Not being able to conceive when one is desperate to start a family can cause major rifts in a marriage. Infertility affects about one in six Australian couples of reproductive age. That is the starting point for a world premiere work by Australian playwright Ron Elisha, which originated from a feature article in The Australian Weekend…
The popular Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap has been a constant tourist drawcard in London since it was first performed in 1952, meaning that perhaps the whodunit’s biggest mystery is how the show is not outdated. Australian audiences can determine this for themselves in the latest on-tour production of the West End version of the…
Michael Tuahine thought up the idea of writing this fictionalised version of the life of Aboriginal entertainer and activist Jimmy Little, the first Aboriginal entertainer to appear on television, and what a great idea it was. The show provided a great night of the joyful retelling the life of a man who not only entertained…
Are you an Agatha Christie fan? Does nothing get you going quite like a drawing room mystery? If you said yes, then Régis Roinsard’s stylish mystery The Translators (Les traducteurs) will be catnip for you. But Roinsard and his screenwriting collaborators Daniel Presley and Romain Compingt give the genre a modern sheen with a comprehensive…
A mixture of performance art and theatre, unHOWsed is a laudable and creative look at homelessness from the perspective of eight mature-age women (aged 50 plus to 77) who have been there. It’s a piece open to interpretation, in which a great deal isn’t spelt out. Instead, it is left to the audience to fill…
Cross 1989’s Tom Hanks’ comedy Turner and Hooch with Best in Show and you should have the makings of one hot-diggity-dog of a film. But potential is one thing – and the realisation of Show Dogs is something else entirely. The film features a cast of talking canine characters, including the hero Max (voiced by…
Once upon a time, Luc Besson was the hottest director in French cinema. But the years and a couple of misfires (Valerian, anyone?) have seen him overtaken by the likes of Celine Sciamma and Olivier Assayas. Still, Besson gave us classics like The Big Blue, Subway and (my personal favourite) Leon: The Professional. Now he’s…
In Owl & Cat’s new production Crush, Celia (Mardi Edge), editor of the (fictional) Melbourne Sentinel newspaper, is a having a less than satisfactory affair with a married man. Johnny (Seb Muirhead) – who has a deep-seated fear of drowning – is in love with Celia, or so he thinks. He is attracted to her passion and…
In October 2013, the enigmatic and subversive British street artist known simply as Banksy headed to New York to create an original work of art a day for the entire month with an ambitious project known as Better Out Than In. Every morning he would place a picture of his latest creation on his Instagram…
In 1929, Virginia Woolf reflected on the treatment of women in general and female authors in particular. Her searing essay, A Room of One’s Own, has now been adapted for the stage. Woolf didn’t hold back. She laid it on the line, pointing out what theatrical adapter and director Peta Hanrahan calls “the profound inconsistencies,…
