Am I, Shaun Parker & Company, January 9; Dido & Aeneas, Sasha Waltz & Guests, January 16; Gudirr Gudirr, Marrugeku, January 17; Forklift, KAGE, January 18 THE Sydney Festival’s dance program was relatively low-key but had an interesting range, from the large-scale centrepiece Dido & Aeneas from Sasha Waltz & Guests to the intimacy and…
Tag: Sydney Festival
Oedipus Schmoedipus
Belvoir, January 15 FOR each performance of the utterly baffling theatre work that is Oedipus Schmoedipus, two dozen volunteers are recruited to perform in the piece. As it turns out they are responsible for a good half of the action, so that was a pretty good wheeze on the part of creators Zoe Coombs Marr,…
Circus in Sydney
WHATEVER you call it – circus, burlesque, cabaret, vaudeville, physical theatre, variety, magic – Sydney apparently can’t get enough of it. In January more than a dozen shows falling somewhere within these porous borders have fetched up, most as part of a mini-festival within the Sydney Festival or from other presenters keen to mine this…
The urge to perform
I AM not a great fan of audience participation – certainly not for myself, and rarely when I see others roped in. Frequently it involves people making spectacles of themselves or being put in an awkward position they can’t wriggle out of. It almost invariably feels like a power trip on the part of the…
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…
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…
Dance Better at Parties
Sydney Theatre Company, April 9 DAVE would appear to have come to the wrong place. The ugly suburban dance school with its poo-brown floor and unforgiving fluoros offers private lessons in the rumba, tango, paso doble and other glittering ballroom arts. You buy a block of 10, sign here for direct debit, initial the injury…
School Dance, The Blind Date Project, The Peony Pavilion, The Secret River, Sydney Festival
School Dance, Sydney Theatre Company presents the Windmill Theatre production in association with the Sydney Festival. Also Merrigong Theatre Company, Wollongong, February 7-9; Melbourne Arts Centre, April 10-20; Brisbane Powerhouse, July 31-August 3 The Blind Date Project, Ride on Theatre, Sydney Festival The Peony Pavilion, Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre, Sydney Festival The Secret River, Sydney…
A Masked Ball, Semele Walk, Sydney Festival
A Masked Ball, Opera Australia in association with the Sydney Festival, January 16 Semele Walk, KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Germany, Sydney Festival, January 12 WHEREVER or whenever you want to set it, Verdi’s A Masked Ball – Un ballo in maschera – takes place in a world of privilege where the haves live it large and those…
Murder, Cantina, Sydney Festival
Murder Erth Seymour Centre, January 8 IT sounds such a strong idea for a physical theatre piece: the special fascination society has with murder; the music of Nick Cave; puppets and animation from a company with a strong track record in this kind of work: Raimondo Cortese as writer; Kate Champion as choreographer. That’s a…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 