Rose Byrne
‘Unemployed at last!’ That wonderful bit of national self-mockery that opens the classic Australian novel Such is Life takes on…
John Mortimer & Leo McKern
What earthly guarantee do we have that live performance is going to be a viable option for Sydney or Melbourne…
The Greeks
What a time of captivity, what a time of plague. The Disney musical Frozen, long delayed by the mammoth Melbourne…
Martin Clunes
Just as the lockdown imprisons the people of Sydney those in Canberra have had the chance to see that exhilaration…
Ethos
A Sydney lockdown on the heels of Melbourne: what price entertainment? It seemed natural as ever to have recourse to…
Singing Shakespeare
Britain is certainly revving up when it comes to culture. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s defiance about social distancing for his new…
Anya Taylor Joy stars in the new Mad Max
It’s funny to reflect how the performing arts, theatre in particular, are a lot stronger when they have a literary…
Andrea Riseborough
National Treasure is a remarkable piece of TV drama, and it looks for a long, bewildering moment like a masterpiece.…
Dylan
Bob Dylan turned 80 the other week. Does that seem to consign not just the vanished twentieth century but the…
Chekhov
The trouble with the performing arts in Melbourne is that you blink and they’re gone. The other week we were…
Macbeth
It’s an extraordinary thing that a director of Bruce Beresford’s reputation should be directing for Melbourne Opera until you remember…
The Dry
It’s a hard thing, harder than it should be, to film a detective story. Is Billy Wilder’s version of Agatha…
Ulysses
If you wanted a college at the University of Melbourne that had no hint of imitation Oxbridge you would turn…
Reese Witherspoon
There are moments when the very idea of live entertainment including its high cultural expression, thrills the soul. On 6…
Kate Winslet
It’s been a strange week in the world of arts and entertainment as we slouched to the weirdest plague-governed Oscars…
Helen McCrory
At a time when people like Prince Philip looked as though they would live forever and the world was a…
Berlin
Theatre is slowly, tentatively opening up again and there’s no denying that a good play with however small a cast…
A Murder of Crows
Sometimes a crime show on TV turns into something higher and better, a transfigured thing. The Victim, from Scotland, falls…
La Streep
It’s one of those secrets that we keep even from ourselves that great acting, everything that we know in terms…
The Virtues
It’s a bit amazing that Hamilton is opening in Sydney on 27 March. Only a few months ago it was…
Ray Lawler
When Brett Sheehy, the departing artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company took the stage of the Sumner with the…
Britney Spears
The arts world in general —and with it theatre in particular— is opening up. Not only is the Botticelli to…
Christopher Plummer
A few weeks ago that great Canadian actor Christopher Plummer died. Everyone knows him as Captain Von Trapp opposite Julie…
Anne-Marie Duff
Melbourne was just stirring into public cultural life when the hotel quarantine mishap led to that last alarming lockdown that…
The Dig
It was gratifying to see such a quiet and impeccably made film as The Dig make it to independent cinemas…