Cain and Abel – biblical brothers at loggerheads. In American playwright Sam Shepard’s searing, black comedic drama it is well educated Hollywood screenwriter Austin (Justin Hosking) and his older brother Lee (Mark Diaco) – a drifter, thief and drinker – in conflict. The pair hasn’t seen each other in five years and find themselves together in their…
I am faced with a predicament that I can’t say I have confronted too many times after a few decades of reviewing. I have just seen a compelling piece of theatre, which I am about to highly recommend, but I will resist going into detail about the plot. I choose not to do so because of political…
The Melbourne International Film Festival screens until August 20. Here are a few highlights from the first week of the festival. CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Call Me By Your Name is a sensitive coming of age story set in a sun-drenched rural part of Italy in the 1980s and it deals with themes of…
The highly entertaining two-hour show could be called the soundtrack of the glorious Robyn Archer’s life. She, accompanied by a highly talented three-piece band – who also provide backing vocals – bring us largely a collection of little-known songs and a few poems. There are a few tunes she wrote and others that chart the path of…
You Got Older is an American play, from a young up-and-coming playwright, Clare Barron. It premiered in 2014 and won the Obie Award in 2015. You Got Older concerns cancer and dying. It seems the writer, Ms Barron, lost her job, had a break-up and received the news that her father had a bad cancer…
Imagine making an occult-driven musical from the misfortune of a group of high school children losing their lives in a tragic Big Dipper incident. Your first reaction would surely be how dreadfully inappropriate, downright maudlin and an act of moral turpitude. And yet that is what Canadian writers and composers Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell…
Three friends – drag queens Mitzi and Felicia, and trans performer Bernadette – board a battered old bus named “Priscilla”. They plan to travel from Sydney across the desert to fulfill a performance engagement in Alice Springs. Mitzi’s past has come back to provide an unlikely second chance. Along the way to the Alice, the “girls” frock…
– Russian Resurrection Film Festival – Screening from 23 October 2015 We have 10 double session passes thanks to the festival. *(Tickets valid in Australia only)* Eighteen new Russian films will premiere at the 12th Russian Resurrection Film Festival, playing at venues in Australia and New Zealand during October and November. Along with this selection…
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is a genteel look at the ménage à trois behind the creation of iconic feminist superhero Wonder Woman. Its direction fittingly boasts a decidedly feminine touch. Truth is stranger than fiction in this origin story outside the norm. Harvard psychologist and inventor Dr William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) was the…
Director Pedro Almodóvar and actor Penélope Cruz are a match made in heaven. The pair have been mainstays of Spanish cinema for decades, and their collaborations stretch back to Live Flesh (1997). Along the way, they’ve given audiences classics like All About My Mother (1999), Volver (2006) and Broken Embraces (2009). The latest Almodóvar film…
