Penny Arcade
(Ukiyo, The Royal Croquet Club, 9.30 until March 14. Four and a Half Stars)
Penny Arcade, aka Susana Ventura, has an impeccable New York CV. She performed in Warhol/Morrisey films, she hung out as a teenager at Max’s Kansas City. She was there at Stonewall and in the terrible AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. Last time she visited Adelaide as part of the 1994 Adelaide Festival, she performed wearing only an American flag. She also brought …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Fringe
Echoes
by Henry Naylor
The Arch, Holden Street Theatre Company
In association with Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh
February 10. Until March 13.
The Last Time I Saw Richard
by Cat Commander
five.point.one
The Bakehouse.
February 16. Until Feb 23.
Red Ink
by Duncan Graham
Tuxedo Cat, Perske Pavillion
February 16. Until Feb 23.
It is not yet “mad March” in Adelaide and already the Fringe, the gargantuan, carnivalesque doppelganger to the Festival has roared into action. For artists and …
Continue Reading Back to topAn Evening with Gillian Welch
Her Majesty’s
February 3.
Some things really are worth the wait. And Adelaide has waited a very long time for a first visit from the incomparable Gillian Welch and her brilliant musical partner David Rawlings. It has been eleven years since they last toured Australia and then it was Eastern States only. This time they drove to South Australia from Perth – 28 hours by car, they proudly report, but- with some regret – not …
Continue Reading Back to top“When you hear music,“ jazz saxophonist Eric Dolphy once remarked, “After it’s over, it’s gone, in the air, you can never capture it again.”
In varying degrees that is true of all live performances. They have their moment, their season and then are gone. Sometimes they remain vivid, but eventually, even excellent productions and outstanding performances drift into imperfect recollection and generalised hearsay.
I hope this website, for all its sometimes unwelcome opinions, is a useful record of some of …
Continue Reading Back to topDear Senators
I have been a theatre reviewer for national publications, including The National Times, The Australian Financial Review and currently The Australian, since 1985.
My comments refer particularly to theatre funding in Australia but inferences can be made across all of the performing arts.
I am profoundly concerned by the recent changes to arts funding announced in the 2015 Budget by Senator Brandis : both in the reduction of allocation to the Australia Council and the siphoning of as …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Popular Mechanicals
by Keith Robinson, William Shakespeare and Tony Taylor.
From the original direction by Geoffrey Rush.
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 10. Tickets: $ 27 – $ 69.
Bookings : BASS 131246 or www.bass.net.au
Until November 28.
Duration: 90 minutes.
Puck called them “hempen homespuns”, Shakespeare called them Rude Mechanicals : these are the six artisans who perform a daffy royal command performance for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta in …
Continue Reading Back to topMortido
by Angela Betzien
State Theatre Company of South Australia
and Belvoir, Sydney.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
October 20. Tickets: $ 27 – $ 69.
Bookings : BASS 131246 or www.bass.net.au
Until October 31 .
Duration: 2 hours 20 minutes.
The Belvoir season opens in Sydney November 11.
“Freud reckoned love and hate, sex and death are twin impulses”, explains the philosophic Detective Grubbe, in Angela Betzien’s brand-new crime psychodrama. “Existence is an endless circle of life and death, …
Continue Reading Back to top
Introduction to the Currency edition of Maggie Stone by Caleb Lewis
The Rising Debt of Gratitude: Actions and Transactions in Maggie Stone
It was Polonius, in Hamlet who said : “Neither a borrower or a lender be/ For loan oft loses both itself and friend.” He is right, of course, but like much of the old man’s advice to the young prince, it is a platitude; something easier said than done. It is not how we live in the world, because the world won’t let us.
In his insightful, engaging, sometimes …
Continue Reading Back to top