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From opera to musical theatre and drama classic and contemporary, I’m genre agnostic when it comes to picking the best theatrical experiences of 2018. The standout Sydney stage shows spoke to the moment in distinctive ways, from #metoo to race relations, mental health, environmentalism … and the pitfalls of bricking yourself into a pyramid. In
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Playwright Joanna Murray-Smith pays tribute to the gift of an actor. The actor is her uncle John Bluthal who died on November 15 north of Sydney, aged 89. Bluthal was born in Poland, raised and educated in Australia and worked as an actor for stage and screen for seven decades, mostly in London. His career included lead roles in West
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“The gift of time in reflection has provided some clarity …” It reads as the opening words of a philosopher, sitting in a bower, contemplating life and offering to the trees and sky an essence of what he or she now would utter on something important, something of a distilled universal nature. But no, not
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Andrew McGahan’s first book, the disturbingly comic Praise, defined him as a Queensland writer, and that stuck. Even though he has written books set in Sydney and Canberra, even though he has lived in Melbourne for decades, the sultry indolence of Brisbane in that Vogel-Award winner back in 1992 perfectly matched the tone and delivery
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Last week, the global citizenry seemed to be in shock as they watched the American president explain that the Saud family’s current dictator will not be sanctioned for having one of his former advisors hacked to death in Turkey. The reason, said Trump, was because America needs control over Saudi oil and loves the billions
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“Love,” so the song pile-driven deep into your brain goes, “will never let you be the same.” Which goes for the show, too. You can’t unsee Aspects Of Love, the sweepingly silly Andrew Lloyd Webber musical extravagantly revived at the Hayes Theatre. You certainly can’t unhear Love Changes Everything, its saccharine strains injected into every
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Magpie Diaries is a band hailing from the Hunter region of NSW. Its well-crafted tunes could be loosely described as contemporary-country and blues-influenced-folk rock (stated influences include Grateful Dead, Neil Young and Van Morrison). They also bring other sensibilities, such as a fair whack of sax to the table on their debut album Sanctuary. The band is fronted by Matt
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By Shane Murphy
About five years ago, I picked up a copy of Koraly Dimitriadis’ first book of poetry – Love and Fuck Poems – in a bookshop in Fitzroy. Idly flipping its pages, I realised that she was writing with a fire and fervour that I hadn’t seen much in recent times. I was hooked straight away,
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Last year I reviewed legendary indie band, The Pixies’ excellent performance at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney for Daily Review. In some quarters, the band that played that night at the Horden was a Clayton’s version of The Pixies; it didn’t include original bass player Kim Deal, who was replaced by Paz Lechantin, who does
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The first episode of SBS’s four-part drama On the Ropes (which premiered this week) begins with an image reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler: a behind-the-back handheld shot tracing the steps of a person marching towards the ring. We assume this character, Amirah Al-Amir (Nicole Chamoun) is a boxer, but discover upon her arrival that
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