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Robyn Archer

Film  |  Theatre  |  Art  |  Opera  |  Music  |  Television  |  Festivals

Welcome to ABR Arts, home to some of Australia's best arts journalism. We review film, theatre, opera, music, television, art exhibitions – and more. To read ABR Arts articles in full, subscribe to ABR or take out an ABR Arts subscription. Both packages give full access to our arts reviews the moment they are published online and to our extensive arts archive.

Meanwhile, the ABR Arts e-newsletter, published every second Tuesday, will keep you up-to-date as to our recent arts reviews.

 

Recent reviews

Epiphany: 'Braving Glyndebourne' by Robyn Archer

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June–July 2019, no. 412
Epiphany: 'Braving Glyndebourne' by Robyn Archer
It was during the still relatively tentative explorations I was making into the world of international arts festival direction that I swallowed hard and made my first visit to Glyndebourne. I had lived in London throughout the 1980s, had performed there many times in various venues from the National to the Drill Hall to Wyndham’s in the West End ... ... (read more)

Picaresque (Adelaide Festival) ★★★

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14 March 2019
Picaresque (Adelaide Festival)

For the uninitiated, a maquette is an architectural miniature of a monument or building. Small, made from cardboard or wood, and often able to be flat-packed, travellers have long collected them as souvenirs of adventures to faraway places. Robyn Archer, doyenne of Australian cabaret ...

... (read more)

2016 Arts Highlights of the Year

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November 2016, no. 386

To highlight Australian Book Review’s arts coverage and to celebrate some of the year’s memorable concerts, operas, films, ballets, plays, and art exhibitions, we invited a group of critics and arts professionals to nominate some favourites.

... (read more)

News from the Editor's Desk - November 2016

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November 2016, no. 386

Our new Laureate. Australian Book Review is thrilled to name Robyn Archer as our new Laureate. She joins David Malouf, who became the inaugural Laureate in 2014. Robyn Archer is ...

... (read more)

'Kindness by Numbers' by Robyn Archer

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November 2015, no. 376

Robyn Archer debated Peter Singer during the 2015 Melbourne Writers Festival; their topic was 'Is Funding the Arts Doing Good?'. This is an edited version of her paper.

I hear that in New York
At the corner of 26th Street and Broadway
A man stands every evening during the winte ...

Arts Highlights of the Year

by •
November 2015, no. 376

To highlight Australian Book Review's arts coverage and to celebrate some of the year's memorable concerts, operas, films, ballets, plays, and exhibitions, we invited a group of critics and arts professionals to nominate their favourites – and to nominate one production they are looking forward to in 2016. (We indicate which works were reviewed in Arts Up ...

Arts Highlights of the Year

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January-February 2015, no. 368

Leading arts critics and professionals nominate some of their favourite performances for 2014.

... (read more)

Detritus: Addressing Culture and the Arts by Robyn Archer

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September 2010, no. 324
Alison Broinowski reviews 'Detritus' by Robyn Archer

A sarcastic little slogan on a wall in Australia’s arts funding organisation in the mid-1990s read ‘Il y a trop d’art’. All right, it was meant in jest, but it seemed to hint broadly at shared bureaucratic resentment of importunate artists, even though they were the Council’s clients and the reason, indeed, for its very existence. Remember the national health hospital in Yes Minister that ran perfectly until it had to take patients?

... (read more)

Platform Papers No. 4: by Robyn Archer & The Woman I Am by Helen Reddy

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June–July 2005, no. 272
Platform Papers No. 4:: The Myth of the Mainstream: Politics and the performing arts in Australia

In 1964 the Australian television show Bandstand set up an annual talent contest called Bandstand Starflight International. In its first year, one of the national finalists was a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl called Robyn Smith, who later changed her surname to Archer. The following year, the contest was won by a 24-year-old professional singer called Helen Reddy.

... (read more)
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