Using harsh reality and pop culture as its backbone, Vox Lux is a hard-hitting drama about the price of fame. The film takes place between 1999 and 2017. After tragedy strikes at a US high school, Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) sings at a subsequent memorial service, which touches the hearts of mourners and Americans in general….
Set against the backdrop of the Holocaust, Driftwood The Musical is a deeply moving tale of tribulation and triumph. The starting point for creator Tania de Jong AM was her mother Eva de Jong-Duldig’s 2017 memoir “Driftwood – escape and survival through art”. The musical focuses on the true story of Eva’s mother (Tania’s grandmother), Slawa Horowitz-Duldig….
Just where the line between sanity and madness lies is one of the questions in Bliss. Another concerns the true value of the contribution one makes in life. Everyone loves Harry Joy (Toby Truslove). The world revolves around the successful advertising man who runs his own agency. Then, on a sunny afternoon, when aged 39,…
I was really curious about Slender Man. Not that I expected anything spectacular. But the photos with this cult figure, which popped up on the internet, were rather intriguing. Not really scary but mysterious. A faceless figure with disproportionate limbs who appears in the background while observing children playing. A kind of Pied Piper of…
A pugilist’s confessional, Shadow Boxing is tough, gritty and unrelenting. Samuel Addison features as the boxer, whose father, Errol Sebastian Flynn (who we never meet), also put on the gloves. His 47 fights produced only eight wins and his son recalls the vitriol directed at his dad as he lay spreadeagled on the canvas with…
I’ve been following with interest the updates on Cassie Hamer’s debut novel After the Party. Thanks to Netgalley, I was able to read an advance copy and I’ll say now, add this to your reading lists if you are a fan of Liane Moriarty and her sister Nicola Moriarty. You’ll get a story that mixes…
Provocative. Intense. Disturbing. In Tinderbox you are up close and personal, witnessing the highs and lows (especially the latter) of a nine-month relationship between a pair of 20-somethings that unravels before your very eyes. Violence and mental torment, jealousy and hatred are the stock in trade. There is also tenderness and intimacy, flirtation and ecstasy,…
A clever study in absurdity, The Horses by William Lane is an unusual piece of Australian literature that unpacks notions of class, ideology, religion and education. Set in a boarding school on Sydney’s outskirts, the novel features young men who wear armour for uniforms (including helmets, breastplates and chain metal gloves), teachers who care more the…
Twenty-one-year-old Leo Joseph-Connell (Shiv Palekar) values his independence. He’s fallen out with his mother Jane and is on a cross-country bike trip. The family hasn’t heard from him in weeks and they are worried. Leo lands on the doorstep of his 91-year-old grandmother Vera Joseph’s (Nancye Hayes) apartment in Greenwich Village, dirty and smelly. He’s…
Four actors … who break the fourth wall, track down a Melbourne man from a seven-minute rant obtained by a transcription service and give a potted history of the internet. That, in a nutshell, is the subject matter of the cleverly orchestrated play that puts the fear of God into you. In fact, humour and paranoia are…
