Perhaps the most disturbing thing about A Number is not that cloning can happen to anyone, but that a father can simply ask for a do-over. Playwright Caryl Churchill sweeps the audience along on a story that rejects the typical cloning plot possibilities, turning instead towards questions of the definition of family, family love, and [...]
READ MOREAugust, 2011
REVIEW: Serenely Independent? | El Rocco, Sydney
El Rocco might have some claim to former fame and have undergone a most welcome change of ownership, but it still exudes surliness and is, at the end of the day, a pretty dingy hole in the ground which might be more aptly called La Cucaracha. Still and all, we must be thankful for small [...]
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REVIEW: The Mercy Seat | Sidetrack Theatre, Sydney
DoLittle Productions has come up with a you-beaut Neil LaBute play, written in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Designer Clair Moloney has created an NYC apartment and liberally sprinkled it with dust and sand. This true grit permeates the relationship tracked by La Bute, in all its strenuous, agonising, petty, bitchy, dirty detail. The palpable [...]
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REVIEW: A Quiet Night In Rangoon | New Theatre, Sydney
Subtlenuance would seem to be going from strength to strength. Oh sure, writer-director Paul Gilchrist and producer Daniela Giorgi have faltered here-and-there but, all-in-all, bugger all. This time out, they join forces with The Spare Room, an initiative of historic New Theatre that facilitates co-productions between same and indie theatre companies, emerging and established, funded [...]
READ MOREREVIEW: Mountains Never Meet | Riverside Theatres, Sydney
Martin Del Amo is an interesting man. Commissioned by WAAPA a few years back to create a work for its graduate dance company LINK, he chose to investigate the difference, and distance, between walking and dancing. It’s interesting as an idea and, perhaps, counter-intuitively, also works on the floor, even if it could be a little [...]
READ MOREREVIEW: Orthello | TAP Gallery Theatre, Sydney
Steven Hopley has high hopes. He’s created The Sydney Shakespeare Company. This, in the city of Bell. Hello! Yet, like many impossibly ambitious schemes, his hopes, far from being dashed, have been substantially realised. And who would’ve believed a compelling reading of Othello would survive the confines of Tap Gallery Theatre? After all, it’s a [...]
READ MOREREVIEW: Shakespeare’s Will | Old 505 Theatre, Sydney
Ironically, the Old 505 Theatre is a new venue. Well, kinda. Sorta. It was started several years ago now, by jazz bassist Cameron Undy and his creative backbone, his wife, Kerry Glasscock. Unit 505, Hibernian House, 342 Elizabeth Street, opposite Sydney’s Central Station, was their home and rehearsal space. A space which they decided, illegally [...]
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REVIEW: Side To One | Riverside Theatres, Sydney
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: dance and narrative aren’t natural bedfellows; it’s not a marriage made in heaven. But Side To One puts up a very credible challenge to my assertion. Lisa Griffiths and Craig Bary are behind, and in front of, the work, which very successfully seeks to explore human [...]
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REVIEW: Rising Water | Playhouse, Melbourne
As far as Tim Winton’s works go, Rising Water is the one that comes closest to home for me, geographically speaking. It’s set in Fremantle Sailing Club, just down the road from where I grew up. Unlike many of the other clubs in the Perth area, it’s home to serious sailors as well as to [...]
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REVIEW: The Merry Widow | Opera Theatre, Sydney
The Merry Widow. Even the title throws you right into the heady, self-indulgent days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, before one of its own sons, of little stature, talent or accomplishment, but big ideas and fearless determination, threw a bloody, big spanner in the works. Franz Lehar’s operetta, in three acts, even seems more like a [...]
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