The sheer scope of his work
When Tom Stoppard, playwright extraordinaire, was at the early height of his fame, with Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons in…
Confused and cumbersome
Anne-Louise Sarks’ production of that dazzling dramatic opera Carmen at Melbourne’s Regent was sometimes lit like a Christmas tree, sometimes…
Pit full of snakes
What a cheering thing it is that David Szalay has won the Booker Prize for Flesh which is a masterpiece…
Equal to any quirk
Richo is dead. The supreme fixer of the Labor party is gone. That wise and moderate man Brian Johns who…
The brilliance of her technique
It’s strange the way comedy lives. A legion of the young continue to listen to Pete and Dud or watch…
The necessity of love
Everyone has been preoccupied with television and the way in the wake of Covid we have seen the streamers (and…
Transcending the cloaks and jewellery
Mrs Warren’s Profession (in selected cinemas from October 23) is one of Shaw’s ‘Plays Unpleasant’ and it’s an extraordinary play…
La de da
Everyone who has read the work of the late great Thomas Bernhard, the Austrian novelist forever spitting his fellow Austrians…
The rustle of underwear
If ever there was gorgeous chocolate-box theatre it’s this magnificently staged production of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca directed by Anne-Louise…
Looming horror of the heart
What are we to make of dramatic classics and classics of music and dance? That very distinguished actor Bille Brown…
High artistry and hilarity
It’s bizarre the level of sheer wastage in Ian Michael’s production of Troy. Yes, there’s a bit of hieratic glamour…
Dazzling reverse-mirror farce
It was good to see that Vivien Gaston was lecturing about portraiture in the context of the travelling Archibald Prize…
Turning your brain to mush
The appointment of Dean Bryant as head of the Malthouse Theatre took some of us by surprise. He had just…
The blood goes cold
Isn’t it weird the way our newspapers seem suddenly to have discovered the obituary. David Stratton, loved and revered for…
Dark and ravaged places
Destiny was the first work commissioned under Anne-Louise Sarks’ directorship of the Melbourne Theatre Company and it’s appropriate that it…
A world away
Remember Gus the Theatre Cat in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats? He says that he has acted…
Getting down and dirty
It’s splendid to be sitting at the very front of the Playhouse watching a new musical from the Melbourne Theatre…
A vibrant, complex character
We’re preoccupied with the horrors of what can happen with the internet and Australia thinks it can lead the world…
Unparalleled strangeness
How strange it is to be transported back to some version of the world of Lena Dunham. Remember Girls, that…
A touch of the unthinkable
The other night we watched one of the greatest American films ever made. Network was directed by Sidney Lumet to…
Elizabeth Harrower – the greatest Australian writer you’ve never heard of
The friend of Patrick White and Christina Stead abruptly withdrew her fifth novel in 1971 and gave up writing altogether – only now to be hailed as ‘one of the great novelists of Sydney’
The transcendence of style
Paula Vogel’s Mother Play: a play in five evictions is a superlative piece of theatre and it demonstrates unambiguously that…
Bush noir
Barry Jones likes to allude to the fact that John Adams declared that he had to study agriculture and warfare…
Last days, spare room
In a world of international horrors and hopes it is weird to have one of the weirdest true-life crime stories…
Russians greats
The house was awash with the Russians this week – first because someone was reading George Saunders’ A Swim in…
