Andrew Fuhrmann
Andrew Fuhrmann reviews books and theatre. He is currently dance critic for the Age newspaper.
When did you first write for ABR?
May 2012, when I reviewed Thomas Bernhard’s The Histrionic at the Malthouse.
Which critics most impress you?
Dozens of critics impress me, but the critic who made the greatest impression is John Dryden. Everything began with Dryden. It was his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) that first inspired me to write about the theatre. Through Dryden I discovered a way o ... (read more)
Goats are ubiquitous in the work of Patrick White. Start looking for them and they appear everywhere, staring out, page after page, with wise, tranquil eyes, pellets scattering like secrets into dust.
... (read more)
Goats are all but ubiquitous in the work of Patrick White. Start looking for them and they appear everywhere, staring out, page after page, with wise, tranquil eyes, pellets scattering like secrets into dust.
White bred goats, of course, Saanen goats, or tried to, while living at Castle Hill, and it is clear that the goat-mind made a profound impression. ‘One day I’m going to write a novel ab ... (read more)
In 2008, when Patrick White’s unfinished novella The Hanging Garden was liberated from obscurity, his biographer David Marr suggested that White might have returned to this ‘masterpiece in the making’ in 1982 had he not been beguiled by the ‘siren song’ of the theatre. This is the conventional narrative: flirtation and distraction, with Patrick White, Australia’s unambiguously great no ... (read more)
Writing to his brother in 1889, Anton Chekhov advised: ‘Try to be original and as clever as possible in your play, but do not be afraid of appearing stupid. Freethinking is essential, but to be a freethinker one must not be afraid to write nonsense.’
I thought a lot about nonsense during the Melbourne Theatre Company’s new production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904). In this often t ... (read more)
And so Griffith Review is ten. It’s a credit to the publishing smarts of founding editor Julianne Schultz that the journal is now a fixture on the cultural landscape, alongside the country’s older literary journals. Griffith is the vantage not of the outraged so much as the frustrated, a reliable forum for passionate criticisms aimed at the inadequacy of political discourse in contemporary Aus ... (read more)
‘If men are masters of their fate,’ asks the American feminist Susan Faludi, ‘what do they do about the unspoken sense that they are being mastered, in the marketplace and at home, by forces that seem to be sweeping away the soil beneath their feet?’
... (read more)
‘If men are masters of their fate,’ asks the American feminist Susan Faludi, ‘what do they do about the unspoken sense that they are being mastered, in the marketplace and at home, by forces that seem to be sweeping away the soil beneath their feet?’
Perhaps they go on a cruise. That, at least, is what Runt, Craze, Rabbit, and George do. Four middle-aged men, past their prime but still wi ... (read more)
Alec Hugh Chisholm, born in 1890 at Maryborough, is a legendary figure among Australian birders. He was a pioneering member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union, later known as Birds Australia, now BirdLife Australia, and worked tirelessly to facilitate and promote ornithological research. He was a prolific author of journal articles, field notes, prefaces, reflective essays, and popular ... (read more)