Thirty years on and boy-band (now very much man-band) Human Nature has still got it! On stage for more than two hours, performing a set of 30 plus numbers, these guys – brothers Andrew and Michael Tierney, together with high school friends Toby Allen and Phil Burton – are energetic and reverential. They love their…
Balloon tells the true story of two East German families’ escape to the West a decade before the Wall was torn down. It’s a tense and dramatic film, with moments of melodrama. We’re in the summer of 1979. The Strelzyks and Wetzels have been working on an audacious plan for more than two years. They…
A dramatic comedy, Bed & Breakfast is a brilliantly written, outstandingly realised double hander with many parts. The work of Canadian playwright Mark Crawford, this marks its international premiere. Frankly, a work of this quality, containing such important subject matter, should be seen globally. The action takes place in Melbourne, Ballarat and in a smaller regional setting,…
Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s masterful work The Phantom of the Opera sizzles. Everything about the production works a treat. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music, a cavalcade of riches, still stirs the soul 36 years after the musical debuted in London. In this case, plaudits to Orchestra Victoria for bringing it to life, with Anthony…
Alex Miller has twice won Australia’s premier literary award, the Miles Franklin, for The Ancestor Game in 1993 and Journey to the Stone Country in 2003. His fifteenth novel A Brief Affair, shows how he has continued to develop his themes and concerns. It is a character study that asks deep questions about what we…
Derek (Ben Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson) are back with a vengeance as fashionistas the likes of which the world hasn’t seen. When we last set eyes upon these male models, they were enjoying the wonders of the “Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good…
Craig Russell is intent on exploring the idea of split personalities, or what might make otherwise good people do bad things. In his last novel, The Devil Aspect, set in a European asylum on the eve of World War II, the question was whether it was the devil, or some other malevolent spirit that possessed…
Melbourne’s answer to authentic Tennessee-style Americana, Georgia State Line have been building steam since the release of their debut EP Heaven Knows in July last year. The 2018 Out On The Weekend Festival added the alt-country act to its line-up. The band has just revealed their latest single “Dry My Tears” and have announced a…
Critically acclaimed for good reason, this is a play that holds greatest appeal to theatre purists. Featuring four monologues and a running time that is a shade over two hours without interval, it is a drama that arrives at The Sumner after an award-winning season at the Belvoir in Sydney. It focuses on the life…
In 2008, Philip Roth published his 29th novel, Indignation, a story that returned him to his own youth, growing up in Newark, New Jersey before attending a small liberal arts college. One of America’s most honored and accomplished writers – having received a Pulitzer Prize – Roth was 75 years old when he turned back…
