Last year in Australian theatre a rare event took place: a sector-wide debate about the role of classic adaptations in the national repertoire. But the discussion had darker resonances and was clearly…
We’ve been celebrating Shakespeare’s 450th birthday week with fun, festivals, exhibitions, a cake competition – and the launch of an improbably epic tour of Hamlet from the Globe in London “to every country…
In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the conspirator Cassius bitterly describes the position of Caesar in Rome. He says: … [H]e doth bestride the narrow world Like a colossus, and we petty men Walk…
In 1951, screen star turned director Ida Lupino wrote: Women, according to these stalwart defenders of male superiority, may not be film musical directors, cameramen, set designers, composers, assistant…
Two performance artists in this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) – the UK’s Bryony Kimmings and American Adrienne Truscott – have a certain flavour of humour: it’s the knowing, self-deprecating…
What is it about stand-up comedy that makes it a more difficult space for a funny woman to conquer? A bunch of seasoned female stand-ups return to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) this…
Love is a battlefield. While Pat Benatar might have made this line her own in the 1980s, Shakespeare and his contemporaries were also familiar with the trope. Analogies between wooing and hunting were…
No one has ever claimed that the gods of theatre are fair. Musicals have flopped in London for any number of reasons: some were ahead of their times (the first production of Sweeney Todd), some were overpriced…
In 1825 the African-American actor Ira Aldridge came to London in The Slave’s Revenge. Before abolition, he had no hopes of working on the stage at home, but he became one of the most popular Shakespearean…
We are finally starting to see an emergent consistency in creative economy policy in George Osborne’s budget statement. The chancellor’s key innovation was the introduction of tax relief for theatres from…
C.P. Snow’s pessimistic view of “two cultures” – the arts and the sciences at war with each other, glowering across no man’s land, entrenched in their embattled fortress of true expression (as each saw…
When I was an adolescent I used to spend a lot of hours in useless discussions with friends as to who was a star and who wasn’t. John Travolta was, Christopher Reeve wasn’t but Superman was. Esther Williams…
Adaptations are everywhere. Almost every other major release or project currently in development is has its origin in another text, whether that be book, play or another film. Most recently is the news…
This week, Back to Back Theatre’s 2012 production Ganesh versus the Third Reich will open at Sydney’s Carriageworks. The show has toured the world, winning awards and laudatory reviews in Montreal, Paris…
Meet Dr Patricia Baker; not a medical doctor but a doctor of scrapology, founder of SCRAPS, the Society (for the) Care, Repair (and) Analytical Probing (of) Scrapbooks. She has an alluring range of CSI-like…
At the heart of the Homer’s Coat production of An Iliad, currently playing at the Adelaide Festival, is that most of Homeric of things, a list. In a narrative compression as consummate as any in the epic…
Over six hours, three Shakespearean tragedies – Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra – are connected in an immensely ambitious production, Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s Roman Tragedies. Under Ivo…
This article contains spoilers. John Wells’ film August: Osage County tells the story of a family which has gathered for the funeral of its father. Ostensibly, they are also there to help its ill and drug-addicted…
British playwright Mike Bartlett’s contemporary comedy of manners Cock opened on the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) main stage last week. Highly anticipated after winning an Olivier Award with its London…
You meet someone. Someone different. Someone attractive, open, free. Let’s call him Davos. You start seeing a lot of each other, hanging out as a couple. As always when you’re in a relationship, a degree…