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Alex First

Alex First is the editor of The Blurb. Alex is a Melbourne based journalist and communications specialist. He also contributes to The Blurb on film and theatre.

Masterclass (Malthouse Theatre) – theatre review

Oh my. What a breakout, beguiling, absurdist, slapstick comedy Masterclass is. It is a deliberately pointed slight at male arrogance and entitlement. A pretentious interviewer (Feidlim Cannon) conducts an at first fawning interview with a heralded esoteric playwright and director (Adrienne Truscott). Their dress sense and wigged and mustachioed personas are as outlandish as the interplay between the…

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One Fine Morning – movie review

A moving, slice-of-life piece, One Fine Morning combines the sensitive touch of writer-director Mia Hansen-Love (Bergman Island) with the acting chops of leading actor Lea Seydoux. Seydoux plays Sandra Kienzler, a single mother whose husband died five years ago. A translator, she and her family are dealing with the deteriorating health of her father Georg…

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TANZ – dance review

WARNING – FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY Ten naked women cavorting on stage in a comic book reality is the wild work of 37-year-old Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger. A live back piercing in close-up, dancers being elevated off the stage by their scalp and a rat birthing from an elderly woman (complete with…

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Death of a Salesman (Chapel Off Chapel) – theatre review

Almost three quarters of a century after it was written, the power, passion and desolation intrinsic to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) remains intact. It is a devastating and iconic piece of work, magnificently performed by the 11-strong cast from Hearth Theatre at Chapel Off Chapel. The three-hour production explores themes of change, isolation, depression,…

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Euphoria (Melbourne Town Hall)

As Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 Oliver Stone-directed hit film Wall Street, Michael Douglas said “greed, for lack of a better word, is good”. I venture to suggest that Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt, who has created the impressive multiscreen installation Euphoria, would vehemently disagree. Using the musings of more than 100 economists, business magnates, writers and celebrities,…

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