Uncanny mutations
Isn’t it odd the way we can start watching a streamer in absolute disgusted disbelief only to discover that we’re…
That glimpse of grandeur
The death of Robert Duvall the other week was a reminder of how long ago some of our cultural landmarks…
A hoard of lost treasure
Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is the most celebrated of all Australian plays; and this story of the…
Strange and familiar
One of the excitements of seeing Ngaire Dawn Fair in the full trilogy of The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll…
The sweeping drama of Australia’s political history
With spellbinding verve, Tony Abbott, a former prime minister of Australia, celebrates just how old and grand the country’s democracy is
Dark and stormy
The opening gala of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra this year with the renowned pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet seems in every way congruent…
Camp indulgence
Music has the odd quality of being an abstract art as well as one that generates great gulfs and legions…
Dazzled and satiated
It’s a tumultuous decade or so since The Night Manager burst onto our television screens and a while longer since…
Celluloid nostalgia for lost worlds
There’s a poignancy in turning back the clock to the Fifties and early-Sixties. Everyone remembers Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday,…
Call me Ishmael, or Viola
When To Kill a Mockingbird was published, Flannery O’Connor, the author of those unholy and tragic fables born of intense…
Remembrance of things past
It’s easy to forget the artistic range of people who have died recently. Susie Figgis, in charge of casting the…
Rebels and Rivals
It’s funny how implicated we are in the places from which we take our bearings. Memories of the Lexington-Concord bridge,…
The full range of diversions
Who can say what a world of Christmases will unfold this year? Sir Keir Starmer was knighted for services to…
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…
