Category Archive: THEATRE
Eurovision 2018: Bet Against Logic and Taste
Lisbon, May 2018 Israel claimed its 4th Eurovision victory in a stunningly predictable finale, where taste was defenestrated and trampled, writhing and squirming, on the Portugese cobbles below. The UK and Bulgaria had outstanding entries, and we give honourable mention to Estonia, Holland and Cyprus. However, what with the jury vote and the televotes, bizarre results were in the cards. We liked Elina Nechayeva with her dress of many colours and the operatic aria, ‘La forza’ sung in Italian, but Estonia came in 8th. Bulgaria’s Equinox (see main image) featuring an East European Lady Gaga, had a dramatic pop-rocker called “Bones”…
Continue Reading →Our Review: Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America
Adelaide University Theatre Guild, 5 May 2018 – Memo to playwrights: Beware Godwin’s Law! Which is not a law as such, but an exercise in mimesis. The ‘Law’ has it that whoever invokes Hitler or the Nazis in an argument thereby terminates that process, usually in defeat. In Australian playwight Stephen Sewell’s work (we’ll call it “Myth / Nazi” for short, à la Marat / Sade) an academic at New York University (oops, that is, a NYC Campus), Talbot Finch (Nick Fagan) writes a piece comparing post-911 America to Nazi Germany. Of course! (Snap fingers significantly). The myth of American righteousness…
Continue Reading →Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America
Adelaide University Theatre Guild, 5 – 6, 9 -12 & 16 -19 May 2018 Stephen Sewell’s award-winning commentary on the War on Terror premièred in 2003. Fifteen years later, its anger and its resonance are undiminished, in that the eternal tension between individual liberty and social cohesion has become more acute in the post 911 world and the new theocratic age. The play asks “What does happen when the ‘Land of the Free’, with its neuroses about security and its desire for control says “You’re either with us or against us?” The Varnished Culture will no doubt seethe and gnash its collective…
Continue Reading →The Book of Mormon
Eugene O’Neill Theater, 230 West 49th Street, New York, 3 April 2018 – TVC, being fans of Big Love, were naturally drawn to this sly musical blend of Americana and wacko cult. Joseph Smith would not approve, and frankly, anyone with the gift of real faith, of any sort, would smell blasphemy here. Yet this show is tight, hilarious and brilliantly conceived, staged and performed. From the prologue where we learn that Jesus, after the disportation, buzzed over to the States and handed a golden book of plates to the Mormons, through an intricate opening number where freshmen Elders ring doorbells to…
Continue Reading →ADEL-AID
16 March, 2018 at “Jade”, Adelaide Fringe Raw, but we ate it up. This performance was one of those closest to the spirit of the Fringe, where non or semi-professionals can test their abilities, and material, in front of an Adelaide crowd, a crowd that is no pushover, albeit less querulous than Milan and less violent than Edinburgh. Co-producers Simon Coad and Adrian Nippress, in collaboration with Simon Goodes, created the gruesome conceit of a mock ‘Telethon,’ with all the forced striving to entertain and chaotic variety which that entails, and whilst The Varnished Culture had reservations (of which more…
Continue Reading →