If The Feather in the Web is one thing – it’s audacious. Like his protagonist, a woman who does whatever she wants and is afraid of nothing, Nick Coyle’s bold new play has a fearlessness that is perfect for the Griffin Theatre Company stage. Kimberley, played by Claire Lovering, is a like a bowling ball,…
Tag: theatre
Review: THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE
Six trembling pre-teens take the stage for the competition they have prepared for their whole lives. It’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the stakes (and nerves) are high for these academically inclined youngsters. The UNSW Theatre Society’s 2019 major production, conceived by Rebecca Feldman, written by Rachel Sheinkin with music and lyrics by William Finn, is…
Fangirls: A Musical That’s So Much Fun You’ll Think You’re At An Actual Pop Concert
Take a bag of glitter, a dozen red bulls, and thousands of pre-teen girls’ high-pitched screams and you’ve got Fangirls, a musical so rich with energy and euphoria you’ll think you’re at an actual pop concert. It’s 2019 and fourteen-year old Australian schoolgirl Edna (playwright and composer Yve Blake) is desperately in love with Harry…
The Almighty Sometimes: Brave and Heart-Wrenching Tale of Motherly Love
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…
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…
