Arts and Entertainment Archive

Lean in: intimate theatre

A choking man spits out a hunk of chicken that lands near our feet. A wheelchair is suddenly illuminated by our seats. A crying woman shakes beside us, her tears visible on her face. Participatory theatre? Not intentionally. Try instead intimate theatre …

Review: The Whale

There is nothing quite like going to the Old Fitz Theatre on opening night: it’s an excuse to get dressed up, have a nice glass of wine or a beer and ogle at the variety of Sydney characters in one of the …

Review: The Good Doctor

  A Moscow chill is in the air at the Glen Street Theatre with Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor, a work that with its humour and touchingly human dilemmas dispels the cliché portrayal of 19th century Russia as harsh, unyielding and soporific. This …

Sydney Festival Review: Djuki Mala

Sydney Festival’s poster girl is Meow Meow whose orange mermaid fish lips adorn bus stops across the city. But while the cabaret performer is dominating publicity, the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent in which she performs is also hosting lower profile yet equally dynamic …

Review: According to Yes, Dawn French

A British nanny glides into a regimented family, upending its members’ structured lives and rigid routines. This may sound like a Mary Poppins scenario, but it isn’t. This is Dawn French’s new novel According to Yes: an often-gritty and poignant account of …

Sydney Festival Review: Vortex Temporum

Vortex Temporum, at Carriageworks until January 18 as part of the Sydney Festival, is brilliant in the same way as an ingenuous mathematical formula. Everything about the work, which sets out to explore sound and time, is circular – from the concentric …

Sydney Festival Review: Cut the Sky

Marrugeku’s Cut the Sky is a thought-provoking work that challenges the human race to change its attitude to the Earth before it’s too late. This major new work from Broome’s internationally acclaimed dance-theatre company Marrugeku is an impassioned plea to regard the land as the …