Arts and Entertainment Archive

While there is no shortage of comedic elements to The Walworth Farce, the mayhem ultimately turns to menace. Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s tale introduces one of the most dysfunctional families you’re likely to encounter on stage. It’s manic, hysterically funny at times, …

At its heart The Sugar House, now at the Belvoir Street Theatre, is a play about family and, more specifically, how each generation wants more for their children. However, it is wrapped up in the changing face and fabric of Sydney and will have …

Written in 1985/6, Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine is something of a contemporary classic, but is it dated? Not in this production, with Sharon Millerchip in the title role. The only role, in fact, for this is a one-woman tour de force, and …

Tour de force can be an overused expression in reviewing theatre but I cannot think of a better way to describe Heather Mitchell’s wonderful portrayal of Cate McGregor. Cate’s journey from Malcolm McGregor – cricketer, rugby player, Duntroon graduate, speechwriter and advocate …

Fragmented in the telling and gently mesmerising, Youth and Destination is a series of 60 short scenes that reflect what it is to be young and aware in the 21st century. It runs the gamut from love to loneliness, flirtation to fear …

“You’ve never suffered from depression?” Lorna asks Connie. “No,” she responds. She’s been sad, but that’s not the same, is it? She seems slightly baffled at the notion of depression. “It’s an illness, right?” This exchange takes place at the beginning of The …

The Sydney premiere of Mary Anne Butler’s The Sound of Waiting at the Eternity Playhouse produced an intense night of theatre. Under the able direction of Suzanne Pereira this two-hander manages to take the audience beyond the walls of an inner city …

The latest episode of The Simpsons has addressed the controversy surrounding Indian character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon after claims the popular show has a “racist” depiction of South Asians. Last year Indian-American comic Hari Kondabolu released a documentary The Problem with Apu, about how South …

Intriguing on several levels, this production of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children is wonderfully realised and maintains its air of suspense and quiet menace throughout. We meet jittery Hazel (Pamela Rabe) first. She’s in a modest cottage near the coast in England, on …

This joyful opening concert of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s 2018 season celebrates 16th and 17th century English choral and chamber music by Byrd, Gibbons, Purcell, Locke and Handel, and closes with the Australian premiere of Vaughan Williams’ ‘Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis’ …