Debra Oswald’s latest book The Family Doctor opens with the shocking death of a young family at the hands of their father and husband. This sounds a little like the set up of Jane Harper’s debut The Dry. But while Harper used this scenario to launch a mystery story, Oswald’s take is much more realistic….
Queensland Theatre can’t go wrong opening its 2023 season with this entertaining and sometimes searing comedy-drama from the prodigious David Williamson (Emerald City, Don’s Party, The Removalists and many more). Family dynamics clash with topical politics and social issues in the tight, interval-free 90-minute play directed by Artistic Director, Lee Lewis (Prima Facie, Mouthpiece). Family…
I am faced with a predicament that I can’t say I have confronted too many times after a few decades of reviewing. I have just seen a compelling piece of theatre, which I am about to highly recommend, but I will resist going into detail about the plot. I choose not to do so because of political…
Sex, drugs and disco? The popular New York disco Studio 54, run by entrepreneur Steve Rubell, epitomised the hedonistic lifestyle of the late 70s. Rubell’s aim was to create a place where ordinary, but good looking people, could mix with celebrities for a party that would never end. He created a place where the rich…
This second instalment of the action science fiction thriller picks up where The Maze Runner left off. As the Gladers are unloaded from the chopper that flew them away from the maze, the helicopter doors fly open and masked soldiers whisk them into an underground bunker. The bunker is run by the duplicitous Janson (Aidan…
Merrily We Roll Along is based upon a 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. George Furth (book) and Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) retained the basic structures and themes of the play but updated it to cover the period from 1957 to 1976. The musical starts in New York…
Maggie Stone is an Australian play by Caleb Lewis. It was written eight years ago. This is its first outing in Sydney. Maggie Stone (Eliza Logan), a let-herself-go, middle-aged lower rung corporate slave – small loans officer – struggles to maintain an equilibrium of pleasantness around the ‘service’ she’s meant to dole out. Coming from…
Michael Keaton both stars in and directs this slow-burn crime drama about a contract hitman suffering from rapidly developing dementia. This marks Keaton’s second effort behind the camera, following 2007’s little-seen The Merry Gentlemen, a dark drama about another hitman undergoing a crisis. There are a number of superficial similarities between that film and this…
These days you can’t make a superhero movie without reference to the multiverse – and so it is in the latest DC offering, The Flash. The nerdish, insecure Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), who works in criminal forensics, is the voraciously hungry pivotal figure. As The Flash, he is a founding member of The Justice League,…
Lily Bloom’s father has just died. Her mother Jenny wants her to eulogise him at his funeral, but she can’t. Why not? That introduction sets in motion a chain of events that will see the sins of the father visited on the child. As a teenager, Lily struck up a loving relationship with a fellow…
