All My Sleep and Waking was an early play (first?) written by Mary Rachel Brown, first performed in 2002 in a 55 minute one-act version, that has had recent and further development with mentor/director, Dino Dimitriades, of the Apocalypse Theatre Company. Three siblings, Maria (Angela Bauer), Anne (Di Adams) and Peter (Richard Sydenham) await –…
Feel good entertainment in a good, old-fashioned pub – what could be better than that? Well … simple, really – feel good entertainment in a good old-fashioned pub on stage, with no shortage of audience participation. That is the show and the group known as The Choir of Man – nine talented singers and musos….
The prequel to The Wizard of Oz is back to delight anew and delight it most certainly does in a dazzling display at Melbourne’s finest theatre – the grand Regent. This is top shelf entertainment in every way. I speak of the talent, the choreography, the staging, the lighting and the sound. We are in the…
Renny Harlin was one of the great action directors of the late 80s and early 90s, with films like Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight to his credit. But lately he seems reduced to directing second-rate formulaic action films like The Misfits and episodes of various TV series. And now he’s helming…
Terminator Genisys is at times viciously violent, features masterful special effects and a story that is confusing and convoluted. Further, it makes good on a catchphrase – “I’ll be back” – that became one of the most recognisable after it entered our lexicon when the first movie in the series was released in 1984. Arnold…
The sophomore feature from Jennifer Kent (The Babadook), The Nightingale offers up horrors of a different kind. Set in Tasmania in 1825, the film is a bloody, brutal and unflinching tale of revenge that also addresses the savage history of colonial Australia, the systemic abuse and mistreatment of women and the indigenous population. It makes…
If you’re going to ask me what Marauders was about, I’ll owe you the answer. Because to be honest, this was such a complicated story that I couldn’t understand what was happening while watching. Let alone that I could still retell it now. The big jumble of storylines is just as inextricable as a fisherman…
If you don’t know the names Betty Burstall and Buzz Goodbody, I’m not sure you’ll be all that much wiser after seeing the play The Other Place. In Carlton in 1967 schoolteacher Burstall begins sketching plans for what will eventually become the iconic La Mama Theatre, the pre-eminent, independent home of new, experimental unseen Australian…
Aurore is an unobtrusive little charmer of a French comedy. Aurore (Agnes Jaoui) is a middle-aged woman with two adult children. She muddles through life as best she can. She’s a fighter, not a victim, although she experiences discrimination. Then she unexpectedly bumps into an old high school flame, Totoche (Thibault De Montalembert). She hasn’t…
Dominic Smith takes readers to Northern Italy in his sixth novel Return to Valetto and brings with him the richness and descriptive power that characterised his earlier novels. While his last couple of novels revolves around art and artists (The Last Painting of Sara de Vos and The Electric Hotel) they had an interest in…
