The seed of the book that became The Patterson Girls, Rachael Johns’ first foray into contemporary fiction, came from a weed. As Johns tells it, the paddocks around the town where she then lived were covered in what appeared to be a beautiful purple flower. She soon discovered that the flower was an invasive weed…
All that glisters is not gold – and there was plenty of non-gold glistering on the Lyric stage. The whole show, from curtains to costumes, and even the seats in the stalls sparkled with sequins, colour, and glitter – and the sky was dotted with shining stars. Designer Catherine Martin’s set and costumes were a…
Minusonesister is the Sydney Theatre Company’s (STC) Patrick White Playwright’s Award of 2013, by Anna Barnes. The action of the play is set in a contemporary, salubrious household of an Australian city, with a set of siblings – three sisters and brother – struggling, inside a wrapped crime scene room, to make sense of the…
M Night Shyamalan subverts the usual expectations of the fairy tale visit with kindly old grandmother with this mix of horror and uncomfortable black comedy. The subdued horror film The Visit marks a return to form of sorts for the Sixth Sense filmmaker, whose last couple of films were the awful The Last Airbender and…
Gary Clark Jr. has exploded since his 2012 Blak and Blu album put him on the map with its bluesy rock that was both soulful and energetic in the same guitar movement. After a non-stop tour that has only made him bigger with his engaging stage presence, Gary Clark Jr. has finally released his much…
If you like a bit of weirdness in your reading, a bit of fable for fun, look no further than Undermajordomo Minor. It caught me by surprise, in a good way. Here’s the blurb: Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, he…
Ride and Fourplay are two early works from Jane Bodie. Both are lengthy one act plays. The evening is three hours long. It didn’t feel like it on the night I attended. Ride (2001), is a two-handed journey as two ‘moderns’ wake up in a bed not remembering how they got there or what subsequently…
This fascinating insight chronicles the adventures of an eclectic group of young pioneers who … well … changed the world. These were Canadian hippie journalists, photographers, musicians, scientists and American draft dodgers who set out to stop Richard Nixon’s atomic bomb tests in Amchitka, Alaska and end up creating a worldwide green movement. Greenpeace was…
Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Incendies) has proven himself to be a director with few peers. Now he is at it again, with tough and gritty filmmaking at its finest. In Mexico, Sicario means hitman. When Arizona FBI agent and kidnap response team leader Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) uncovers a Mexican house of death, her shocking find…
Enthusiasm for Shakespearean adaptations shows no sign of waning, as Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel (Snowtown) assembles an A-list cast for a stunningly visual and viscerally gripping version of the classic Macbeth. At its most basic, Macbeth is the tale of a struggle for power in Dark Ages Scotland; and Kurzel has wisely decided to strip…
