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The wives win hands-down in The Merry Wives of Windsor. REUTERS/Toby Melville. An image of playwright William Shakespeare from The Herball, a 16th-century book on plants.

Vale Shakespeare, the (not always) patriarchal Bard

While London and Stratford-upon-Avon go into meltdown over the upcoming anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, a new production – shown recently in Western Australia – is worth looking at closely.
In All the Sex I’ve Ever Had six Sydneysiders over 60 talk frankly about love, life and everything in between. Prudence Upton

Sydney Festival review: All the Sex I’ve Ever Had

There is something a little anxiety-inducing about knowingly walking into a closed theatre in which we will have no choice but to listen to the over-60s talk about their sex lives.
Lear’s mordant images and sonorous cadences throb with dire warning and a sense of imminent catastrophe. James Green

King Lear reincarnates as Geoffrey Rush – it’s a bloody tragedy

Lear’s mordant images and sonorous cadences throb with dire warning and a sense of imminent catastrophe. So what’s the play’s key message, for current times, with Geoffrey Rush in the title role?
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s last collaboration The Seven Deadly Sins, first performed in 1933, in circumstances not dissimilar than those we face today. Pictured: Meow Meow. Victorian Opera

How now Meow Meow? The Seven Deadly Sins is a Weimar Opera with 21st-century resonance

Victorian Opera this week stages The Seven Deadly Sins, the final collaboration between Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. First staged in 1933, it is a masterpiece by two of the most revolutionary artists of Weimar Germany.
Desdemona is one of several productions at this year’s Melbourne Festival that invites its audiences to listen to tragedy and its reverberations. Mark Allan/Melbourne Festival

Toni Morrison’s Desdemona invites us to listen not just hear

Tony Morrison’s Desdemona, which opens today in Melbourne, asks many questions of its audience. Perhaps most pressingly: what does it really mean to listen, rather than hear?
In Athenian spirit. Carsten Rehder/EPA

If only we could ask Euripides about refugees

Berlin recently agreed to curb the number of migrants it welcomed after a backlash against Angela Merkel’s suspension of EU rules limiting numbers. It followed previous scenes of crowds welcoming new arrivals…
National Theatre of Wales

Why Homer belongs on Netflix

Classical epic can seem particularly alien in the instant gratification culture of Instagram and Twitter, yet there’s a surge of interest in them.
What does telling the story of the long-running conflict in the Congo through the lens of Verdi’s Macbeth teach us? Owen Metsileng and Nobulumko Mngxek in Macbeth. by Nicky Newman

Macbeth brings double, double, toil and trouble from DR Congo

Brett Bailey’s Macbeth at Brisbane Festival is a powerful production that relocates Verdi’s opera (based on Shakespeare’s play) to the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Interactive children’s theatre engages childrens’ innate creative impulses and encourages them to be curious and playful. Image by Kristian Laemmie-Ruff. Arena Theatra

Not so Fringe: interactive children’s theatre takes centre stage

An expanded program of interactive performances for children at this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival harnesses their audience’s innate creative abilities and invites them to both watch and join in.
Alison Bell as Emma, making the long, counter-intuitive journey from despair to hope, is perfect in every way. Shane Reid

Betrayal by Harold Pinter, and our betrayal of ourselves

This production of a very great play by the State Theatre Company of South Australia is beautiful, clarified, and haunting. You will be relieved to know it is “excellent”. More to the point it is right.

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