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.
Directed by Erica Lovell, the Old Fitz Theatre’s production of Joanna Murray-Smith’s delightfully wicked The Female of the Species is fast-paced and entertaining.
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.
There is a certain poignance, laced with nostalgia, in this, the Genesian’s last production at its charming Kent Street home, before its relocation to Rozelle. Director Ali Bendall’s excellent adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s passionate novel about a young orphan’s quest to survive and find love still resonates with modern audiences (if the lists of favourite reads are to be believed), nearly two hundred years after it was written.
Carmel Dean’s Well-Behaved Women is a musical journey through the ages that highlights women’s experiences and balances both comedy and tragedy perfectly.
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.
Perfection is what we should all be striving for, right? But is losing who you are in the process worth it? Astra Milne and Miah Tito-Barratt brilliantly tackle this idea with full force in Shopfront’s latest production Snail and Rocks.
Against a minimalist set (Zoë Atkinson) consisting of pale grey squares Christopher (Daniel R. Nixon) introduces himself and his special education teacher, Shiobhan (Brigid Zengeni), who will also narrate part of his story from the book he has written about his adventures.
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.
Winning the Tony Award in 1996 for writer Terence McNally, this dramatic production is based on Maria Callas’ master classes at the Juilliard performance school at the end of her career in the 1970s.
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.
The blast from the past provided by the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir’s program of iconic hits celebrating the great hits of the ’80s proved to be just the right note for beginning the June long weekend with an energetic dose of uplifting aural magic.
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.
Acknowledged as the “Queen of Cosy Crime”, Agatha Christie’s detective stories often featuring Miss Marple or Hercules Poirot, have been translated into many languages and adapted into many film, television and stage productions. Anthony Hinds’s Let’s Kill Agatha Christie while making fun of the genre popularised by Christie, is also a ridiculously funny play staged with energy and style by the Genesian.
Sydney’s Le Petit Theatre have opened their first post-pandemic production with the crime-comedy 8 Femmes. The play is best known through François Ozon’s 2002 now dated film version and savvy director, Anna Jahjah, has wisely chosen to create her own chic version of Robert Thomas’s original 1958 play.
The Belvoir is fortunate to showcase the world premiere of Nayika: A Dancing Girl, an astonishing solo performance by Vaishnavi Suryaprakash. While relevant to the present escalating partner violence, and a powerful piece of truth-telling, it is also of a performance of memorable strength and beauty.
The solo performance format can place weighty demands on an actor, but Mandela Mathia breezily rises to the challenge, telling his arresting life story with warmth, charm and humour.
God doesn’t rate a mention in Samuel D. Hunter’s sensitive and probing A Case for the Existence of God, however faith is rewarded in a low-key and moving way. Faith in what, we ask, or is it simply the hope that things in the end might turn out not to be irredeemably wretched for both characters in this tightly directed absorbing two-hander.
Australia Felix is an entertaining and thoughtful play. Writer Geoffrey Sykes has chosen the ideal story through which to probe our chequered history and the uncertainty of our future, the cast is very appealing in their various roles and have good voices, and Steve Wood’s songs are both catchy and purposeful.
Collide is Shopfront’s most recent ArtsLab program showcasing the work of emerging artists who are given not only the opportunity to develop their work but also the support of practising professional artists. The current festival of new work includes three completely original and, each in their unique way, inspiring theatrical performances.
Adapted by Tommy Murphy from Tim Conigrave’s 1995 best-selling memoir, first staged in 2006 and turned into a film in 2015, Holding the Man, while a queer classic of Sydney literature and stage, has almost reached mythic status.
Agapi and Other Kinds of Love is an innovative and intriguing show merging hip-hop beats with music for ancient instruments and swinging in time between Athens in 416 BCE and the modern-day city. The text, exploring different kinds of love and inspired by Plato’s The Symposium is performed by poet and rapper Luka Lesson ...
You don’t need to know much about rugby to enjoy this warm, effervescent, funny rendition of an iconic match in 1978 between the formidable All Blacks from New Zealand and an amateur team from Limerick in Munster, Ireland.
The audience reaction to Tiny Beautiful Things was rapt attention throughout and rapturous applause at the close. This moving and life-affirming performance based on Cheryl Strayed’s best-seller and adapted for theatre by Nia Varlados comes at a time when many are struggling to find consolation or hope in dark and confusing times.
The play is an adaptation of Anita Heiss’ much-loved novel and now, as a part of Sydney Festival’s Blak Out program, it is Sydney’s turn to enjoy this funny, heartwarming theatrical treat.
Would you like to go to the theatre and enjoy a night of sheer fun, ridiculous antics and hilariously organised chaos? As good as pre-Christmas drinks, the Ensemble’s absurd romp Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall offers a welcome escape from responsible adulthood and permission to indulge in giggling at Kilmurry and Oxenbould’s cheerfully zany take on the well-worn phrase “What could go wrong?”
The enthusiastic opening night audience gave a standing ovation to Eamon Flack’s ambitious and magical adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s complex and layered novel The Master and Margarita. What is the connection between a novel written during the Stalinist regime and only published as a complete book in 1967 and a contemporary audience whose freedom of expression seems unrestricted by comparison?
Taking inspiration from the concept of the Lost Boys, Peter Pan’s companions, the Little Eggs Collective has devised a mesmerising hour-long performance of soundscape, movement and spoken word exploring the volatile emotional “innerscape” of the modern pre-teen.
Shelagh Stephenson’s 1996 prize-winning play The Memory of Water is surprisingly relevant as it explores the influence, actual or imagined, of a mother upon the future lives of her children.
In an Australian premiere, spectacular new dance-theatre work Message In a Bottle from award-winning choreographer Kate Prince, set to the music of 17-time Grammy award-winning artist Sting, has opened at the Joan Sutherland Theatre as part of the Opera House’s 50th Birthday Festival.
Drifters presents the second of its twice-yearly festival of new work from Shopfront Arts Residency program which partners emerging artists with industry mentors and provides a performance opportunity. The fresh, lively and thoughtful program offers an exciting glimpse into the creative minds of the young and vibrant.
The Disappearance, adapted by Les Solomon from Kim Platt’s novel The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear, fits well with Mental Health Month which is intended to raise community awareness and understanding of mental health issues.
Deadhouse Productions, purveyors of tales from the Sydney Morgue, once again both thrill and haunt their audience with their very successful immersive presentation of Juanita Nielsen: The Final Days.
As well as explaining the details of a major constitutional crisis with clarity, The Dismissal is also a stylish musical satirising Australian politics and politicians.
Under Molly Hadden’s direction, Agatha Christie’s “country house murder”, beautifully indulges our nostalgia for a partly imaginary past while allowing its major characters complex motivation.
Subtlenuance’s return production of Paul Gilchrist’s Catherine at Avignon is very relevant in the wake of Greta Thunberg’s challenge to world leaders to act on climate change.
Although not without its dramatic moments, The Weekend is deeply moving because its disclosures are low key, often almost tacit and often suggested through stage effects.
Richard Hilliar’s stage adaptation of Henry James’s much-debated novella The Turn of the Screw delights in presenting a range of Gothic horror elements while giving James’s apparent theme a more contemporary perspective.
Yuldea, the anticipated full-length performance choreographed by Frances Rings in her new role as Artistic Director of the iconic Bangarra Dance Company, is an extraordinary achievement.
The Genesian’s production of Steven Canny and John Nicholson’s hilarious re-invention of the celebrity detective Sherlock Holmes’s well-known case The Hound of the Baskervilles is a must-see.
