Creativity abounds in The Drill, which is unlike anything I have seen – a combination of circus arts and interactive experiences. We’re in the midst of WWI and campaigners for peace are adamant they want politicians to listen to their pleas. A rally is planned and a petition for an end to the war is…
Situational comedy of a different kind, Why Women Kill is not at all what you might expect from its title. Why is it that three murders have happened in the same house, all in different eras? Don’t blame the house. Relationships are hard, and the reasons why they fail for the couples (and in one…
Their father was big and strong. He could be fun, but more often than not he was scary, angry, brutal and dogmatic. He couldn’t land a job and so money was always tight. He drank. After surviving WWII, which included being shipwrecked and a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Railway, he had PTSD. His wife,…
Ulna is the project of Adam Schubert, a notable figure in the DIY music scene. He also plays guitar in Bnny alongside his wife, Alexa Viscius. Personally, Schubert has moved from a rebellious youth to a sober, reflective artist, a transformation that shines through on Gazebo, his second record as Ulna. The album represents the…
Hero or villain? Richard Jewell, the movie, answers that question about the chief suspect in the Centennial Park bombing in 1996. That incident killed two people and left more than 100 injured. On 27th July that year, during the Atlanta Olympics, security guard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) discovers a suspicious backpack hidden under a bench…
The Queensland Ballet’s Dangerous Liaisons is not only a world premiere but it is also an amazing blockbuster of a show. The whole production just blew me away. It was the ballet’s premiere season and yet the choreography, the costumes and the music, made me feel I was watching an ageless classic. It was genius on…
Anyone who enjoyed Jeffrey Archer’s seven volume Clifton Chronicles will lap up his latest rags-to-riches tale which contains all of the familiar elements of his novels. It is his first stand-alone novel in a decade as the Clifton Chronicles has taken up most of his time. There is a virtuous young hero who makes his…
Disgraced is the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning play by Ayad Akhtar. This is the typical well made American play that I talked about in my entry about The Whale. A small cast of five in a single setting with a subtly disguised exposition that introduces the protagonists with their differences and backgrounds. Emily (Sophie Ross),…
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…
Emily St John Mandel came to prominence with her fourth book, the pandemic post-apocalypse Station Eleven. That book gained a second wind when the COVID pandemic hit, and was turned into an HBO series. Some of the craziness of that success, and of the pandemic itself, is captured in St John Mandel’s latest book Sea…
