Menu
By Raymond Gill
When Stephen Found, the owner of the 2010 seat Sydney Lyric Theatre, is in New York checking out shows, he has to be careful to not accidentally roll onto his phone when he’s asleep. If he does, he might set off the app he designed that within a few seconds turns the vast Lyric from 2010 seats to a 1350 seat venue mid-performance
Read More
The following is the keynote address given by playwright Joanna Murray-Smith in Sydney last night at the announcement of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. *** “The map? I will first make it.” So wrote Patrick White in his novel Voss –one of the greatest of all Australian novels, no small claim. And so it is for artists.
Read More
By Daily Review
Leah Purcell’s radical theatrical reimagining of Henry Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife has won the major prize at this year’s NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. In addition to winning the $30,000 Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting, the play picked up the $10,000 prize for Book of the Year. It’s the first play script to win the Prize for Book
Read More
By Ben Neutze
There are few roles in the musical theatre canon as masculine and tough as Javert, the scary and steadfast police officer in Les Miserables. New Zealand-born musical theatre performer Hayden Tee has been playing the role since 2014, first as part of the Australian cast, then on an international tour, and finally on Broadway and the West
Read More
By Daily Review
PJ Hogan’s 1994 movie Muriel’s Wedding launched Toni Collette to stardom, earning the actor widespread recognition and her first Golden Globe nomination. So the actor stepping into the role for the upcoming musical adaptation of the film has massive shoes to fill. Daily Review can reveal that Muriel will be played by newcomer Maggie McKenna. McKenna is daughter
Read More
By Ben Neutze
The Ham Funeral is one of the richest and most significant plays in the Australian canon. Written by Patrick White in 1947, when he was still a relatively young man and an almost completely inexperienced playwright, the play remains a fiendishly difficult prospect for directors and actors alike. The surreal world of White’s play is unlike any other
Read More
By Ben Neutze
The highest stakes on a Sydney stage this year may well show up in the first act of American playwright Anne Washburn’s brilliant and brutal Mr Burns, A Post-Electric Play. Those sky-high stakes aren’t because the ongoing existence of humanity is under threat (although it is), nor are they because the safety of the characters on stage is under
Read More
By Ben Neutze
Lucy Durack and Jemma Rix are reuniting and returning to the characters which made them two of Australia’s most beloved musical theatre stars. But this time, they’ll be tackling the characters from a rather different perspective. Durack will play the Glinda, the Good Witch, and Rix will play the Wicked Witch of the West in the upcoming
Read More
By Daily Review
Hannie Rayson is one of Australia’s best known playwrights whose many plays include the celebrated Hotel Sorrento and Life After George. In 2015 she published a memoir, Hello, Beautiful!. As she promoted the book around the country she came up with the idea of turning it into a 6o minute one-woman stage show starring herself, telling her own
Read More
By Raymond Gill
When Opera Australia and John Frost’s production of My Fair Lady directed by Julie Andrews played in Sydney late last year it sold more tickets than any other show in the history of the Sydney Opera House. The production moved to Melbourne’s Regent Theatre this week lock, stock and barrel (with only one major cast change),
Read More