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Recent reviews
The cricket-lover knows that a Test match – let alone a Test series – lasts long enough for the full sweep of human comedy to be on show. Ambition; petulance; perfection all too fleeting; horrible failure; hilarious pratfalls; selflessness and honour: it’s all in a day – or in five day’s play.
... (read more)Anxiety and agitation failing to translate into action as an exhausted and exhausting world faces an uncertain future – the contemporary relevance of The Cherry Orchard requires no special pleading. Retaining the characters and narrative trajectory of the play written by Anton Chekhov in 1903, Australian director Benedict Andrews employs music and contemporary diction in an ambitious production that takes the humour in Chekhov’s final play seriously.
... (read more)The season of giving
Close readers of our Patrons page will note many new additions to this month’s listing, including several substantial donations. Some of these followed a Melbourne function on 1 May, at which ABR Editor Peter Rose, ABR Chair Sarah Holland-Batt, and ABR Laureate Robyn Archer all spoke. This was an opportunity for ABR to thank its many supporters and to highlight new developments and opportunities.
... (read more)There was a real sense of occasion on Thursday evening before the opening performance of Melbourne Opera’s new production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, first performed in 1835, with a libretto by Salvatore Cammarano, based on Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Bride of Lammermoor (1819). Bagpipes summoned us along Collins Street. Inside, the Athenaeum Theatre seemed close to full.
... (read more)