The Australian Ballet’s glorious production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a fitting tribute to the splendid State Theatre before it undergoes a three-year refurbishment. It is a colourful, highly creative, whimsical work – a sensory sensation. The winner of the 2018 Helpmann Award for Best Ballet, Christopher Wheeldon choreographs the translation of Lewis Carroll’s beloved book. The…
To call Steve Cavanagh’s Eddie Flynn thrillers “courtroom dramas” is to sell them well short. Sure there are some courtroom or other legal shenanigans in every one of Eddie’s outings. But what Cavanagh seems to delight in is how much pressure he can bring to bear on Eddie outside of the case itself. In his…
If Shakespeare had the vision of Nostradamus, he may well have foreseen The Merry Wives of Windsor being set in a 1980s Australian backyard. Nonetheless, director Viktor Kalka has made the geographic transition and it is an interesting concept, to say the least. Inspired by “The Bard’s” intention to make the play contemporaneous, Kalka creates one…
Terry Miles debut novel Rabbits, is based on his podcast of the same name. Having not listened to the podcast, it is impossible to compare the two media but Miles himself says that one is not a reproduction of the other. Rabbits is full of – and possibly for – gamers, puzzlers, conspiracy theorists, believers…
Former Australian cricketer Brett Lee stars in this cross-cultural romantic comedy, the first production of the Australia India Film Fund. Beautiful divorcee and single mother of one, Meera (Tannishtha Chatterjee) is an Australian of Indian origin. Smart and independent, she has carved out a successful life for herself and her daughter … in the face…
There are not many records that capture an era like the Singles soundtrack. Grunge stormed the scene in 1991 with the explosion of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains leading the way. It was a movement that single handedly halted the music world, ended hair bands as we knew them and birthed muscular…
Based upon a true story, The Clan is the incredible tale of an Argentine family – the Puccios – which, in the early 1980s, made its living from kidnapping and murder. They live in a typical family home in a traditional neighbourhood. To the outside world a devoted husband and father, Arquimedes (Guillermo Francella), the…
Darkest Hour is a kind of backgrounder on Winston Churchill’s “never surrender” speech. It also touches on the flotilla dispatched to fetch the British troops from the beach at Dunkirk (as to which, see Dunkirk). But this showy biopic has too much emphasis on levity. Joe Wright (Atonement) directs from a screenplay by Anthony McCarten (The…
Passion, intellect, history and legacy explode on stage in the masterfully written, acted, directed and produced romantic, dramatic, thriller Berlin. Australian Tom (Lachlan Hamill) has just landed in the German capital, keen to get to know the real city, not the tourist offering. He’s directed to a small watering hole, where he meets and is…
Alice Clark-Platts’ debut novel was The Flower Girls, an unsettling look at children who kill other children. Her most recent book, The Cove takes the domestic thriller to a small island off the coast of Malaysia and then turns up the heat on all of its main characters. Expat Brits Lou and Adam live in…
