In this probing play, Brother Daniel, the choices made by an imprisoned elder of an unidentified revolution and a young lawyer who wishes to save him, may be less heroic than they seem. Or are they?
In Purgatorio, the central section of The Divine Comedy, Dante displays knowledge of the four stars visible in the southern hemisphere and seen by "the first peoples". Award-winning composer and classical guitarist Diego Bosco has both translated this section and composed music to accompany its reading by Noongah elder, Roma Yibiyang Winmar, and actor Bruce Gilbert (Bad Boy Bubby, 1993).
A courageous Paul Gilchrist (writer and director) dares to question the role of story in a time when having a story is of paramount importance in establishing personal authenticity.
While Patyegarang is a moving and mesmerising episodic tale of two young people, a local Eora girl and a First Fleet astronomer, for whom the circumstances are out of joint, this dance experience is so much more. The suffering of individuals caught up in events larger than themselves is sad but the true tragic ache is generated by a sense of wasted potential and the loss of possibility.
Mamet’s play, written in 1992 and often viewed as a response to the still relevant issue of sexual harassment publicised through the Anita Hill-Clarence Thompson hearings (USA, 1991), is not confined to the issues of gender and power. Included also is a very relevant critique of education, but more importantly Oleanna explores the way language can be used as a means of control.
In turns fantastic, grotesque and hilarious, Poo Poo Pee Doo, scripted and directed by the multi-talented Anna Jahjah, is a joyous romp in the anarchic spirit of commedia dell’arte. Each of her small compagnie gleefully plays several characters, and it seems, sometimes several characters almost at once, energetically subverting gender, culture, politics and revelling in ridiculous situations, absurd repartee and entertaining stage action.
The Political Hearts of Children was one of my favourite productions from big or little theatre in 2013. As High Windows, Low Doorways used the same immensely successful collaborative approach, and the chosen theme, spirituality, was particularly challenging, I was eager to see this first subtlenuance production of the season.
Neither a western nor a thriller, A Gun in Each Hand is a witty, sympathetically observed and gentle satire upon the contemporary middle-class male with...
In Cristina in the Cupboard, a tight little play of around 90 minutes, Paul Gilchrist explores the frightening deficit between what actually happens and societal projections of roles, relationships and responses from the perspective of a young woman on the verge of adult life.
A thrilling theatre event, Version 1.0’s devised performance, The Vehicle Failed To Stop, based on the killing of Marou Aswani and Geneva Jalal as they returned from church by private security contractors in October, 2003, asks hard questions about the relationship between commerce, war and privatisation.
Roberto Zucco is a much-produced play in Europe, is becoming so in the US, and Anna Jahjah offers us the opportunity to see this strange and compelling work of French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès (1948-1989) for ourselves. The play was inspired by a police poster showing four dissimilar images of a young Italian-born serial murderer, Roberto Succo, whose killing spree in the 1980s garnered him a cult following. The play, intentionally oblique and confronting, represents Zucco’s murders as almost ordained and ending in his own spiritual transformation. Or is this how the possibly schizophrenic Roberto Zucco (Tim Cole) perceives himself?
The events of the Waterfall train disaster, January 31, 2003, are undeniably tragic, but it takes a gifted playwright to transform tragic events into a theatrical tragedy. While drawing honestly and sensitively upon verbatim sources to construct a full picture of the impact of these events upon a community, Dead Man Brake is a compelling, uplifting and profoundly poetic reflection upon the nature of human suffering. Valentine’s remarkable treatment of her subject is ably supported and amplified by composer/sound designer, Daryl Wallis.
The ACA Second Year Company presented eight scenes from different Shakespearean plays, each chosen to connect with and reflect on Shakespeare’s own life in the age of the Great Queen.
The events of the Waterfall train disaster, January 31, 2003, are undeniably tragic, but it takes a gifted playwright to transform tragic events into a theatrical tragedy. While drawing honestly and sensitively upon verbatim sources to construct a full picture of the impact of these events upon a community, Dead Man Brake is a compelling, uplifting and profoundly poetic reflection upon the nature of human suffering. Valentine’s remarkable treatment of her subject is ably supported and amplified by composer/sound designer, Daryl Wallis.
Attending this subtlenuance presentation is like entering another world. Imagine coming in from a cold winter’s night, a climb up worn carpeted stairs, welcoming words from Daniela Giorgio (producer), a short time spent in a dimly lit book-lined bar with other friendly theatre seekers. At the sound of a bell, we move along a narrow passage, our path traced by a tube of tiny lights, and emerge into a bedroom, the most personal of spaces, within – by implication – a shared house.
In Tall, Dark Stranger two London couples, the aging, now divorced Helena (Gemma Jones) and Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), and their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin), claim the right to the pursuit of happiness.
Most adults in our society would see children as apolitical. However, as The Political Hearts of Children suggests through this performance of seven unique childhood memories, the young are early introduced to the notion of power-holding and powerlessness through the relationship of child to child, adult to child, parent to child, and community to child.
The five intersecting stories of Into the Mirror celebrate identity and affirm the choices of its characters. At the play’s close, a mirror, draped in a dark cloth at its opening and used by various characters to reflect their image throughout, is left uncovered as characters discover that they need not be afraid of what they see.
Tarantula picks up the story of Lola Montez on July 8, 1856, when returning to San Francisco from an exhausting and scandal-filled Australian tour, Lola’s lover, Noel Folland, disappeared from the deck of the Jane A. Falkenburg and was never seen again, presumed drowned. Using the conceit of a play within a play, Tarantula (premiered here at the King Street Theatre but first read as part of the Griffin Searchlight program) traces the story of Lola’s life by having a contemporary actress, Gina, making a play about her hero.
