Category Archive: THEATRE
The Illusionists 1903
Adelaide Festival Theatre, 15/1/2015 In The Wanderings of a Spiritualist (c. 1921), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has this to say: “There is an excellent clairvoyante in Paris, Madame Blifaud, and I look forward, at some later date, to a personal proof of her powers, though if it fails I shall not be so absurd as to imagine that that disproves them. The particular case which came immediately under my notice was that of a mother whose son had been killed from an aeroplane, in the war. She had no details of his death.” On asking Madame B., the latter replied,…
Continue Reading →Birdman
(Dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu) (2014) This is an interesting and well-made film that suffers from an empty space about its heart. The 1990s star of “Birdman 1, 2 and 3”, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton – get it?) spurned Birdman # 4 when at the top of the Hollywood pile, and is now a penniless has-been with substance abuse issues and an uncertain relationship with reality, as evidenced by his schizoid exchanges with the alter-ego Birdman character, who comes and goes, alternately revving and razzing Thomson in a voice reminiscent of Frank in Donnie Darko. His comeback (or if you hate…
Continue Reading →Kata Kabanova
Palais Garnier. Image by P. Giraud
Palais Garnier (2 November 2004) A beautiful production of this sad tale of adultery and recrimination, with the set a series of flats that would be at home in The Bill, including an appropriately atrocious print of bison at a waterhole (just to rub in Kabanicha’s horrendousness) and leaf-swept patio – incongruous in the gilded truffle of this particular opera house. Angela Denoke and Jane Henschel, as Kata and mum-in-law respectively, take on the white and black hatted key roles magnificently. Peter Burian conducted.
Continue Reading →Dumbing Down Terracini
Sydney Opera House (photo by Diliff)
Every artist has occasion to groan about critics. Often it can amount to, in Verdi’s phrase, ‘stupid criticism, even stupider praise’, or argumentum ad hominem. As Peter Craven observed in last weekend’s The Australian, much online content falls into these categories but in the current context, the artistic director of Opera Australia has taken the bait and been hooked like a bullfrog. Diana Simmonds reports on her site Stage Noise that she was informed: “In response to some of your recent writing about the company, Lyndon [Terracini] asked that you be removed from the media list.” So what was Simmonds’…
Continue Reading →Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night or What You Will (William Shakespeare) (1601-2) Adelaide 18 December 2014 TVC saw a theatrical reading of the Bard’s best comedy on a blustery summer evening in Victoria Square, the Square expensively revamped with little evidence of revamp. Yet kudos to the Council for the initiative of returning some varnished culture to the city’s jaded heart. Twelfth Night, produced by Holly Myers (also an excellent Viola), was played as Harold Bloom prescribed – “at the frenetic tempo that befits this company of zanies and antics.” Unlike much of the cast’s aspect in Trevor Nunn’s (1996) sombre film, here…
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