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By Ben Neutze
Australia’s cultural cringe may well be at its greatest when it comes to our musical theatre. We certainly don’t have a strong history of championing and developing our own unique voices and talents, and our yardstick for measuring the quality of our work has always been international success. Muriel’s Wedding the Musical is a big, boldly joyous “screw you” to that notion
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By Ben Neutze
Australian playwright Mary Rachel Brown’s riotous new Christmas comedy follows the Lickfold family as they prepare their house to compete in the Australian Regional Christmas Excellence (ARCE) awards. The Lickfolds (geddit? Lick-fold?) have previously been entering the ARCE (say that sentence out loud — geddit?) for 12 years, but they face a few major hurdles to
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By Ben Neutze
Few productions are blessed with both wonderful material and a team as extraordinarily talented as the one working on Sydney Theatre Company’s Three Sisters. On paper, it ticks just about every available box: a line-up of rising and established stage stars, the return of Andrew Upton to adapting Chekhov, director Kip Williams bringing his incisive contemporary lens to
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By Ben Neutze
In all cultures there are dominant narratives that form an unquestionable image of a society’s history and identity. These are the narratives upheld by the kinds of people who have sat in positions of power for hundreds of years. But sitting just to the side is a rich reservoir of counter-narratives that, when pulled together, make up a more complex, nuanced and
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By Ben Neutze
The works of Greek-Australian author Christos Tsiolkas have been the subject of some fairly significant adaptations: his debut novel Loaded was turned into the award-winning 1998 film Head On, and both his novels The Slap and Barracuda were adapted into critically-acclaimed TV series. So when leading independent theatre director Stephen Nicolazzo’s partner suggested that he should approach Tsiolkas about adapting the author’s short
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By Ben Neutze
“Write what you know” is probably the most widely known piece of advice given to writers. It’s generally pretty useful: start with finding the narratives and drama in your own life, and write about the world as you experience it. It helps a writer to find an authentic voice and ensure their storytelling rings with a degree of
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By Ben Neutze
The ABC has been home to Australia’s most loved TV comedies for several decades now, stretching all the way back to the 1970s, when the broadcaster was home to Aunty Jack and Norman Gunston, through to Frontline in the 1990s, Kath and Kim in the early 2000s, and Mad As Hell in the 2010s. But on December 4, the broadcaster
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By Ben Neutze
Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge isn’t quite as well known as his three most famous and studied masterpieces — Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and All My Sons — but there’s been significant renewed interest in the play in recent years. A well-received Broadway revival opened in 2010 starring Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber, and a stripped-back 2014
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By Ben Neutze
The ABC has removed eleven years of reviews by David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz from the internet, leaving audiences unable to access one of the most significant records of modern Australian film history. The website for Pomeranz and Stratton’s At The Movies, which ran on ABC TV from 2004 to 2014, is no longer maintained or hosted by
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By Ben Neutze
Pop idols have been reinventing their images, personas and sounds for as long as there have been pop idols. Some reinventions are calculated to achieve commercial goals: to ensure an artist stays in-step with the latest trends, to avoid any sense of staleness, and to reach a broader audience. But others are much more organic, reflecting the
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