Sydney’s favourite four part harmony folk powerhouse All Our Exes Live In Texas have announced plans for a massive national tour this October after an appearance at the Lorne Festival in Victoria. All Our Exes Live In Texas have been putting the finishing touches on their upcoming debut album When We Fall so are promising…
Two and a half hours of high-octane rock ‘n roll, an ode to Freddie Mercury and Queen, await those who venture in to Melbourne’s Regent Theatre to see the off-the-wall musical comedy We Will Rock You. Written and updated as well as directed by Ben Elton, it is oh so silly, but heaps and heaps…
J G Ballard’s prescient dystopian 1975 novel High-Rise was a bleak allegory for the class warfare and decline of civilization and the breakdown of society. Ballard wrote the novel in the 70s during a period of tumultuous upheaval in the social fabric of Britain before the economic downturn and rampant unionism drove Thatcher’s conservatives into…
History shown through the gentle, softening eyes of love – that’s what to expect with Anita Heiss’s latest read, Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms. Here’s the blurb: Over 1000 Japanese soldiers break out of the No.12 Prisoner of War compound on the fringes of Cowra. In the carnage, hundreds are killed, many are recaptured, and…
This is a dark and erotic fairy tale with a dominatrix queen and an innocent but feisty teen Snow White who is experiencing her first glimpses of sexual awareness. It is a heady mix that kept me engrossed for the close to two hours of non-stop dance. The plot follows the fairy tale closely. Queen…
In 2008, Philip Roth published his 29th novel, Indignation, a story that returned him to his own youth, growing up in Newark, New Jersey before attending a small liberal arts college. One of America’s most honored and accomplished writers – having received a Pulitzer Prize – Roth was 75 years old when he turned back…
The Coen brothers have given us some great films, like the brilliant Fargo and the Oscar winning No Country For Old Men, which is why their latest offering is a little disappointing by comparison. With Hail, Caesar! the filmmaking siblings return to the Golden Years of Hollywood in the 50s, which was the backdrop of…
A modern day satire, which tears our notions of morality to shreds, The Beast is an at-times-hilarious rant on urban culture, an organic lifestyle and infidelity. Written by Eddie Perfect and featuring him and six other actors – Heidi Arena, Peter Houghton, Alison Bell, Rohan Nichol, Toby Truslove and Christie Whelan Browne – it was…
Betrayal, by Harold Pinter was written in 1978, and belongs to his great middle period, and along with other works like No Man’s Land (1975) and Old Times, is often characterised as one of his ‘memory plays’. Pinter was given the Nobel prize for Literature in 2005. This play uses reverse chronology, and so the…
The Disney Theatrical Productions arm of the Disney Company have brought to Sydney a spectacle of old fashioned musical theatre in a contemporary (new fashioned) post-modern, popular culture version of a tale of Middle Eastern origin, Aladdin. Disney had made an animated version of the tale in 1992, and it became a most successful member…
