This is the longest I have taken to write a review. I have a 48 hour deadline.. but I usually stay up until 2am to write a first draft while it is fresh in my mind: but this one, for several reasons, has taken me a little longer. One of the reasons is I really liked the plays and another was because I felt a strange sense of longing about the production: and I had to turn the problems in my mind over for a day or so , so I could make sense of my reaction. The major thoughts are influenced by two Platform Papers: Cross Racial Casting: Changing the Face of Australian Theatre by Lee Lewis and What IS an Australian Play: Have we Failed our Ethnic Writers? by Chris Mead. Read more

I am going to declare a few things. The last time I saw a revolving stage at Belvoir St Theatre was in 2000, in Michael Scott Mitchell’s design for the MTC/Belvoir co-production of Yasmina Reza’s The Unexpected Man, for which I was a 20-year-old Honours student sent in to observe a rehearsal process. What I learnt from that experience was profound and personally transformative: and ultimately I came to understand what an absolute NIGHTMARE revolving stages are. The sound of the revolve, the awkwardness of furniture when it is placed on the revolve. Stage managing, timing, pacing all the challenges of blocking a play are tenfold! So when I saw that Simon Stone, “the youngest director to direct in the Upstairs theatre” had taken on a revolve. I thought, “oh dear, I hope he’s got a good one- and he knows how to use it!” Read more

When lights dim and the performance starts there is clicking of black riverbed stones as boots march and grubby feet scamper. Read more

I have found this rather a difficult production to review as I must declare: this really isn’t my thing. I recently had the epic wonder of experiencing Elevator Repair Service’s The Gatz at The Sydney Opera House: an 8 hour theatre experience of The Great Gatsby which was nothing but a sublime once in a lifetime theatrical experience (which I will write up soon). This however, was not quite a reading, not quite a staging, not quite theatrical: though surrounded in theatrical devices and conceits. So here is my review… in which I question the effectiveness of this chapter of Dostoevsky adapted for stage. This is where I am the conservative reviewer: if it aint broke why fix it? Read more

I am a fan of Mary Rachel Brown’s work. She is a playwright who has won several awards in recent times… including the 2006 Max Afford Award and the 2006 Griffin Award for New Australian Playwriting and more recently the 2008 Rodney Seaborn Playwright’s Award, which she was awarded for “Inside Out.” Read more

I first encountered Brink Productions very early on in their inception: I was a robust and angsty Performance Studies Student in 1999.. and we were witness to BRINKs workshop of Heiner Muller’s Quartet under the direction of Holger Teschke: the then Artistic Director of the Berliner Ensemble. And I spent a full week silently watching a Vicoria Hill, Michaela Cantwell and Patrick Dixon amongst others play in a room 8 hours a day with the text. Now here is a show which has been in development for 4 years… and I was keen to see what had transpired over the last 10 years.
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Stage Juice is a bright young performance collective lead by artistic Director and performer Katy Green and In the Shadows is the debut production (from what I gather) of this new collective.
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This is not a review: more of an internet-note on a show I saw last night at The Old Fitzroy Hotel in Woolloomoolloo: Bluey by Phil Spencer and directed by Scarlet McGlynn. Read more

This is an unofficial reflection on the play: not a review as I was not invited to this as a reviewer but as a practitioner, and it is with my director/dramaturgy hat I write about this piece, not my reviewer’s “will the audience get their money’s worth” hat. Read more

This review for AustralianStage.com contains extra rant at the end I didn’t include in the review.
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