Mermaid out of her depth
It’s strange the different strands of culture we constantly negotiate. The Rolling Stones bring out a new album and this…
Poets don’t stink
The Australian Book Review poetry prize is upon us again and it’s worth mentioning that the ABR editor Peter Rose,…
Everybody’s friend
It was cheering in its way to hear, from the lips of that shrewd urbane man Tony Burke, that 246…
The masterful technique
Isn’t it weird to hear reports of eminent curators at the British Museum leaving because various priceless artworks (often of…
Bob, Robbie & Robert
It’s fifty years they tell us since the creation of Utzon’s Opera House and it’s strange to think how this…
Dazzled by her gift
If you have never seen Bernadette Robinson give yourself a treat and see her current one man show, Divas. It’s…
An air of baffled honesty
It’s an exciting prospect, Helen Morse in a play by the great Caryl Churchill. The artistic director of the Melbourne…
Magniloquent horror
The experience of watching Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy, his film with Cate Blanchett as the nun running an orphange…
Kundera’s last laugh
So now Milan Kundera is gone at the age of 94. It’s easy to forget the tremendous weight, the sheer…
How to build the bomb
Graham Greene used to say that none of the great literary works he had read as an adult had the…
Keeping Ralph on his toes
It would have been interesting to hear Barrie Kosky and Kip Williams talk about the theatre on Tuesday night. In…
An icy restraint
The world has seemed like a procession of deaths lately. Generally, of those in old age. Of all of them,…
Captivating marvels
It’s fascinating to hear that one of the greater theatre directors we have produced, Neil Armfield, is directing Anthony LaPaglia…
Innocent pertness
There are times when anyone might decide to throw in scanning the range of literature and art and music and…
A staggering performance
It would be wrong to belittle the Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria because the emphasis is on…
A campy and colourful role
It’s good to report that the latest revival of The Rocky Horror Show with Jason Donovan as Frank-N-Furter is true…
One kind of masterpiece
It’s strange the world of classics and demi-classics and popular classics we inhabit. Right at the moment there’s the chance…
Strange bedfellows
What a whirlwind the world of the arts can be. Gabrielle Carey who changed forever the image of teenage girlish…
Rattle and HM
It’s funny to think that at the very moment when King Charles was going through his Coronation, pledging service and…
Dragons, broomsticks and whatnot
It was saddening to hear of the death of the poet John Tranter the other week. For those of us…
The preternatural nature of his genius
Is it being a dominion country, a well-heeled colony, that makes this country good at comedy? The death of Barry…
A ravishing sensuousness
What a world of paradox painting confronts us with. The death of John Olsen is a reminder of his stature…
The pity of war
‘My subject is war and the pity of war,’ Wilfred Owen wrote in the poems which Benjamin Britten set to…
Erotic intensity
We think of television – even in this age of a thousand streamers – as something we pig out on…
Searching in vain for The African Queen
What a weird world we inhabit when it comes to popular culture or indeed to any culture high or low.…
