sprites and goblins,” says the boy Mamillius, through whose eyes John Bell filters Shakespeare’s late, great fable. Mamillius’s bedroom, bathed in a fairy-world pastel light and hung with stars, is where everything will happen, a reflection of…
Cojocaru and Kobborg
WHEN Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg join The Australian Ballet in Sydney for two performances of Manon in April it will be their first appearance with an Australian company, but their second time in Australia together and Cojocaru’s third visit. She danced in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Hamburg Ballet in Brisbane in 2012. In…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 