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Recent reviews

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

One might be pardoned for assuming, from the preponderance of mono-dramas at this year’s Adelaide Festival, that some mix of budgetary pressures and theatrical taste has meant that drama even the minimal Greek combination of three theatrical presences is not high on the director’s shopping list. Elsewhere, as in Perth during its recent ...

Faust (Opera Australia)

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23 February 2015

Scottish director David McVicar’s importance to Opera Australia – after his acclaimed Don Giovanni in 2014 – grows with this new production of his Covent Garden Faust, which is currently being seen in Sydney. The production dates back to 2004 ...

In May 1957, with some trepidation, Tennessee Williams went into analysis under the care of the fashionable psychiatrist Lawrence Kubie, known to his distinguished clientèle as Dr Sugar. Kubie insisted that Williams should temporarily separate from his partner of the time, Frank Merlo, and give up drink and writing. With a sense of relief, Williams banished the tem ...

For many of us – those of us not in the Farnham faction – this was our first visit to the Palais Theatre in three decades. (It has mostly been used as a rock venue since the Australian Opera decamped.) So there was much anticipation before the opening night of Victorian Opera’s The Flying Dutchman, perhaps the most ambitious production in the company’ ...

Jumpy, by British playwright April De Angelis and directed by Pamela Rabe, opens Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2015 season. First produced at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2011, it is a modern-day comedy of manners whose plot and subject matter owe much to the television sitcom. Its humour relies on bedroom intrigues, blunt sexual dialogue, marital ...

In these straitened economic times, it is rare for opera companies to stray far from the standard, well-known repertoire. But there are only so many Toscas, Traviatas, and Butterflys one needs to see in a lifetime. So it is pleasing that Melbourne Opera was prepared to stage an opera once so famous it was parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan ...

To complement our popular ‘Books of the Year’ feature, to highlight ABR’s fast-expanding arts coverage, and to celebrate some excellent music, theatre, and film, we invited a group of critics and arts professionals to nominate some of their favourite productions of the year ...

... (read more)

Falstaff (Opera Australia)

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08 December 2014

With the third of its spring offerings, Opera Australia again demonstrated the overall strength of the ensemble and the consistently fine playing of which Orchestra Victoria is capable.

 This Falstaff is a revival of Simon Phillips’s production, first performed in 1995 (Adelaide) and starrily led by Bryn Terfel in 1999 (Sydney), his first Falst ...

Don Pasquale (Opera Australia)

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24 November 2014

Epicœne, or The Silent Woman is one of Ben Jonson’s most witty and least familiar satires. First performed in 1609 and published in 1616, it is set in contemporary London. Morose, a well-named old bachelor, is intent on finding a bride who will give him an heir so that he can disinherit his nephew, Sir Dauphine Eugenie. Morose, a famous misanthrope, detest ...

Tosca (Opera Australia)

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17 November 2014

Opera Australia’s spring season in Melbourne opened with John Bell’s production of Tosca, which had its première in Sydney, in June 2013. The company is now adding strong readings of masterworks to its repertoire: this Tosca preceded David McVicar’s brilliant production of

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