American Primitive is the thirteenth studio album by veterans Old 97’s. The record is arriving just months before the 30th anniversary of their debut album, Hitchhike to Rhome. The band, consisting of vocalist/guitarist Rhett Miller, bassist Murry Hammond, guitarist Ken Bethea, and drummer Philip Peeples, describes the album as a “de-evolution,” featuring big, loud, brutal,…
A murder mystery with a difference, Transwoman Kills Influencer pits four colourful and flawed characters against each other. This hardly has the niceties of the world’s longest running staged whodunnit, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Rather, it is audacious in its extreme characterisations. Gender politics and prejudice play a part in proceedings. Transwoman Kills Influencer combines live action with pre-recorded…
Both a prequel and a sequel to Mamma Mia! from 2008 , Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a lightweight, fun-filled romp. In 1979, high-spirited Donna, Tanya and Rosie – aka Donna and the Dynamos – graduate from Oxford University. Donna joyfully embarks on her adventures through Europe to fulfil her destiny on the…
In 1929, Virginia Woolf reflected on the treatment of women in general and female authors in particular. Her searing essay, A Room of One’s Own, has now been adapted for the stage. Woolf didn’t hold back. She laid it on the line, pointing out what theatrical adapter and director Peta Hanrahan calls “the profound inconsistencies,…
The title says it all you need to know about this visceral, ultra-violent action thriller from India. Kill delivers a high body count and plenty of gore and mayhem. Most of the action is confined to a train, so it comes across like The Raid set on a train. The film takes place on a…
Many comics seem to be insecure, unhappy, lonely. They turn to comedy as a way of dealing with their emotional pain, and they often use humour as a defence mechanism. And this the plight of the heroine in Funny Cow. This unapologetically bleak tale follows a damaged woman trying to make it in the male-dominated…
Pre-show music and mingling sets the tone of The Neighbourhood, as the show’s performers (Cieavash Arean, Nima Doostkhah, Aurora Liddle-Christie, Dr Matt Hsu, Naavi Karan, Anisa Nandula and Amer Thabet) converse with the audience to prompt conversation around consideration of our neighbourhoods. Clearly, the concept of home is a complicated and abstract one and it…
Ridley Scott is rightly regarded as one of the most innovative filmmakers of the 1970s and ’80s. His groundbreaking work in films like Blade Runner, Alien and Thelma & Louise still stands up today. But since Gladiator (2000) his work has tended to the epic and slightly bombastic. His latest, The Last Duel, remains in…
Talented photographer Diane Arbus (Diane Glenn) meets sex symbol Mae West (Melita Jurisic – complete with sultry voice) in the MTC’s new play Arbus & West. In 1964, Arbus arrived at West’s pristine LA apartment to take snaps of the famous star, then 71. The play explores a fictional account of that real encounter between…
There is a reason that you should always listen to a record more than once before putting it aside. I have been a big fan of La Luz since their 2013 debut It’s Alive but after one spin through Floating Features I thought the band might have regressed some instead of taking all the momentum…
