An Evening Without Kate Bush
(Adelaide Fringe, Garden of Unearthly Delights, 13 March 2025) Kate Bush, is, like one of her influencers Emily Bronte, both genius and mystic. Her look, her voice, her entire unique and brilliant oeuvre, have entranced us ever since her debut in 1978, aged 19. Sarah-Louise Young is clearly a Kate obsessive, and her show, a dizzy mash-note, is clearly for fans (we mean that in a good way), the Fish People, but it is witty and vibrant enough to please those ignorant of Kate-World. Whilst the music is pre-recorded, Young is not: her voice is strong and she inhabits the…
Continue Reading →Krapp’s Last Tape
(Directed by Vicky Featherstone; Adelaide Festival, 7 March 2025) Less is more with the great reductionist Samuel Beckett, although sometimes less is less. James Wood observed of Beckett’s late work that he had “smothered longings for riches, and [made his] reductions seem like bankruptcy after wealth rather than fraud before it.”* Take the best of Kafka and Jimmy Joyce, stir, and simmer. Stephen Rea stars, if one can call it starring. In The Crying Game, he was upstaged by a penis; in V For Vendetta, by a Guy Fawkes mask; and a burning theatre in Interview With a Vampire. Here,…
Continue Reading →It Ends With Us
There's no end to this...
(Directed by Justin Baldoni, from the novel by Colleen Hoover) (2024) Thanks to Guest Reviewer Rita, for sitting through this so we don’t have to. Her pithy synthesis is below, with our additional comments further on. “What a woeful travesty! This film trivializes and romanticises the very serious subject of domestic violence and is downright insulting to the many true victims of this ongoing crime. It fails in many ways…most notably it neglects to portray the fact that the most dangerous time for a woman entrapped in such an abusive relationship is when she summons the courage to leave. Give…
Continue Reading →Gene Hackman
(30 January 1930 to 17? February 2025) He was Mr. Reliable, and never selector’s choice as a leading man, but after several obscure but worthy performances, he gained stardom in The French Connection as an obsessed, driven narcotics cop. In later decades, he usually slipped into supporting roles, with the odd standout star role, such as in Mississippi Burning and Narrow Margin. The circumstances of his demise currently a mystery, we instead will nominate his best amongst his almost 80 films: Bonnie and Clyde (1967) The Gypsy Moths (1969) I Never Sang for My Father (1970) The French Connection (1971) Scarecrow…
Continue Reading →Auschwitz Liberated
(27 January, 1945: the liberation of the Nazi’s most infamous extermination camp) Blood libels against the Jews are nearly as old as the hills. They were stirred during the First Crusade (1096), but reached the nadir (at least, one hopes) during the Second World War, in the form of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” “At camps maintaining labour installations, like Auschwitz, 10 per cent of the arrivals – those who looked fittest – were selected for work. The remainder were consigned to the gas chambers. They were instructed to undress; the women and girls had their hair cut. They were then marched…
Continue Reading →