Anne Frank’s story is a tragic but inspiring one and it is played out in dramatic fashion on stage. As Jews, when her Dutch family was forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust, she was gifted a diary, which she wrote in religiously. It contained her innermost thoughts about those she was with and…
The Little Dog Laughed, by American writer, Douglas Carter Beane, has had a previous outing at the Ensemble Theatre in 2009. The play had been nominated in 2006 for a Tony Award, in New York, and, I, based on the Ensemble production that I saw, could not understand why. It appeared to be one of…
Crimes of the Heart was Beth Henley’s first full length play, and was seen at the Manhattan Theatre Club and then onto Broadway, where it played for 535 performances in the John Golden Theatre, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. I remember seeing it on my second trip to New York, Mary Beth Hurt as…
If you want to have a laugh and a bit of fun in the frenzied days leading into the festive season look no further than the latest offering at The Owl and Cat Theatre. After Party was written by Michael Thebridge, his first produced play, and is skilfully directed by Gabrielle Savrone. It is the…
Although Please Stand By is a fairly predictable film and endeavours to strike a sensitive nerve, I’m all for such a type of film. The number of films about individuals with a disability who try to survive in our society where perfection is the standard nowadays, and who succeed in making great achievements, is endless….
I’ve often commented to people that it is much more difficult to write a glowing review than something at the other end of the spectrum. This experience makes putting together a review of Ad Astra’s Merrily We Roll Along a daunting task for I fear I may have insufficient superlatives for the company’s first musical…
An emissary from a New York publishing house (Giuseppe Rotondella) is dispatched to Switzerland to convince reclusive crime novelist Patricia Highsmith (Jenny Davis) of The Talented Mr. Ripley fame to sign a new contract. A bold move to stage a two-hander at an hour forty five minutes with no intermission in the Heath Ledger. The…
In the Indiana Jones wannabe, The Lost City, Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) is a writer struggling to find a suitable ending for her latest potboiler. She writes Mills and Boon-like fancies, featuring long-haired hero Lothario Dash. The model she’s used on 20 front covers is Alan (Channing Tatum), who is invariably asked to rip off…
There cannot be a better metaphor for the Cold War than the game of chess. But more than the metaphor, of course, was the very real rivalry between the West and Russia across the chess board. Both of these aspects are used to great effect by Patrick Worrall in his Cold War debut The Partisan….
Long before Catherine Martin was stealing all the plaudits in Hollywood, another Australian, Orry-Kelly (31st December 1897 – 27th February 1964), had already blazed that trail. This is his story, told through interviews and commentary from an actor who plays Orry, as directed by Gillian Armstrong. During the boom years of Hollywood, Orry was costume…
