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Welcome to ABR Arts, home to some of Australia's best arts journalism. We review film, theatre, opera, music, television, art exhibitions – and more. Reviews remain open for one week before being paywalled.
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Recent reviews
Michael Winterbottom’s three Trip films are, in essence, all the same: two middle-aged men motor through beautiful locations around the world and eat sumptuous meals in high-end provincial restaurants while impersonating celebrities, sniping at each other, and complaining about ...
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The career of Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona began with The Orphanage (2007), a gothic drama godfathered by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006) that shared his interest in the imaginative life of children, and in ghosts. In the 2012 survival pic The Impossible and his latest film ...
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Few singers make riveting autobiographers, it must be said, but one who should have penned her memoirs was Sybil Sanderson (1864–1903). She seems to have been too busy, on and off the stage. Hers was the kind of short, turbulent life that Puccini might have done something with ...
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The Merchant of Venice is a troublesome play. I have seen productions that have played up the comic aspects to an absurd and irritating degree while confining Shylock to the stereotype that bears his name. Some interpretations exploit the play as anti-Semitic propaganda ...
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In this fortnight's Update: Kafmann in Parsifal, The Feuerle Collection, Pieter Wispelwey, MONA's anti-casino, The Pop-Up Globe, Kestin Indigenous Illustrator Award, Australian Dance Awards, SALA Festival, Australian Shorts at MIFF, Boîte Millennium Chorus, Ballarat International Foto Biennale, La Sonnambula on demand, and giveaways from Melbourne Opera, Melbourne Recital Centre, and Transmission Films ...
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Louis Nowra’s latest play, his first in ten years because apparently and appallingly no major company in Australia has asked him for one, is the third in his semi-autobiographical Lewis trilogy. In Summer of the Aliens (1992), the young Lewis, growing up in housing-commission ...
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Clive, a splendid chappie, has taken up the white man’s burden in darkest Africa and is attempting to bring some British order to the lesser breeds without the law, even though the ungrateful blighters are getting a bit restless. He’s accompanied by that jolly good stick of a wife of his ...
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Britain’s illustrious Royal Ballet has brought extraordinary gifts to QPAC audiences in Brisbane this year: two huge, exciting ballets which, in different ways, are game-changers in the creation of full-length narrative ballets. They are Woolf Works by the company’s resident ...
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In this fortnight's Update: Peter Rose writes from Berlin, Martha Argerich, Turangalîla-Symphonie, La Mama turns fifty!, SAFC partners with Umbrella Entertainment, ATYP at Griffin Theatre, Australian Festival of Chamber Music, AGNSW's Sydney Modern Project, Alina Ibragimova, Lohengrin, Short Film Fellowships, Due West: Immersive Arts Festival, Badu Gili, The Antidote, The Power Within, Art On The Page, and giveaways from Australian World Orchestra and Entertainment One ...
... (read more)Das Lied von der Erde and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) ★★★★
Schubert’s most famous ‘unfinished’ work, the Eighth Symphony, is unconventional in a number of ways, its B minor key and the opening movement’s 3/4 pulse not least of them. Mahler’s grand Lied is a match in strangeness – setting, as it does, a miscellany of ancient ...
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