What distinguishes Dance X is creativity and excellence in diverse forms of movement and the emotion it generates. Make no mistake, feelings surface and explode – that is certainly true in my case. There is a primal connection to the art form. In a special fortnight of dance at Arts Centre Melbourne, I started with…
Writer and director David Pulbrook (Last Dance) has a way to go before being compared to Alfred Hitchcock. The great director’s command of the genre is what Bad Blood seems to be going for, but it falls short. Carrie (Morgan Griffin) is in love with her new fiancé Vincent (Xavier Samuel), a handsome and successful young…
Just why Deborah Conway and her husband Willy Zygier are cherished as Australian music royalty is evident when you see Songs from the Book of Life. It is an 80-minute narrative concert featuring a cavalcade of life experiences, as outlined by Conway, along with eight songs. She goes back to her childhood when her parents used…
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Inspired by actual events Margrete: Queen of the North is an epic historical drama from Denmark set in the early 1400s. The film is a drama of Shakespearean proportions with lots of court intrigue, betrayals and treachery. Queen Margrete (Trine Dyrholm) has managed to unite Norway, Denmark…
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…
We haven’t seen much from former film historian and critic turned director Peter Bogdanovich on the big screen for a long time, as he has spent much of the past two decades concentrating on tv movies and directing the odd music video and an occasional episode of The Sopranos. Bogdanovich was an auteur who made…
All work and no play makes Christopher Robin a dull boy. AA Milne’s world is brought to life in this combination of live action and animation. Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor), the young boy who shared countless adventures with his stuffed animal friends in the Hundred Acre Wood, is now grown up. He lives in London…
Kim Lock’s first novel, Peace, Love and Khaki Socks, is an intelligent and worthwhile novel about birth choices. Her second, Like I Can Love, highlights how talented and versatile this author is. Here’s the blurb: On a hot January afternoon, Fairlie Winter receives a phone call. Her best friend has just taken her own life. Jenna Rudolph,…
Cats is a musical that tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they make what is known as “the Jellicle choice” and decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. The first performance of Cats was in 1981 in the…
It is Melbourne’s newest entertainment precinct (off Lonsdale Street), with a sizzling hot new show, involving seven spirited performers. I speak of Spiegel Haus Melbourne and the adults only, risqué cabaret Blanc de Blanc Encore. It is slick, sexy and in your face – in short, a walk on the wild side – with audience…
