It may follow the playbook, but The Way Back still grips tightly. Back in high school, Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck) had everything going for him. A basketball phenomenon, he could have punched his ticket to college or even the pros. Instead, he chose to walk away from the game, forfeiting his future. Jack’s glory days…
Readers will enjoy a piece of Australian Gothic with Luke Devenish’s novel, The Secret Heiress. Here’s the blurb: A fabled house. A fabulous fortune. Beautiful, identical twins … Dark shadows fall across the golden summer of 1886. Naive country girl Ida Garfield longs to escape the farm. When Miss Matilda Gregory, the elegant mistress of Summersby House,…
Francois Marsault (Andre Dussollier) is a former military man. Now aged 75, he lives life on his terms. Married to Annie (Sabine Azema) since she was 19, they have three grown up children. The eldest, Amaury (Gael Giraudeau), has followed his father into the armed forces. At a family gathering to mark his mother’s birthday,…
With re-boots, re-writes and re-imaginings de rigeur these days, it’s not all that surprising that Robert Ludlum’s famous super-spy gets to have another go around in the eponymous Jason Bourne. This stylish thriller re-unites star Matt Damon with Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass. It hardly seems nine years since Ultimatum; but there…
Eliza Henry-Jones is a new writer to me. Everything about Ache is beautiful, from the cover, with those piercing eyes, to the prose, which tumbles from the page and into readers’ hearts. Here’s the blurb: A year ago, a devastating bushfire ripped Annie’s world apart – killing her grandmother, traumatising her young daughter and leaving…
After a break of 16 years (since 2006’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Road), award winning author Cormac McCarthy returns with a pair of connected novels. The first of these is The Passenger – centring on salvage diver Bobby Western. McCarthy sets the scene with a suicide, an event that is central to Bobby’s life. This…
Pushing the boundaries and then some is a bizarre piece of theatre conceived and performed by Carly Sheppard in the guise of a character known as Chase. It is a persona she has worked with for a decade. The 70-minute production has anything but a straightforward narrative arc. Chase is a larger-than-life character who wants to make…
Blend drag, burlesque, circus, irreverence and the sensational sound of songstress Sahara Beck and you have the ingredients for a top night of fun and frivolity. That is Bite Club: 2nd Serve from cult cabaret-style mischief makers Briefs Factory. There are eight Briefs’ performers, alongside Beck on guitar and vocals, and the other members of…
One of America’s most influential twentieth century plays A Streetcar Named Desire’ is now on at Sydney’s Genesian Theatre. Written in the 1940’s by Tennessee Williams, its content is as relevant today as it was then. Dramatic from start to finish, there is plenty to digest and take home from this finely crafted production. Over…
Poignant. Deeply moving. Brilliantly conceived and executed. A life story rich and redolent. That’s what awaits you when you enter Red Stitch Theatre to experience multi award-winning British playwright Abi Morgan’s Lovesong. Billy and Maggie are a young English couple who have migrated to Australia. He practices as a dentist and she’s a librarian. They…
