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By Helen Razer
This is an extract from Daily Review columnist Helen Razer’s new book, Total Propaganda: Basic Marxist Brainwashing for the Angry and the Young. As its title suggests, the work, to be released by Allen & Unwin this Wednesday, is an attempt to introduce the thought of Marx to the curious, the cross and the time-poor in an era
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Screen Queensland’s move to revive the dormant Brisbane International Film Festival in partnership with Palace Cinemas has stoked concerns that the festival scene is being hijacked by commercial interests. The growing influence of Palace Cinemas on the film festival circuit may not mean that much on the surface says Mark Taylor, who sits on the
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By Daily Review
The 1930s in Australia was a tumultuous time as the Depression hit, then receded, politics rumbled across the left and right, and consumerism and a new body consciousness emerged as technological advances were made. Australian artists reacted to these changes in commercial art, architecture, fashion, industrial design, film and dance. The artistic styles that emerged were both progressive and conservative.
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By Ben Neutze
The Australian cast of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical have this week started rehearsals ahead of the show’s Sydney premiere next month. We caught the cast three days into rehearsal and spoke to Esther Hannaford, who stars as King, and director Marc Bruni, who is recreating his Broadway production for local audiences.
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By Ben Neutze
Following its success this year with Barrie Kosky’s production of Saul, Adelaide Festival has announced another large-scale opera to open next year’s festival. Australian composer Brett Dean’s new operatic version of Hamlet will have its Australian debut next March, directed by Adelaide Festival’s Joint Artistic Director Neil Armfield. The opera had its world premiere in June at the UK’s Glyndebourne Festival
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In the near future, universities will no doubt be bombarded with Phd topics involving the Trump era, just as they were post 9/11 when life inspired a new narrative take on storytelling. Artists have always responded to social change and political upheaval in order to contribute to the conversation through their own medium or because they
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By Ben Neutze
There are several ways in which Matt Okine’s new series for local streaming service Stan is similar to Josh Thomas’s critical darling Please Like Me. Both shows follow a popular millennial Australian stand-up as he goes through a period of transition in his young adult life. Both take place in inner suburban sharehouses and cafes. Both feature
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The frosty skies and magnificent New Zealand mountains provided more than pretty scaffolding in the first season of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake: they informed the very heart and soul of it. Like the Tasmanian-based, mystery sci-fi The Kettering Incident, a darkly magical synergy bound, like bolts from a wand, the central location to
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By Ben Neutze
The patriarchy has fallen! Well, at least in a living room and kitchen, in the corner of working class, suburban USA where playwright and performance artist Taylor Mac has set judy’s 2014 play, Hir. But what rises in the place of a fallen patriarchy? How does the world restructure itself and transition when power structures are torn apart, and the people
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The life of Joseph Merrick is a famous and well documented one. The late 19th Century medical phenomenon was a nervous, isolated man who lived with severe and continually developing deformities. He died of a dislocated neck as a result of his conditions. The best known theatrical adaptation of Merrick’s story was the 1979 Tony Award-winning
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