Peter Craven

In Netflix’s impressively realised Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo’s popular fantasy books find a sumptuous apotheosis.

After a long and successful career, dramatist Joanna Murray-Smith returns to her roots with a new play opening this month at the Melbourne Theatre Company.

As the Vatican reckons with scandals involving hundreds of millions of euros, the Holy See’s former treasurer George Pell has given his first interview since returning to Rome.

At 31, Kendall Feaver continues her brilliant career with her new adaptation of Miles Franklin for Belvoir. “I’m wary of black-and-white thinking … I’m interested in the ‘why’. Why is this fracture happening? Why is this so divisive, so deeply felt and fought over?”

Audiences salivating over the impending arrival of Hamilton to the Sydney stage in 2021 can get an early, small-screen taste of the hit musical, courtesy of the Covid-19 disruptions and Disney.

For actor Toby Schmitz, there’s nothing like the exhilaration of being on stage, but for the past week he’s replicated some of that feeling in a series of live-streamed performances of Will Eno’s Thom Pain. He speaks about playing Hamlet, the vitality of theatre and keeping his ‘art spark’ alight in the Covid-19 lockdown. “The audience is the final director that teaches you things you would never have thought of. You know, if one person moves their leg it may mean nothing, but if four people do, then you’ve lost them somehow.”

The Young Vic’s 2014 production of A Streetcar Named Desire, recently rebroadcast during the Covid-19 lockdown, reminds this viewer of the work’s power but also of the test of matching the smouldering energy of Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh.

With theatres around the world closed, stage productions are now entering our homes, via the internet. The fourth streaming performance from Britain’s National Theatre, Twelfth Night, takes its audience on a rollicking journey of mistaken identity and besotted love.

HBO’s The Plot Against America, based on the Philip Roth novel, brings together Winona Ryder and John Turturro in a reimagining of America’s World War II history. Now the slickly produced series is more pertinent to current times than the creators could ever have imagined.

MTC and Queensland Theatre’s revival of Emerald City brings the distinctly Australian dramatic idiom of playwright David Williamson into focus once more. Skilfully led by Nadine Garner, the work still has much to offer.

Boasting a superlative performance by Nikki Shiels, Home, I’m Darling combines high farce and drama to interrogate gender roles.

Once a powerhouse of Australian publishing, Hilary McPhee traded the comfortable life she knew for a mysterious job with Middle Eastern royalty. In writing about this adventure and the collapse of her marriage to Don Watson in her new memoir, Other People’s Houses, she traces her strange journey back to herself. “I dreaded coming back to Australia because I left feeling I’d lost everything, I’d lost my marriage. We’d been together for more than 20 years, so it was quite a lot of life.”

With a superb cast and a cracking pace, the BBC–HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials proves television is the perfect vehicle for the beloved trilogy.

As a piece of ambitious drama – brimming with compassion and moody delights, and performed by a superb ensemble cast – Anthem hits the high notes.

With its pitch-perfect production of David Ireland’s wickedly funny Ulster American, Red Stitch Actors Theatre continues to do some of the most interesting work to be seen on Australian stages.

Under the disciplined baton of founder Alexander Briger, the Australian World Orchestra played an impressive concert of works by Westlake, Janáček and Sibelius.

While Victorian Opera’s production of A Little Night Music may fail to dazzle, it satisfyingly portrays Sondheim’s witty insights into the sweetness and sorrow of the world.

Although Kat Stewart is well known for playing dark, in-your-face characters, her life experience has led her to a greater appreciation of hope and contentment. Her latest stage role is in Melbourne Theatre Company’s Heisenberg. “The idea I really love is that we spend all this energy trying to control our lives and take comfort in that … but we have very, very, very little control and what this play confronts you with is: What if that is not a bad thing?”

Although the Malthouse Theatre’s production of Cloudstreet is flawed, its failings cannot overshadow the fundamental power of Tim Winton’s novel.

With the transformation of Muriel’s Wedding for the stage, some of the film’s winsome ugly-duckling charm has been lost, and along with it the story’s emotional reality.

Ellen Burstyn, in Melbourne to star onstage in 33 Variations, has a film career spanning six decades and including such cinematic touchstones as The Exorcist and The Last Picture Show. She talks tabout Beethoven, spirituality and recruiting Scorsese to direct her in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. “I asked that he be the director. He had already made Mean Streets, but it hadn’t been released and he was deeply grateful that I wanted him. This doesn’t mean that I gave him his start. And there was no stopping him, anyway – he would have got there in any case. But, you know, there was never any sense with Marty of working with a monster, with a master in the nasty sense. He’s marvellous, he’s an original. He’s smart and fiery and rough and excitable and alive.”

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child succeeds in furthering J. K. Rowling’s remarkable canon, with a greater dramatic thrust than the films but all the heart of the books that seduced young and old alike.

The National Theatre’s modern, militarised take on Antony and Cleopatra – ‘the greatest of Shakespeare’s history plays’ – offers a flat production but fine performances from Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo.

Simon Phillips’ MTC production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night may lack a little of the comedy’s melancholy, but in Tamsin Carroll and Richard Piper it has performances as good as seen anywhere.

MTC’s childish ’80s romp Astroman – unsuccessfully transplanted from New Zealand to Geelong – is unlikely to appeal even to schoolkids, but more adult audiences will revel in Max Gillies’ masterful turn in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape.

Barry McGovern’s one-man adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt is a masterpiece of poignant, pratfalling absurdity

Choreographer Liam Scarlett, a former dancer with the Royal Ballet whose Midsummer Night’s Dream will soon tour China, seems destined to join the ranks of the all-time greats. “With every premiere you sit back and watch it for what it is. You think I could tweak this or I could tweak that. But I was happy with it, it was such a relief when it was over but it’s probably the thing I’ve done which I felt most proud of.”

Solid acting from Marta Dusseldorp and her supporting cast at MTC can’t save A Doll’s House, Part 2, an unnecessary and misguided sequel to Ibsen’s masterpiece.

Actress-singer Christie Whelan Browne catapulted to the attention of theatregoers at a young age, untrained but bursting with talent. Here, she talks about fate, timing and discovering a love of musical theatre. “I was the clown, I really made people laugh. Boys told me I was ugly … I used comedy to fit in.”

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ much-hyped Gloria is well executed by MTC, but its pretensions outweigh its eminence.

A tricked-up Andrew Lloyd Webber version of a timeless classic has the viewer realising they’re not in Kansas anymore.

In the contrived and uproarious relationships of The Real Housewives of Melbourne, emotional truths emerge that are poignant as well as entertaining.

Elijah Moshinsky’s interpretation of Verdi’s tragic masterpiece La Traviata has been wowing Opera Australia audiences since the ’90s. The latest iteration – both visually rich and lovingly handled by its stars – doesn’t let down the canon.

While the cast of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical fails to deliver an uplifting experience, Bernadette Robinson, in her solo performance of The Show Goes On, is transcendent as she channels the great women of song.

Theatre director Ivo van Hove is often drawn to adapting film screenplays for the stage, but his latest work, juxtaposing three warrior kings from Shakespeare’s histories, shows he also finds contemporary relevance in the classics. “Richard III just wants to be king, but once he’s got the crown, he’s totally bored. He can only reign, only live, only feel in order to have power.”

John Bell delivers perhaps his finest performance as a man suffering dementia in Florian Zeller’s masterpiece The Father.

Billie Piper’s performance in Lorca’s tragedy Yerma caps a powerful production at the Young Vic for the ‘antipodean Orson Welles’, Simon Stone.

Gary Abrahams’ production of Angels in America is stark and shrewd, and has in Helen Morse a virtuosic display of restrained acting.

Sam Strong’s production of the timeless farce Noises Off  falters in pacing and believability, delivering an awful production of a play that is about an awful production of a play.

As a child, Downton Abbey’s Charles Edwards listened to the classic My Fair Lady recording with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. Now he's playing Henry Higgins, with Andrews directing.

Actor Jai Courtney, the latest Australian to make headway in Hollywood, returns to the theatre to give MTC’s Macbeth his muscle.

In Lally Katz’s latest play, the MTC fails to capture the dramatist’s magic, despite fine performances by two grand dames of the stage.

In the style of Alan Ayckbourn, Sam Holcroft’s Rules for Living for Red Stitch portrays middle-class disarray at its most engaging.

Sarah Goodes’ MTC production of John features two actors at the height of their powers, in a drama from the master playwright Annie Baker.

The Book of Mormon, from the creators of South Park, is a blasphemous riot of bad taste, making it a musical not to be missed.

German actor Lars Eidinger, performing his arresting Richard III at the Adelaide Festival next month, talks about Shakespeare, Trump and the value of being open to contradiction.

Neil Armfield’s stark but powerful Ring delivers Wagner’s masterpiece as a triumph of the Australian stage, as good as could be imagined anywhere.

Nadia Tass’s production of Uncle Vanya for Red Stitch suffers from some pretensions, but a superb cast does the incomparable Chekhov justice.

Joanna Murray-Smith’s drama about thriller writer Patricia Highsmith’s dying days sequestered in Switzerland is brilliant, sinister entertainment in the Hitchcock mode.

Director Kate Cherry takes the helm at NIDA with a vision of the school not just as an incubator of dramatic talent but of the nation’s cultural future.

The brilliance of the MTC’s latest production, Disgraced, completes a trifecta of fine Australian shows.

A new production of Marlowe’s classic Edward II strips back the original until what remains is a flat facsimile.

A masterful portrayal of the survivor of a mass shooting bears witness to the challenges of faith, healing and compassion.

Talented actors are left adrift in MTC's adaptation of Strindberg's masterpiece, 'Miss Julie'.

MTC's The Distance is an enjoyably unpredictable comedy-drama.

Ladies in Black, as Aussie as SeaChange or Prisoner, is one of the finer recent attempts at the elusive form of the musical.

MTC falls short in its one-man deconstructive tribute to the incomparable Barbra Streisand.

Director Adena Jacobs takes a classic Greek tragedy and sets it free – with an erotic vengeance – in the hands of a troupe of teenage girls.

MTC’s production of the supernaturally tinged Irish pub drama The Weir is a slow-burning pleasure.

This stark new production sadly robs Ariel Dorfman’s modern classic Death and the Maiden of its considerable power.

Opera director Elijah Moshinsky returns to Australia after 15 years to restage his monumental Don Carlos.

Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information is drama down to its bones, with so much living in the spaces in-between.

Red Stitch’s production of The Flick is a luminous and intimate examination of changing relationships.

The astonishing Miriam Margolyes is wasted in the greatest hits show The Importance of Being Miriam.

Led by Jane Turner, the women in Jumpy make a mockery of those who turn their noses up at simply being entertained.

Baz Luhrmann's film-turned-stage-musical may be a little out of step, but it hits some high notes.

In Benedict Andrews’ A Streetcar Named Desire, filmed for cinema, Gillian Anderson delivers a lustrous Blanche DuBois.

An intimate musical on a grand stage, Once cleverly entwines its songs and story by telling a tale of people with music in the blood.

Most famous as TV's moustachioed sleuth, David Suchet’s onstage role as a cardinal is cashing in on his mass appeal.

Brendan Cowell’s MTC play about the horrifying world of footballers and sexual abuse is a Jacobean triumph.

He’s worked with Oscar winners, directed a hit film and now brings to life the story of a revered Indigenous Australian.

Mamet’s monster of a play is given a mousy rendition, save for its star.

He has enchanted audiences and critics alike, but for Simon Russell Beale the dark souls of his subjects leave a lasting impression.