This week

A number of small performances will open and close: blink and gone!

Lily Kiara opens on 5 and closes on 6 December: Moving South at the Dancehouse. Shelley Lasica presents VIANNE at 45 downstairs, from 4 to 14 December. Glyn Roberts's and Robert Reid's This is Set in the Future, at La Mama, closes on December 7 and is, I hear, perfect. It is also your last chance to see the gorgeous gorgeous Black Lung, and Bell Shakespeare's unhappy fling with Heiner Muller, complicated but well-worth seeing, both closing at the Malthouse on December 6.

Meanwhile, up in Sydney, Frankenstein, based on Lally Katz and set design, opens at Wharf2LOUD next week. It was in the previews when I was up partying, and I don't know if it's any good. NOMADS, the best performance in the country this year that nobody saw, opened at Performance Space on Friday and closed on Sunday.

I've had a rich week of theatre, quite uncharacteristically. While I'm sorting out my notes, trying not to spend too much time wrapped up in YouTubing the extraordinary work that friends and not-yet-friends in Europe are putting on, with big budgets, institutional support, and critical welcome, perhaps it's worth noting that Black Lung's Avast season at the Malthouse is the most significant development in independent theatre in Melbourne 2008. Visibility rather than creative outburst, perhaps, sure, but significant nonetheless.