Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
The Comedians
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, 19 November 2022 Comedy is hard. Stand-up comedy is very hard, and should be left to stand-up comedians. Alas, Mick Molloy, Sam Pang and Marty Sheargold are stand-up comedians like Ricky Gervais is a stand-up comedian: getting by, but not demonstrating a core skill. These three are well known for their amusing work on TV (‘The Front Bar’, ‘Have You Been Paying Attention?,’ ‘Fisk’) and radio. They are all likeable and funny, but somehow, one didn’t take away anything particularly witty or memorable: it seemed a parody of what was promised to be “a night (in…
Continue Reading →Short Stories: My Best List
“I do not desire little stories” quoth the German customer in the bookshop where George Orwell worked. And yes, you have to be in the mood. But the right one can repay attention with greater interest than a great many ho-hum novels. Here are my favourites: Cathedral by Raymond Carver (1981) Whilst we are not a real fan of Carver, we liked the simplicity of this piece, and its way of managing to ‘only connect.’ A Distant Episode by Paul Bowles (1988) A linguist’s nightmare. Everyone’s nightmare. Hunters in the Snow by Tobias Wolff (1976) Buddies, guns, snow, neuroses –…
Continue Reading →Bridge of Dreams
OzAsia Festival, Adelaide, 27 October 2022 It may be time to revisit Kipling’s dictum: “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” “Bridge of Dreams” is an unlikely but pretty impressive combination of Hindustani music and big band progressive jazz. At Her Majesty’s Theatre in Adelaide, Saxophonist, composer, and improviser Sandy Evans collaborated with tabla (a pair of twin hand drums from the Indian subcontinent, since the 18th century the principal percussion instrument in Hindustani classical music) players Aneesh Pradhan and Bobby Singh, singer Shubha Mudgal, harmonium player Sudhir Nayak, and the Sirens Big Band,…
Continue Reading →The Cube
d’Arenberg winery, October 2022 d’Arenberg Cube is a five-storey, double-tempered glass building situated within the Mourvèdre vines of d’Arenberg winery in the little town of McLaren Vale, itself a great stop and gateway to South Australia’s famous Fleurieu Peninsula. The design concept for the Cube came from d’Arenberg’s Chief Winemaker, Chester Osborn, by way of inspiration from Toyo Ito’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London and Ernõ Rubik’s famous puzzle. Built in 2014/17 at a reputed cost of $15 million to $16 million Australian dollars, it rises, or ‘floats’ above gently rolling hills and vines, in no way creating an eyesore. You…
Continue Reading →The Descent of Comedy
Oh dear. Shaun Micallef was once a genius of the Theatre of Embarrassment. But if you’re going to “go political” in comedy, you need to visit a plague on all houses. Not merely pander to the cognitive elites, smug in their infallible bubbles. Alas, he’s now the Australian Stephen Colbert.
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