The struggle for personal survival in the unhinged world of late capitalism is both playfully and painfully observed by playwright Vivian Nguyen in the wild and wonderful Werkaholics.
Adapted from Max Porter’s much praised novel, the Belvoir Street production of Grief is the Thing with Feathers is electrifying, fantastical and deeply moving.
I have lived in Matavai since 2010 and am a survivor of a decade of so-called government consultation since Brad Hazzard first announced the Metro and the redevelopment of the Waterloo Estate.
A very clever and engrossing play, Eugene O’Brien’s award-winning Heaven reveals the quiet desperation that underlies the marriage of middle-aged Irish couple Mairead and Mal.
Sport for Jove’s The Player Kings: Part 1, a reframing of Shakespeare’s historical cycle, Richard II, Henry IV (parts 1 & 2) and Henry V into a durational dramatic event, is compelling, astonishing and revelatory.
Award-winning playwright Alana Valentine, sharp as a tack, courageous and compassionate, once again takes up the challenge of placing the patriarchal and colonial Australian psyche under her microscope.
Dance Clan 24 is exciting, challenging, beautiful and groundbreaking. A unique programme, Dance Clan nurtures a new generation of artists by offering young members the opportunity to create original works reflecting both their personal story and their cultural heritage.
Sam O’Sullivan’s McGuffin Park, a new play about an idealist who enters the mayoral race in the little town of McGuffin, is a gem of the political theatre genre.
Seventeen is interesting and compelling theatre as it directly involves its audience in bridging the gap between what they see, an ensemble of older actors, and what is voiced, a bunch of teenagers celebrating their last day at school.
A production made possible by the collaboration of the Nautanki Theatre and KXT Bakehouse, Sonal Moore’s autobiographical and tender-hearted Ten Years to Home tells the story of the South Asian diaspora through the eyes of three generations. The play, while looking with clear eyes at the difficulties of immigrant families, also celebrates the contribution made by Indian traditions and beliefs to a culturally diverse Australia.
Sensitively directed by Janine Watson, Colder Than Here is a moving and funny play about a middle-class English family dealing with terminal illness, but it is more than that. It is also about a wife and mother, whose resignation to her death is admirably up-beat but whose deep concern for her soon-to-be-bereft family is humbly heroic.
Iris is the production of the Dead Fruit Theatre Company, a recently developed collective of three Wollongong artists, Mish Fry, Clementine de la Hunty and Dominic Hort and is part of the Sydney Fringe Festival, 2024. The staging of this one-hander is strikingly inventive making clever use of visual media to underline its exploration of evolving selfhood.
The short and fast-paced Augusta is very entertaining, coating a thoughtful exploration of power beneath a sparkling exterior. The theme is always topical and vexatious as power is an inevitable outcome of human social life and structure as long as influence and control are valued as enhancing individual or group importance.
Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s Arlington presses the boundaries of theatre with a multimedia performance accompanied by aggressive lighting and sound effects. The production’s staging demands and discomposes, shocks and bewilders but the play’s most discomforting proposition is that the audience assemble their own sense from the triptych of contemporary anguish offered to it. The process is thrilling.
Fear not those theatregoers who love Chekhov and for whom Uncle Vanya is their favourite play. Joanna Murray-Smith’s adaptation maintains the Chekhovian melancholy – the sense of life passing without being lived – and comedy generated by human zaniness.
Bangarra is a national treasure, and Horizon continues its mission of both celebrating Indigenous cultures and enriching the mainland through a visually stunning and dynamic double bill.
Grace Chapple’s moving Never Closer quickly engages its audience in the lives of five teenagers in the time of “The Troubles”, the violent 30-year war that ravaged Northern Ireland from the ’60s to the ’90s.
