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This captivating song cycle, from Adelaide based theatre company Slingsby, begins with a children’s book given to a boy by his grandmother. It is called An Island in Time and it is the factual story of geological land formation from volcanic upheaval through, by natural selection, to the establishment of flora and fauna, habitat and ecological
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One of the many things to like about the Adelaide Cabaret Festival is that, not only is its program filled with new and intriguing performers, it is also a showcase for capital ‘‘S” Stars. There have been many over its 17 year history, including such Broadway luminaries as Bernadette Peters, Michael Feinstein, Mandy Patinkin, Stephen
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The hangover from seeing a really great piece of theatre, a work of the moment that speaks to the moment, can be particularly cruel. Saint Joan, at the Sydney Theatre Company, captured so powerfully the isolation and subjection of women. The Hypochondriac, which opened at the Darlinghurst Theatre on Wednesday, is a portrait of an
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Joan of Arc is so hot right now. Inappropriate pun intended. She’s just finished on Broadway, she was on the West End not that long ago, and is rarely absent the stage for long. There’ve been 40-odd films, the most recent just last year. She’s been inhabited by some of the greats: Plowright, Redgrave, Dench,
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When love gets you down, they say the best remedy is to get straight back out there. And so it is in The Merry Widow, choreographed for The Australian Ballet in 1975 by Ronald Hynd, and now revived in its season at the Arts Centre, Melbourne until June 16. Ludicrously rich French widow, Hanna Glawari, is
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With friends like the former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who needs enemies? The proposed Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra has died in the trench warfare between the post-modern left and the new right. According to The Australian this week, the ANU’s incoming history department head, Professor Frank
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By Raymond Gill
Last weekend the Queensland Government announced that its hulking arts complex, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) in Brisbane was about to get even bigger with an extra theatre to address the shortage of large theatre venues in the city. Commercial producers have long complained that big touring musicals could be lined up like Airbuses at a single runway airport waiting for
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In June, Melbourne celebrates its 25th ‘Bloomsday In Melbourne’ festival, the annual literary event commemorating James Joyce’s famous novel Ulysses. The festival includes a stage production of Holy Cow! James Joyce Slaughters the Sacred Cows of English Literature, directed by Jennifer Sarah Dean at fortyfivedownstairs in Flinders Lane, Melbourne. The festival’s director Frances Devlin-Glass looks at how its costumier, Rhiannon Irving,
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Fiona Blair reviews the return season of Resident Alien starring Paul Capsis as Quentin Crisp and directed by Gary Abrahams. The show was performed in Melbourne at 45downstairs and at the Brisbane Powerhouse earlier this month and will be presented at the Seymour Centre in Sydney June 13-16. *** Resident Alien, is a curious piece. Not least because of
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Ten years since its origins as Club Briefs in Brisbane’s West End, Briefs comes home, studded with international accolades, to perform Close Encounters at Melt Festival. In Close Encounters, the Briefs spacemen have landed from the future to bring us hope – to let us know that everything is going to be okay. Hosted with
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