As reviews go, that one was certainly worth waiting for.

Beautiful voices, beautiful, rhythmic and readable prose. But I wondered what the director actually did, apart from hand out six copies of the book and a packet of highlighter pens. Robert is so right – MTC are leaving most of the medium unexplored.
They can do so much better, and I’m sure they will. This project deserves, and needs success…[Read more]

Three features distinguished the rump Parliament that sat to enact the regulations permitting the JobKeeper allowance. One was that the session seemed utterly farcical – the votes could have been counted at the Members’ entrance, long before anyone even took a seat. Another was Tony Bourke’s informed and eloquent speech in favour of amending the B…[Read more]

Your words have captured the feeling that we are drowning, sinking slowly into the quicksand of ignorance and apathy, too exhausted even to struggle.

Your prescience is disturbing.

When plague descends and cities burn,
Then, then to Art the people turn.
When cities burn and plague descends,
On Art recovery depends.

I haven’t seen it yet (looking forward to it) but I want to ask: is it OK to critique a show for what it DOESN’T say? Seems unfair.

My prediction for the 2020s: the boundaries separating commercial, independent and subsidised theatre will fade away, evaporate and dissolve.

And another thing: a rule of noli me tangere onstage or in the rehearsal room would be the death-knell of some of our best-beloved theatre. Intimacy, violence, treason, murder & rape, like every crime, have been enacted onstage for centuries. Enacting them with care, understanding and safety, without threat or exploitation – that must be a goal of…[Read more]

Some of us, many, I hope, are determined that it must not happen again. I will never again be silent while my theatre is not a safe place.

First, a disclosure of interest: I have been employed at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne for many years and my previous employer was the Sydney Theatre Company. I have professional acquaintance with many of the people involved in the case, and am aware of certain facts that are not generally known. Now that a verdict has been delivered, I can…[Read more]

This is, by a long way, the most reasoned and reasonable commentary I have yet seen on this terribly loaded topic. As an industry, we cannot risk letting it lie here; we must continue Dan & Catherine’s discussion until we arrive at the answers, plural. We must:
1. Protect the vulnerable. This must mean teaching people to think about their…[Read more]

For years, many of us have dreamt, argued, speculated and written about the “Great Australian Drama/Musical/Opera”. For some reason, iconic history is looked-to for the source, and Ned Kelly, Eureka and Gallipoli pop up again. So unnecessary, and such bad stories for the stage.

Barbara and the Camp Dogs, wow. A joy to see two so-complete performers so thoroughly plugged in to each other’s notes and rhythms.

Two great Australian talents have been sacrificed to sell newspapers. Guilt and innocence are no longer the issue, if they ever were. It’s no more thancelebrity-salaciousness, and the paper’s insistence on a ‘truth’ defence has made the case into an adversarial contest betwen Norvill and Rush, which it should never have been. All of us in the…[Read more]

As ever, Alison, your writing is the very voice of reason and your balance as precise as a jeweller’s scale. I have been reluctant to comment on this matter for many reasons, but will just say this: can we resist the pressure pushing us to take sides?
What Rush is alleged to have done is inappropriate and unwelcome. Those are the words in the…[Read more]

Thanks (typing very deliberately) Keith Gow. What I enjoyed most, after the laughter, was the feeling of fermentation going on in my brain afterwards. I really think a profound theatrical experience is not fully realised without a tram journey to finish it off. Trams may be one reason why Melbourne is Australia’s cultural capital. Tramsylvania.

GOW – it’s bloody auto-corrected me twice.

Sorry about the typo. Keith Goy seems, of course

Keith Got seem to have been impressed, but doesn’t really say whether he liked the show. It’s quite brilliant. Three intensely entertaining women riffle-shuffle through a playlist made up of a lifetime of conversations, chats, stories, arguments. Three characters, each utterly unlike the others, spinning a web of their commonplaces. It’s fiercely…[Read more]