Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s Little Eyolf (1894) is a searing portrait of angst. Rita (Elisa Armstrong) is deeply in love with Alfred (Damien Harrison). He’s a writer and they have been married for a decade, but she fears his feelings for her have shifted. He’s just returned from a fortnight walking in the mountains, a trip he has…
Coping with death and significant illness resulting in death isn’t easy for anyone. When it affects one’s nearest and dearest it is particularly harrowing. What if inside two years both your spouse of nearly four decades and adult child pass away? How would/could you handle that? In an instant, life as you had known it…
English novelist Naomi Alderman gained plenty of attention for her last novel The Power, a speculative look at what might happen in a shift of global power. She has followed that book up with something a little closer to reality, but still on the speculative side. The Future takes as its premise three of the…
Goosebumps! That is what I had while watching and listening to three of Australia’s preeminent musical theatre performers on stage with the Aussie Pops Orchestra. The occasion was one of three New Year’s Eve & The Night Before Gala Concerts at Hamer Hall (included amongst them was a matinee). Complete with a 60-piece orchestra, the mastery of their…
Gerard Butler, as US Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, is clearly trying to outmuscle and outgun Bruce Willis, as NYDP police officer John McClane (Die Hard), if his latest high-octane thriller, London Has Fallen, is anything to go by. The intent is no let up in the action or in the suspense from go to…
Sandra Pankhurst was a remarkable woman whose life hardly followed a conventional path. She founded a successful trauma cleaning business and is a no-holds-barred public speaker. The documentary Clean starts by outlining the work undertaken by her conscientious employees. They must have a strong constitution, because this is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea. Blood,…
Tobias S Buckell’s standalone speculative fiction novel A Stranger in the Citadel opens with literally a killer first line: The gods say, “You shall not suffer a librarian to live”. Riffing on classics like Fahrenheit 451, Buckell creates a future world in which largesse is provided through giant machines known as the cornucopia and books…
A rich, harrowing and deeply evocative story has been superbly translated into captivating musical theatre in this Australasian premiere production of The Color Purple – The Musical. It charts the life of Celie Johnson (played by Jayme-Lee Hanekom – Disney’s The Lion King), a battered and downtrodden African-American woman from when she was a 14-year-old…
If Aimee Mann had another pop/rock band album in her after the break-up of her 80’s breakout as vocalist and bassist with the band ‘Til Tuesday, she got that out of her system with Ted Leo on the duo’s one release in 2014 (The Both by The Both), producing one of the best albums of…
Think old-fashioned midday movie or a Mills and Boon novel and your head will be in the right space for One True Loves. Since school days, Sam (Simu Liu) has been into Emma (Phillipa Soo). But Emma always had the hots for swimming champion Jesse (Luke Bracey). As it turned out, Jesse swept Emma off…
