Australian Arts
A world away
Remember Gus the Theatre Cat in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats? He says that he has acted…
Getting down and dirty
It’s splendid to be sitting at the very front of the Playhouse watching a new musical from the Melbourne Theatre…
A vibrant, complex character
We’re preoccupied with the horrors of what can happen with the internet and Australia thinks it can lead the world…
Unparalleled strangeness
How strange it is to be transported back to some version of the world of Lena Dunham. Remember Girls, that…
A touch of the unthinkable
The other night we watched one of the greatest American films ever made. Network was directed by Sidney Lumet to…
The transcendence of style
Paula Vogel’s Mother Play: a play in five evictions is a superlative piece of theatre and it demonstrates unambiguously that…
Bush noir
Barry Jones likes to allude to the fact that John Adams declared that he had to study agriculture and warfare…
Last days, spare room
In a world of international horrors and hopes it is weird to have one of the weirdest true-life crime stories…
Russians greats
The house was awash with the Russians this week – first because someone was reading George Saunders’ A Swim in…
Dial Q for Cold Case
By the time this is published, your columnist will have seen the students of the National Theatre perform their chosen…
A deadly sweetness
One of the greatest documentary filmmakers who ever lived died last week at the age of 97. He is the…
Craggy man of integrity
Sometimes you’re just too clapped out to attend the most sparkling bit of theatre and so it was for your…
Beautifully played
Who would have thought? The arena concert version of Les Miserables, Claude Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s sung-through extravaganza is…
Dark lowering road
Bill Henson, the greatest Australian photographer, has a show at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery at 6pm Friday 16 May. It’s…
A need for abasement
We sometimes forget how much opera provides a captivating alternative to classic drama but this was written all over Opera…
A wonder to behold
The National Gallery has been gifted Edvard Munch’s Man with Horse and its acquisition brings to mind James Mollison, the…
A passable Antipodean
Isn’t it strange the way the popular and high art aspects of our culture keep connecting and intersecting. A friend…
The way the imagination works
Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of…
The zenith of art
Last week your columnist cut a paragraph stating that the original Melbourne Higgins in My Fair Lady, Robin Bailey, and…
Unsurpassable
It’s a weird connection but they say Donald Trump is devoted to his presidential predecessor Andrew Jackson who was popular…
Intensely engaging
The Australian National Academy of Music gala performance on Friday 21 March was dazzling with guest conductor Asher Fisch leading…
Theatre vultures will kill
Having a sportswriter father is no excuse. The young man was tall, long fair-haired with a hat. ‘What do you…
Never mind the cracks
If you wanted confirmation that the world can change dramatically you need only remember the Berlin Wall coming down in…
Devotion and betrayals
There is a Roman saying, ‘What the barbarians started the Barberinis completed’ with reference to one of the great dynastic…
In every kind of film
The fact that the eminent Irish actor Stephen Rea is doing Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at the Adelaide Festival from…
