Recent ABR Arts reviews:

• A Man of Good Hope (Isango Ensemble/Young Vic) ★★★★
• Salome (Opera Australia) ★★★★
• The Miser (Bell Shakespeare) ★★★
• Ballenesque, Roger Ballen: A Retrospective (GAGPROJECTS/Adelaide Festival)
• Arbus & West (Melbourne Theatre Company) ★★★★
• The Magic Flute (Adelaide Festival) ★★★★1/2
• Two Feet (Adelaide Festival) ★★★★1/2
• 33 Variations (Comedy Festival) ★★★★1/2

Giveaways

• Two double passes to 33 Variations written by Moisés Kaufman and starring Ellen Burstyn. The tickets are valid for any performance until the play's end on 24 March 2019.
• Ten double passes to Sometimes Always Never directed by Carl Hunter, featuring Bill Nighy. In cinemas 14 March 2019.

See below for details about how to win the free tickets.

Coming up in ABR Arts?

Credits left to right: Melbourne Theatre Company • Melbourne Symphony Orchestra • Gottfried Lindauer, Tomika Te Mutu, chief of the Ngaiterangi tribe, Bay of Plenty, 1880, Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Library of Australia, Canberra

There’s plenty of quality reviews ahead in ABR Arts: 
• Maxim Boon reviews A View from the Bridge (MTC)
• Elizabeth Kertesz reviews the MSO Opening Gala conducted by Sir Andrew Davis 
• David Hansen reviews Maori Markings: Ta Moko (NGA)

Clunes Booktown Festival

The Clunes Booktown Festival has released its 2019 program. The Festival runs on May 4 and 5. Around twenty-five writers will tackle subjects ranging from climate change and feminism to podcasts and social media. They include Tony Birch, Robbie Arnott, and Andrea Goldsmith. ABR Editor Peter Rose will take part in three sessions, including conversations with John Arnold about ABR and book reviewing; and one with George Megalogenis about AFL!

For more information on the festival, click here.

Cirque Du Soleil Returns To Australia

Promotional image for KURIOS – Cabinet of Curiosities (photograph by Martin Girard)

Cirque du Soleil will return to Australia this year with its acclaimed show KURIOS – Cabinet of Curiosities. This other-worldly event, written and directed by Michel Laprise, is a reality-bending journey set in the nineteenth century, featuring a Seeker and his curio cabinet, which he believes contains hidden worlds. This will be the first time KURIOS has come to Australia since it premièred in Montreal in 2014.

For more information on Cirque du Soleil and KURIOS, click here.

Piers Greville Wins 2019 Glover Prize

Piers Greville, winner of the Glover Prize 2019, with his work entitled Pedder Prime Cuts

Melbourne-based artist Piers Greville has won the 2019 Glover Prize, a prestigious landscape painting award. Greville was selected from 482 entrants for his work Pedder Prime Cuts, which draws inspiration from Tasmania’s Lake Pedder. The work is a reimagining of the lake using a combination of the digital mapping, photography, and the artist’s own memory of visiting the lake in 2017.

The Glover Prize exhibition is open at the Falls Park Pavilion, Evandale, Tasmania, from March 9 to 16.

The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-fiction

Entries are now open for the The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-fiction, with a first prize of $5,000. The prize encourages boundary-pushing forms of essay and for writers from all walks to apply. The 2018 winner was Eloise Grills for her piece ‘big beautiful female theory’, which incorporated fractured prose with a selection of Grills’s signature illustrations. This year’s judges are Timmah Ball, Chris Kraus, and Quinn Eades.

For more information on the award, click here.

Opera Australia at Uluru

Promotional image for Opera Gala at Uluru

For the first time, Opera Australia will be present an Opera Gala at Uluru. Those attending will be privy to several of Opera Australia’s most revered singers performing arias from Bizet, Puccini, Rossini, and Verdi. As backdrop to the one-off event will be the beautiful Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Part and Bruce Munro’s Field of Light, a dazzling array of 50,000 coloured glass spheres. Opera Australia Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini said: ‘Opera Australia is honoured to be presenting our first ever performance at Australia’s spiritual centre, on the sacred lands surrounding Uluru.’

The Opera Gala at Uluru is being performed on Saturday 2 November 2019. For more information, click here.

Giveaways!

33 Variations

This week, two new or renewing ABR subscribers will win a double pass to 33 Variations written by Moisés Kaufman and starring Ellen Burstyn. The tickets are valid for any performance until the play's end on 24 March 2019.

Sometimes Always Never

This week, ten new or renewing ABR subscribers will win a double pass to Sometimes Always Never directed by Carl Hunter, featuring Bill Nighy. In cinemas 14 March 2019.

How to enter: To be in the running please email Grace Chang at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your full name and contact details. Preference is given to subscribers who have not received a giveaway in recent months. To be eligible for these giveaways, you must be a current or new paid subscriber to the print edition of ABR or to ABR Online.