THIS year I saw more than 200 performances and, over the past week or so, have written about the people, plays, operas, dance works and musicals that spoke to me most strongly. Now I cull the list to 14 – just because that’s how it turned out – and a supplementary, the last being something…
Tag: Joanna Murray Smith
Naming names: looking back on 2014
I’VE avoided making neat lists of 10 of this and 10 of that in my survey of 2014, which is good when it comes to the individuals who made the deepest impression on me. I decided not to divide the names by art form or vocation. There are dancers, opera singers, actors, actresses, directors and…
A baker’s dozen: 2014 theatre in review
OF the more than 200 shows I saw last year, about a third were plays. Dance, opera, musical theatre and cabaret make up the rest. Unfortunately symphonic and chamber music featured very lightly. Can’t do everything, which is why my theatre viewing in Sydney had many gaps, although I don’t believe I missed anything that…
The drama of Patricia Highsmith
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, November 7 In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man WHEN Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Andrew Upton announced STC’s 2014 program in September last year,…
2013: a retrospective
Here’s my take on the year’s high points. As many have noted before me, “best” is a useless word when applied to the cornucopia available in the arts. Here are the people and productions that most inspired me. “A SHORT show is a good show,” we all carol (me and my fellow critics) as we…
Goodnight, sweet prince
Hamlet, change of cast, Belvoir, Sydney, November 26 THEATRE critics don’t often revisit a production. They go to the opening, write, and move on. They must. Other plays, other companies relentlessly crowd the diary and then the season is over and the chance disappears. The critic has to make judgments swiftly, and very possibly on…
Michael Griffiths; Bernadette Robinson
Michael Griffiths, Sweet Dreams: songs by Annie Lennox. Slide Lounge, Sydney, June 1. Bernadette Robinson, Slide Lounge, June 4. HOW many times have you said how much you love a particular artist, but in reality you’ve stopped listening? Not stopped hearing, but stopped listening. Much of the time perhaps. The music does its job of…
Angels in America, The Maids, Phedre, Othello
Angels in America, Belvoir, June 5 and 6; The Maids, Sydney Theatre Company, June 8; Phedre, Bell Shakespeare, June 12; Othello, Sport for Jove, June 14. THEATRE, from companies big and small, has been particularly rich in the first half of the year in Sydney. There were exceptional new works, old ones given a jolt…
Fury, Stories I Want to Tell You in Person
Fury Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1, April 19 JOANNA Murray-Smith recently spoke on radio of the seductive power of argument, of recalling the sound of her parents and their friends talking passionately long into the night. Those long-evaporated murmurs are the wellspring of Fury, Murray-Smith’s absorbing new play. Alice (Sarah Peirse) is a neuroscientist at…
Bombshells
Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, March 20 “I’M so fucking happy,” screams Theresa McTerry, bride-to-be, slamming down the bubbles. It won’t be the first time she says that. Protesting a little too much, perhaps? Theresa’s monologue is the fourth of six that make up Bombshells, Joanna Murray Smith’s cunningly named piece about women in a state of…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 