REVIEW: The Threepenny Opera

The always-vexing question of the ‘right’ way to do a playtext is particularly vexed when it comes to Brecht; to stage Brecht is almost invariably to fail Brecht.

Changing the Face of Australian Theatre

New Matilda, part 2.

Show Ponies for a Young Nation

Collecting my last writing for New Matilda, part 1.

Deborah Hay’s work returns to Melbourne

The news has just hit my inbox: Dancehouse is presenting a choreography by Deborah Hay (whose If I Sing For You was shown, with great popular success, at MIAF 2008). I am terribly busy, so I will reproduce the press release down below:
DANCEHOUSE in partnership with Critical Path, STRUT dance and Bundanon Trust [...]

Malthouse season 2

Michael Kantor’s last season (just announced) looks strangely like a Best Of Malthouse 2005-2010 (subtitle: The Kantor Years), or a Tribute To… CD (Melbourne indie theatre does Malthouse OR Malthouse does Melbourne indie… you choose). And not just that, but a Christmas edition with two bonus tracks (Great International Name + the understudy makes an appearance).

Melbourne news, news

A flurry of unusual performances has swept Melbourne in the past few weeks, and although I will not have time to pen an essay on every single one of them, I should give each a moment in the blogging sun. (In the place of an introductory paragraph, please reader content yourself with a bracketed explanation, [...]

RW: Elizabeth: Quasi per caso una donna

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing to say about Michael Kantor is that he seems to be capable of only a very narrow expressive range. Most of his work sticks to the same stew of camp singing, heavily applied Satire, sprinkled with poignancy until we all feel five years old. Too many of his works have looked like an educational poster: this is your ‘FUN’, this is your ‘SOCIAL RELEVANCE’, and this is your ‘MORAL’. Unfortunately, the dramatic mechanics of Elizabeth cannot withstand such treatment.

Life… is a Dream.

Seeing a progression in someone’s work the wrong way around is always intriguing for the possibilities it offers for misreading, or overly simplifying. Having seen Daniel Schlusser’s Peer Gynt before Life is a Dream (a remount of which has just closed at The Store Room - but bear with my lateness, for I am working [...]

Brief: Xavier Le Roy @ Dancehouse

Before I forget; the best dance piece I’ve seen all year, bar Sasha Waltz (still undecided), has been Xavier Le Roy’s performance Product of Circumstance, a one-night showing at Dancehouse last week. There is a write-up in The Age, but to call it a review would be absurd.
It is a description of sorts, and [...]

Three perhaps not-so-obvious points on ‘Pornography’ (the play, not the genre)

I do need to preface this comment by noting I am writing it from behind the opaque screen of a 38°C fever, and that I saw Pornography as the swine flu was comfortably settling in. It was, however, a remarkable theatrical event, for many non-obvious reasons.

1st non-obvious reason: demonstrating that an artists’ festival is not [...]