Narratives about fathers and sons have dominated the canon of great plays for centuries. Sophocles, Shakespeare, Miller: these men, and their oft told tales of struggling patriarchs, are still staged internationally today. Male playwrights, directors and actors have for so long taken up all the space in the cultural conversation. Plays are designed to show…
Tag: theatre
Macbeth: Impressive Cast Delivers Devastating Tragedy With A Twist
The beauty of Shakespeare’s plays lies in their flexibility and creative potential. Written over four hundred years ago, the Bard’s thirty-seven comedies and tragedies have inspired film, theatre, musicals, television and more. It is remarkable to consider the infinite directorial possibilities that these plays hold. This week in Sydney alone, two different theatre companies stage…
Review: Single Asian Female
When Lady Bird aired earlier this year, women all over the world fell in love with it for its painfully accurate representation of mother-daughter relationships. Sitting in the Belvoir St Theatre watching freshly divorced mother Pearl (Hsiao-Ling Tang) struggling to keep it together while running a Chinese restaurant and a family single handed, I was…
Review from the Archives: NUTS presents Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi
All-female plays aren’t very common. In fact, statistically, women in the Arts aren’t that common. The ratio of women to men in the performing arts is around 3:10, and women make up only 7% of the top directors in Hollywood. That’s what makes the New South Wales University Theatrical Society’s (NUTS’) latest production so important. Written by…
Review: NUTS presents Savages
If you want to lose your faith in men entirely, NUTS’ production of Savages is perfect evening viewing. Four horny, aggressive, lonely blokes sail away on a cruise ship for the boys’ trip of a lifetime. However, their close living quarters quickly feel suffocating as old rivalries resurface and tensions rise. Written and directed by women (Patricia…
Review: Infidelity and Enlightenment by the UNSW Theatre Society
We all know how it goes – you put a dysfunctional group of family and friends in a room until they all tell their life story, fight, hate each other, and then eventually resolve their problems. It’s a common play type, and NUTS’ latest show Infidelity and Enlightenment nails the style, with influences Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, August:…
Review: Marat/Sade – New Theatre
This show was originally shown at New Theatre on the 3rd of November 2016. This article originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com. The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade is a mouthful of a play title and the onstage experience…
Measure for Measure – Sydney Festival
This show was performed as part of the Sydney Festival on the 8th of January 2017. This review was originally posted on AussieTheatre.com For some, seeing Shakespeare in English is complicated enough. For the crowd that packed into the Roslyn Packer theatre on Sunday night to see Cheek by Jowl and Moscow’s Pushkin Theatre perform…
The Shadow Box – The Old Fitz Theatre
This show previewed at The Old Fitz Theatre on the 16th of November 2016. A terminal illness is an interesting beast. It is undeniably tragic for family and friends to witness a loved one wither away. Yet, its discovery, some argue, brings new perspective to our precious remaining time. The Shadow Box, in a new…
You and Me and the Space Between – Sydney Festival
This show was shown as part of the Sydney Festival on the 17th of January 2017. This Article was originally posted on AussieTheatre.com Good children’s stories usually have deeper meaning beneath the surface. Often our favourite childhood tales contain messages for bigger issues. The Harry Potter series is about learning to cope with death. The Lorax…
Barbu Review- Sydney Opera House
This show was on at the Sydney Opera House Studio on the 9th of February 2017. If you were to accidentally walk into the Sydney Opera House Studio any night this month, you may be alarmed at what you find. If you are a seasoned theatre-goer looking for some Shakespeare or Chekhov, you will be looking…
Review: Jasper Jones – Belvoir Return Season
We go to the theatre for the stories. We go to practise empathy and experience the lives of people whose stories are both similar and different to our own. Theatre’s mainstream sibling, cinema, is often saturated by Hollywood films, so, we rely on theatre to tell the local Australian stories that don’t find voices elsewhere….
