A man of music
The other day saw the opening of the Peter Corrigan Collection at RMIT which comprises his personal collection of architectural…
Such stuff as dreams are made on
When Ken Branagh took the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford for the first time in thirty years…
Elegance and intrigue
Anyone who knows the Sixties can easily be reminded of the beauty and the authority of Sidney Poitier. The MTC…
Sex symbol or respected actor?
You don’t have to be any specific age to thrill to the Opera Australia production of La Traviata. It is…
A masterpiece of economy
There’s something very odd about the fuss that’s been made about David Szalay who won the Booker a few months…
The performance of her career
It’s odd, isn’t it, the uncanny relationship between success and achievement. Just the other night the Melbourne Theatre Company had…
Skill of the characterisation
Yasmina Reza is one of the most dazzling playwrights alive because she creates sweepingly funny bits of theatre (masterfully translated…
Scrupulous fidelity
Isn’t it fascinating how much we adapt works of literature? 150 years ago someone would have had a fair chance…
Like him or loathe him
It’s cheering to hear very promising reports of Barrie Kosky’s production of Siegfried at Covent Garden suggesting that the Melbourne-born…
Cruelties of popular culture
Ethan Hawke is an extraordinary figure. He has made straightforward Hollywood classics like Training Day but he also comes out…
Deaths in the mind
It’s strange the way certain deaths stay in the mind perhaps because of the fascination and interconnection of the lives…
A daily beauty
It’s fascinating to see that Sharmill are presenting a new Othello from London’s Haymarket from 28 March with David Harewood…
A versatile and virtuouso figure
Well, the Oscars have come and gone and we tend only to remember the anomalies. Julie Andrews winning the Oscar…
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,…
