Australian Arts
A deadly sweetness
One of the greatest documentary filmmakers who ever lived died last week at the age of 97. He is the…
Craggy man of integrity
Sometimes you’re just too clapped out to attend the most sparkling bit of theatre and so it was for your…
Beautifully played
Who would have thought? The arena concert version of Les Miserables, Claude Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s sung-through extravaganza is…
Dark lowering road
Bill Henson, the greatest Australian photographer, has a show at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery at 6pm Friday 16 May. It’s…
A need for abasement
We sometimes forget how much opera provides a captivating alternative to classic drama but this was written all over Opera…
A wonder to behold
The National Gallery has been gifted Edvard Munch’s Man with Horse and its acquisition brings to mind James Mollison, the…
A passable Antipodean
Isn’t it strange the way the popular and high art aspects of our culture keep connecting and intersecting. A friend…
The way the imagination works
Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of…
The zenith of art
Last week your columnist cut a paragraph stating that the original Melbourne Higgins in My Fair Lady, Robin Bailey, and…
Unsurpassable
It’s a weird connection but they say Donald Trump is devoted to his presidential predecessor Andrew Jackson who was popular…
Intensely engaging
The Australian National Academy of Music gala performance on Friday 21 March was dazzling with guest conductor Asher Fisch leading…
Theatre vultures will kill
Having a sportswriter father is no excuse. The young man was tall, long fair-haired with a hat. ‘What do you…
Never mind the cracks
If you wanted confirmation that the world can change dramatically you need only remember the Berlin Wall coming down in…
Devotion and betrayals
There is a Roman saying, ‘What the barbarians started the Barberinis completed’ with reference to one of the great dynastic…
In every kind of film
The fact that the eminent Irish actor Stephen Rea is doing Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at the Adelaide Festival from…
Knowing how to cast
Simone Young conducted Mahler’s Third at the Opera House on Wednesday 19 February and with its dense lyricism, its lush…
Newsreader fascinates
It’s a fascinating thing that The Newsreader is back on ABC iview. This is the soap about a couple of…
Sweeping exit
It will be fascinating to see what Jamie Martín, the head of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, makes of Mahler’s Second…
It ain’t me, Bob
It’s always a bit extraordinary how much an art form lives on the legends it has created. Everyone is looking…
Nothing like a Dame
Art takes every possible shape and size. The exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e prints (running at the National Gallery of Australia…
Pacific Paradise Lost
Back in the childhoods of the baby boomers everyone seemed to know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 because there…
Thrillers
It’s funny the preconceptions you have about the Christmas/New Year period. I hadn’t anticipated seeing Juror #2 the new Clint…
Summer Reading
There are a thousand ways of celebrating the Christmas holiday that are culture specific but have a universal appeal. You…
Take it easy on a long, hot summer
It’s a strange time, the summer holidays in Australia. Some people have riveting memories of Boxing Day tests, of Australian…
The most immodest thing
So they’re having another go at removing the varnish and the accumulated dark oiliness and other accretions from that most…
