June, 2010

Marcus Westbury, in yesterday’s Age (or at least the online bit—who knows whether they actually put anything in the paper these days), wrote a piece about the death of art criticism … as we know it: The art form critic that we’re familiar with is neither natural nor inevitable. It is as much a construct [...]

Gagging to see Liza do Lady Gaga? Thanks to Trevor Ashley’s Liza (on an E), you don’t have to die wondering.

This is the question: will any future production of The Threepenny Opera ever outshine Mac Tonight for political and moral poignancy? Answer: Perhaps, but not if you let Michael Kantor near those bloody gorilla suits.

Malian writer Amadou Hampate Ba was born into a wealthy family, at the turn of last century, in Bandiagara. In fact, he was one of the most significant African intellectuals as well as literary figures of that tumultuous century. Historian, collector, translator, ethnologist, poet, prize-winner, UNESCO ambassador to the Ivory Coast and national hero, he [...]

Performance Space at CarriageWorks, like Magoo, has done it again. One of Sydney’s principal bastions of all that’s new, fresh and edgy in performance, art and performance art, now brings us, direct from Melbourne’s Next Wave festival, Bromance, a celebration of homosociality. Boys will be boys and men will be boys too, given half a chance and an empathic hombre.

The weather may not have been so fair, but fair is foul, so what could be fairer than foul weather to open Riverside Lyric Ensemble’s presentation of the bloody tragedy of Macbeth? It’s a limited but intensive season, running twice daily, from June 1 until June 5. Of course, in our highly-civilised society, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which ambition runs riot and ruins everything, as take place in the Scottish play. That’s a joke, Joyce.

Keating: The Musical was a smashing success. So which pollie or political saga deserves the song-and-dance treatment? Apparently, Wilson Tuckey, Pauline Hanson, Kristina Keneally and Mark Latham. And why not?