The past and the present collide in a story that involves reframing a tainted history. We are in Gippsland in the 1840s and a white woman is discovered near death, washed up on a beach. Just what happened to her remains the stuff of myths, but she is said to have been rescued by and…
Personal and societal catastrophic incidents shape a pre-get together, ahead of a 20th anniversary high school reunion in Washington DC in 2022. They form the basis of the conceit, which sees combatants take pot shots at one another in The Comeuppance, which is both dramatic and comedic. Emilio (Khisraw Jones-Shukoor), who used to be a…
The win at all costs mentality that underpins The Beep Test carries with it a high price. This is Year 7C, whose driven PE teacher channels his own unfulfilled ambitions into the captain of the football team, a standout player and reigning beep test champion. I speak of a multi-stage fitness test, in which participants…
Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. The heartbeat of a suburb is captured in St Kilda Tales. All but two hours of movement and conversation is partly overlaid with music. Ten actors play characters looking for connection, among them friends and the disenfranchised, prostitutes and druggies. On occasion, a single conversation dominates proceedings. At other…
Call me a heathen, but I never got into the mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic and beloved trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Mind you, I could say the same about Harry Potter … and then I saw that stage play, firstly in two parts and then in one, which won me over. Now, the…
Who were the big winners from The Verdi Gala Concert at Hamer Hall? We – the audience – as we were left in awe of the raw emotion on display from the moment that conductor supreme Alexander Briger lifted his baton. Orchestra Victoria was in peak form from the opening overture – urgent and powerful….
My, couldn’t we do with more peace and love in the world now, arguably more than ever? That is why Songs from the Canyon (that is Laurel Canyon) carries even greater weight in 2025. The geographic reference is to a mountainous neighbourhood in the Hollywood Hills, an oasis of tranquillity and the home of counterculture…
Highly regarded Australian journalist Peter Greste was arrested by Egyptian authorities in Cairo on 29th December, 2013. He was working there for Al Jazeera as a two-to-three week Christmas cover for another journo. Greste was taken into custody alongside two other Al Jazeera reporters, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed. Written by Peter Duncan, The Correspondent…
Shocking, racially motivated fires – arson – in Germany in 1993 resulted in the death of five Turks. More than 30 years later, Mehmet Akif Buyukatalay’s clever satire Hysteria – the centrepiece of the German Film Festival – fans the flames of discontent. Buyukatalay’s second film focuses on a movie being made about those real-life…
Set in Tehran, this Oscar nominated film for Best International Feature is a distressing, but compelling watch. For the past 20 years, lawyer Iman (Missagh Zareh) has worked for the authoritarian regime in Iran. Now, to the delight of his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), he has been rewarded with an upgraded position as an investigator…
