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Recent reviews
The theatre has given us mutilation, Titus Andronicus comes to mind, and cannibalism in Thyestes and Sweeney Todd, but as far as I am aware there is no dramatic genre based on organ donorship. After Tommy Murphy’s Mark Colvin’s Kidney, this may well change ...
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Lucy Kirkwood, the present darling of the British critics, is a playwright who is not afraid of tackling momentous subjects. Her most recent play, The Children (2016), is a post-nuclear apocalyptic chamber piece which explores the responsibility of the baby boomer generation to those who ...
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The stage is open – a glossy art deco drawing room with plush velvet chairs and a chaise longue, cocktail glasses, and champagne, ready for a party. An engaging young man, dressed formally in a three-piece suit steps onstage and begins the famous speech: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent ...
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Russian-born violinist Maxim Vengerov – still in his early forties and long recovered from a shoulder injury that stopped him from playing for five years – has been a welcome visitor to Australia since 1999. That year, in Melbourne, he gave a brilliant recital and also performed the Beethoven ...
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An assault on the arts, Trainspotting at fortyfivedownstairs, Handa Operas on CD and DVD, Melbourne Art Book Fair 2017, Maxin Vengerov, and giveaways from Melbourne Opera and Village Roadshow ...
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If a single word could sum up the world première of Satan Jawa, it would be ‘bewitching’. Indonesian Director Garin Nugroho’s black-and-white silent film combines mime and dance to relate a Faustian tale of love, sacrifice, and agony, rooted in Javanese mysticism. A twenty-piece ...
... (read more)The Age of Bones (Performing Lines and Satu Bulan/Teater Satu) ★★★★
Rarely has the opening night of a play been so closely linked to a news cycle. A press story on 23 February reported that the Australian government is being sued for AU$103 million in a Jakarta class action. The plaintiffs, one hundred and fifteen Indonesian men, were teenage boys when they ...
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The real test of an opera singer is how they sound in an opera theatre. The bane of ‘legitimate’ opera singers’ lives are singers on television talent shows, many of whom describe themselves as ‘opera singers’. They sing the occasional opera aria, frequently transposed into a more comfortable ...
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Away reached the dubious status of ‘Australian Classic’ in a remarkably short period of time. It has become so ubiquitous that I would hazard a guess that fully two thirds of the Australian audience for this production who are under thirty will have been involved with the play either as performers ...
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What a mysterious and delightful play is American playwright Annie Baker’s John (2015), a meditative comic drama full of exquisite detail and suggested psychological insights. Sarah Goodes directs with sensitivity and imagination for the Melbourne Theatre Company, in the Fairfax ...
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