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Recent reviews
How much is too much music? What creates a successful program? The first of András Schiff’s two Tokyo recitals in the splendid Opera City Concert Hall left these and other questions in the forefront of this reviewer’s mind. Advertised under the banner ‘The Last Sonatas’, the pair of recitals ...
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The Australian Ballet opened its first 2017 Melbourne season looking like a new creature – mature, chic, and serious, ready to tackle any challenges choreographers placed in its path ...
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In this fortnight's Update: Marten Bequest Scholarships, The Faith Healer, Bill Henson at the NGV, The Balnaves Award, Art for Epilepsy, Castlemaine State Festival, and a film giveaway from Entertainment One.
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In this fortnight's Update: Ian Potter Museum of Art, Adelaide Festival ends with a bang, Christoph von Dohnányi, ACMI’s new $240,000 VR program, Armando Iannucci, The 2017 National Folk Festival, Shona Martyn, R&R in Melbourne, Yirramboi (Tomorrow) Festival ...
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You see them driving from Kings Canyon to Alice Springs, the majestic ghost white river gums depicted so faithfully in the paintings of Albert Namatjira. You would think you were looking at a Namatjira painting. And then there is the vista of the craggy hills of the West McDonnell ...
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Three women are staring into space. They are dazed, in shock, not yet believing that what has just happened has actually occurred. Beneath them is the body of a man, husband and father, whom they have just murdered. So begins the wild, darkly lyrical nightmare ride that is Australian ...
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On a balmy night in Melbourne this week, large numbers of well-dressed women descended on the Regent Theatre for the opening night performance of Ladies in Black. The blockbuster production from Australian screenwriter writer Carolyn Burns and director Simon Phillips, with original ...
... (read more)Wot? No Fish!!, Portraits in Motion, and Richard III (2017 Adelaide Festival)
Along with the spectacular offerings at this year’s Adelaide Festival, there are a number of small-scale, one-person shows which, in their concentration on the essence of theatre – what Eric Bentley describes as ‘A impersonates B while C looks on’ – can, perhaps, engage the audience’s imagination ...
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If one accepts the aptness of the old adage ‘one picture is worth a thousand words’, the range of pictorial delights offered by Barrie Kosky’s production of Handel’s oratorio Saul (1739) would test my editor’s word limit – generous though they always are ...
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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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