Theatre

Julius Caesar, first performed in 1599, dates from the period when Shakespeare was leading up to Hamlet, and its central figure Brutus, the conscientious assassin, is a bit of a rough draft for the introspective side of the Prince of Denmark, whereas Richard II, four years earlier ...

Strange and terrible events unfold around us. Conflicts erupt; catastrophes occur; a billionaire reality television performer reminiscent of a snake oil merchant is elected president of the United States. Following these destabilising forces, a chorus comprised of dissonant tones of reproach and plea often emerges ...

One would have hoped that in the four years since Jada Alberts’s fine début play Brothers Wreck premièred at Belvoir Street that its concern with the issue of Indigenous despair would have come to feel less vital, and yet the problem is as acute as ever. This week we learned that every child in detention in the Northern Territory, where Brothers Wreck is set, is Indigenous ...

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. First performed in 1991, Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins has sadly lost none of its topicality regarding gun culture or the ‘disenfranchised’ lunatics who wield such weapons. As Roger Hodgman, who directs this brilliant new production for the Black Swan State Theatre Company ...

Ninety years ago, the British economist John Maynard Keynes forecast that by now, thanks to technological advances, we would all be working fifteen-hour weeks. Instead, we are drowning in work – much of it unnecessary – to the point of existential despair. According to recent studies in Britain and the Netherlands ...

In his preface to the play, George Bernard Shaw wrote, ‘There are no villains in the piece. Crime, like disease, is not interesting: it is something to be done away with by general consent ... It is what men do at their best, with good intentions, and what normal men and women find that they must and will do in spite of their intentions ...

In Joanna Murray-Smith’s play Fury, a successful couple with a teenaged son are visited one evening by the deputy headmaster of his private school. Joe, he informs them, is in trouble. At first Alice (Danielle Carter) and Patrick (Joe Petruzzi) cannot countenance that their darling Joe has done anything wrong ...

‘I invented a character called Barry Humphries,’ the program promised. Beyond his characters, he said, the real man had always lurked behind a mask in various interviews. ‘Tonight you’ll see me.’ And there he was, in mauve jacket and polka dot tie, his features sharp, the voice crisper than ever ...

Black Swan State Theatre Company’s terrific new production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll joins other recent revivals such as those by Belvoir Street Theatre (2011) and State Theatre Company of South Australia (2015) in showing that Ray Lawler’s 1955 classic has lost none of its power to entertain and provoke ...