Just Macbeth

July 2nd 2010 10:18 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

JUST MACBETH Bell Shakespeare Company at the Playhouse Theatre, Sydney Opera House, June 25-July 31, 2010. Photos by Jeff Busby.

THE SCOTTISH PLAY is not really the one you'd immediately pick from Shakespeare's oeuvre for its comic potential. Unless, that is, you happen to be Andy Griffiths, writer of such contemporary classics as Zombie Bums From Uranus and Just Disgusting - from the acclaimed Bum and Just series, respectively. Griffiths, of course, is the Australian author who is as revered as Patrick White and even more popular than Bryce Courtenay - so he can pretty much do anything.

Griffiths' collaborator in the Macbeth enterprise is director Wayne Harrison and that choice tells you why Bell Shakespeare Company first brought this show to the stage last year. Harrison has an uncanny knack with new and "different" material: he can see its potential and the end result is almost always a gem of entertainment. Since Just Macbeth's first outing it's been reworked somewhat - primarily a 20 minute cut from the running time. And it's been turned from a good show into the sparkling and ridiculous comedy Shakespeare undoubtedly wishes he'd written in the first place.

Read the rest of this article and comment on it >>

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

June 30th 2010 4:40 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House, June 28-July 13, 2010. Photos: Branco Gaica.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM's 1973 Broadway hit is his most "popular" show despite - rather than because of - its hummability and Send In The Clowns. That song - made variously meaningless, mawkish and melodramatic by Sinatra, Streisand and club warblers on bar stools the world over - is both the most anticipated and therefore often the biggest letdown of the evening; unless it's done properly, that is. And there's no chance of being disappointed by this production.

Read the rest of this article and comment on it >>

bang

June 25th 2010 3:38 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

JONATHAN GAVIN'S new play is thrillingly ambitious. For the most part it works well in telling those six-degrees-of-separation stories that defy credibility - until they happen to you. It is a complex mix of dream and nightmare as those people who happen to be on a city commuter station platform one evening find themselves inextricably linked in life and death - an end and a beginning.

For those who have died as Hatije, a young Turkish-Australian woman, blows up herself and 17 others, it is the end; but it's also the beginning of a telling of their stories as well as the beginning of that awful death-in-life state that envelops those left alive and bewildered It's also the beginning of their stories and some comprehension.

Gavin has set out to explore not just the possible motives behind the making of a suicide bomber, but also the terrible cost in human shrapnel that is the aftermath. The very excellent cast of six - Blazey Best, Caroline Brazier, Ivan Donato, Tony Poli, Damian Rice and Wendy Strehlow - take on various roles. And possibly the most interesting is Blazey Best as a working class railway security guard who is consumed with guilt that she failed to apprehend Hatije (also played by Best) the middle class, brilliant, academic-turned suicide bomber.

Read the rest of this article and comment on it >>

WESLEY ENOCH FOR QTC

June 25th 2010 1:20 pm | Theatre | News - By Diana Simmonds

WONDERFUL NEWS for theatre and Indigenous Australia in Premier and Arts Minister Anna Bligh announcing (June 25) that Wesley Enoch, a Noonuccal Nuugi man from Minjeribah (Stradbroke Island) is the new Artistic Director for the Queensland Theatre Company.

Enoch is familiar to theatres and theatre-goers in Sydney and across the country for his work at Company B Belvoir, Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Black Swan, Griffin Theatre Company, Hothouse, Ilbijerri, Yirra Yaakin, Windmill, Malthouse and at festivals here and internationally.

As well as his own work - most recently The Sapphires and Parramatta Girls, both for Company B, Enoch is a well known writer and cultural leader and a member of a number of industry boards and committees including the Creative Australia Advisory Group, Ethics Council (National Congress of Australia's First People) and a Trustee of the Sydney Opera House.

Anna B's media release says, "Wesley has a long history of working in theatre, both as a director and a writer, starting his career in his home state of Queensland and then moving interstate to work across Australia. Over the past decade he has worked with the majority of Australia's state theatre companies, major arts centres and festivals and in 2006 directed the Indigenous section of the Opening Ceremony for the 2006 Commonwealth Games."

Enoch first came to national prominence in 1995 following his collaboration with Deborah Mailman, The Seven Stages of Grieving, and he's gone from strength to strength since. QTC Chair Kate Foy says the decision to appoint Enoch was unanimous and that he was "the standout candidate from a strong pool of national and international candidates." He joins the company part-time from July this year as 11-year director Michael Gow prepares to exit and takes over full time early in 2011. Everyone in Sydney theatre will be wishing him well.

Read the rest of this article and comment on it >>

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

June 11th 2010 9:45 pm | Theatre | Review - By Diana Simmonds

MEASURE FOR MEASURE Upstairs Belvoir St, 5 June-25 July, 2010; images by Heidrun Lohr

IN HIS PROGRAM notes, Benedict Andrews writes, "In the theatre, we ask actors to stand in for us, and as our substitutes, to show us how we have been, how we might be " And in Shakespeare's Measure For Measure what we have been and how we might be are not particularly pretty sights, albeit only too recognizable.

Known as the last of his comedies, although more bitter than sweet, Measure For Measure is rarely performed these days, probably because it's difficult. It's hard to find the right balance, tricky to extract the laughter without upsetting the pathos and besmirching the more serious subtext; and even more difficult to find the path through the minefield of possible melodrama and shock for shock's sake. Between them, the creative team of director Benedict Andrews, designer Ralph Myers and an almost flawless cast has not only found that path, found the balance and honoured the play, they have also fashioned one of the most memorable, exciting and utterly absorbing productions of the year.

Read the rest of this article and comment on it >>

GRAPHIC AT THE OPERA HOUSE

June 11th 2010 12:30 am | Visual Art | News - By Barbara Seville

AUGUST is a horrible month in Sydney so how about a brand new festival thingy to brighten up the old tart?

Sydney Opera House is coming to the rescue and announced this stimulus package today: "A brand new festival and online competition to celebrate the imagination and ideas of visionary creators in the fields of graphic storytelling, comics, animation and illustration." Read on:

Read the rest of this article and comment on it >>