Arts and culture
Chekhov
The trouble with the performing arts in Melbourne is that you blink and they’re gone. The other week we were…
European Masterpieces from The MMA, New York at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art
This is a very active period for the visual arts. The Archibald Prize finalists have been announced, Vivid is returning,…
Macbeth
It’s an extraordinary thing that a director of Bruce Beresford’s reputation should be directing for Melbourne Opera until you remember…
Brett Whiteley : Drawing is Everything (31 July – 31 Oct)
Demonstrating excellent timing, the Bendigo Art Gallery has announced a major exhibition Brett Whiteley : Drawing is Everything (31 July…
The Dry
It’s a hard thing, harder than it should be, to film a detective story. Is Billy Wilder’s version of Agatha…
Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert series
Last weekend’s sports pages told us that ‘the crowds have not yet been flocking back to the footy with pre-pandemic…
Ulysses
If you wanted a college at the University of Melbourne that had no hint of imitation Oxbridge you would turn…
The Truth About China by Bill Birtles
As news came through of China’s suspension of high-level trade dialogue with Australia, I read The Truth About China by…
Reese Witherspoon
There are moments when the very idea of live entertainment including its high cultural expression, thrills the soul. On 6…
Francesco Cavalli’s The Loves of Apollo & Dafne
Venice in the 17th century was the birthplace of opera. Its dominant and most successful exponent was Francesco Cavalli. Once…
Killing Comrade Hampton
Fred Hampton, the young chairman of the Illinois Black Panthers, makes a brief appearance in The Trial of the Chicago…
Kate Winslet
It’s been a strange week in the world of arts and entertainment as we slouched to the weirdest plague-governed Oscars…
Science Gallery Melbourne
Sydney is still thrashing around with the historic Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, known as the Powerhouse Museum, while…
Helen McCrory
At a time when people like Prince Philip looked as though they would live forever and the world was a…
The 23rd Biennale of Sydney
Advance notice has been given about the Biennale of Sydney for 2022. No one else should get overexcited about this…
Berlin
Theatre is slowly, tentatively opening up again and there’s no denying that a good play with however small a cast…
She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism
Art movements and fashions may come and go but Australians love of their impressionists seems only to grow stronger. The…
A Murder of Crows
Sometimes a crime show on TV turns into something higher and better, a transfigured thing. The Victim, from Scotland, falls…
Opera on the Harbour: La Traviata
These days, you’d need to be as game as Ned Kelly to run an opera company. It’s a chancy enough…
La Streep
It’s one of those secrets that we keep even from ourselves that great acting, everything that we know in terms…
Boy Swallows Universe
It is difficult not to be irritated by the preoccupations of the funded state theatre companies. They seem to be…
The Virtues
It’s a bit amazing that Hamilton is opening in Sydney on 27 March. Only a few months ago it was…
A Nation Imagined: The Artists of the Picturesque Atlas at the National Library of Australia
If you go to Canberra to see the NGA’s exhibition Botticelli to Van Gogh and are mildly disappointed, your journey…
Ray Lawler
When Brett Sheehy, the departing artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company took the stage of the Sumner with the…
French Impressionism from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Victoria
While admiring the collections of French impressionist paintings in American galleries, it is easy to think of them as evidence…
