culture
theatre
theatre March 9, 2019
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.”
theatre March 2, 2019
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
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.
theatre February 9, 2019
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.
theatre February 16, 2019
Kate Mulvany’s adaptation of Mary Stuart shares with the recent film starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie a desire to portray rival monarchs Mary and Elizabeth I as sisters pitted against each other by the patriarchy.
opera February 2, 2019
Where’s home for theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky?
Barrie Kosky’s peripatetic career has led him to work throughout Australia and Europe, before finally establishing a true connection with Berlin. Still, for the Melbourne-born theatre and opera director, nothing says “home” like a rehearsal room. “It just happened that theatre discovered me, and performance and music discovered me, because the very same time that I started to think, ‘Who am I? How does this relate to me?’ and felt that disconnectedness, was the very same time I was experiencing music: Mahler symphonies or puppet shows or musicals or opera. And it was very linked.”
theatre August 25, 2018
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.
comedy August 25, 2018
The many sides of Eddie Izzard
Eddie Izzard burst onto the comedy scene in make-up and heels, later proving his chops as a dramatic actor. On the eve of the release of The Flip Side, set in South Australia, he talks about taking risks, being gender queer and his newest passion – running for British parliament. “I want people, moderate people like me, to get politicised, because it’s going to get rough and we’d better work out how we’re going to make it work. It’s up to us.”
theatre August 4, 2018
Christie Whelan Browne’s theatrical life
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.”
theatre July 14, 2018
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ much-hyped Gloria is well executed by MTC, but its pretensions outweigh its eminence.
theatre June 2, 2018
A tricked-up Andrew Lloyd Webber version of a timeless classic has the viewer realising they’re not in Kansas anymore.
theatre May 19, 2018
Playwright Patricia Cornelius takes centre stage
She’s a writer whose plays have been widely lauded by critics but largely neglected by the mainstream. Now Patricia Cornelius’s work will take its place on the main stage. “It sounds so hifalutin, but my ambition was really just to be able to create great work … that I felt soared. It never entered my mind that it would happen in the mainstream.”
