Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 20 September 2024. The multi-award-winning tenor saxophonist, bandleader and composer Nubya Garcia’s new album, Odyssey, is out now on Concord Jazz. Following her critically acclaimed debut album, SOURCE, Odyssey is a majestic feat that blends orchestral arrangements with R&B,…
Everything old is new again. That popular expression could apply to the sequel to Disney’s Freaky Friday, which again features Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan and Mark Harmon. The conceit of the original, 22 years ago, was that Tess Coleman (Curtis) and her daughter, Anna (Lohan), are at loggerheads. And then, after a freak accident,…
A well-meaning but slight portrait of war-time suffering, Summerland felt manufactured to me. Despite its subject matter, I thought it lacked gravitas and authenticity. We’re in Kent in south-eastern England during the Blitz of 1940-41. Alice Lamb (Gemma Arterton) is an avid researcher and writer. She analyses folklore. Her small community regards her as harsh…
We’ve all had that thought – “This year, my resolution is to get fit and do a fun run / marathon / triathlon / insert sporting achievement here”. Usually it lasts until the end of January, maybe mid-February and then we slump back into our old lazy habits before Easter rolls around. Brittany Runs a…
Dread is palpable throughout Arthur Miller’s drama A View from the Bridge. The Melbourne Theatre Company’s version features seven actors and one old wooden chair but held me transfixed for two hours. The time is the 1950s; and the place an Italian-American neighbourhood near the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. The narrator is Alfieri (Marco…
– Come from Away – Only at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne from 3 July 2019 We have 2 double passes thanks for the preview performance of Come from Away on Tuesday, 9 July 2019 at 7 pm. *Please make sure before you enter that you will be 1) in Melbourne, and 2) available to…
US soul sensation Leon Bridges is releasing his new album, Coming Home, this week (on Friday, 19 June) on the Hallux label. The singer’s stage presence and soulful tunes are garnering comparisons with the great Sam Cooke; despite the fact Bridges is still only 25. You can judge for yourself come Friday. In the meantime,…
Victorian Opera continues to delight, this time with an hilarious, uplifting and thoroughly entertaining production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s slapstick favourite. I am in awe of the vocal calisthenics of soprano Nina Korbe. What an extraordinary talent she is. Hers is a golden voice worth travelling from far afield to hear. In fact, she is…
A bare stage, save for the odd chair brought in now and again as a prop, is the domain of a troupe of eight highly talented artistes, known as Circa. They drop, climb, roll, balance, hold and run – agility and strength being their stock in trade. On by Circa is all about physicality. A large oblong mat…
This tense, claustrophobic thriller cleverly inverts the premise behind such thrillers as Wait Until Dark and Blind Terror, in which a vulnerable blind woman was terrorised by killers until she fought back. Here though it is a blind person who is doing the terrorising. And it is a surprisingly effective thriller that grips until the…
