Australian author Liam Pieper has released a couple of fascinating and diverse works of fiction – The Toy Maker about a Holocaust survivor and their family, and Sweetness and Light set around an ashram in India. But he also has a career as a ghost writer a career he wrote about in the Guardian earlier…
The satirical virtuosity in this show is in both the writing and execution. A small, talented troupe of entertainers that has been at it annually since 2000 just keeps delivering. The only pity is that because they are based in Sydney, we rarely get to see them further south. Their material is cultural and political. They skewer noteworthy figures…
American author TC Boyle has always been interested in the environment and its fragility those who seek to understand and protect it. From his 2000 novel A Friend of the Earth through to 2011’s When the Killing’s Done and 2016’s The Terranauts. Boyle’s latest novel Blue Skies also considers our relationship with the natural world,…
It’s a case of feathers meeting fluro when performers in Polytoxic’s new work, Dangerous Goods, initially ensemble in movement of feathered fans to ‘light our fire’. Continuing with theme of the collective’s 2021 Brisfest show, Demolition, the fluro comes from the hi-vis tradie uniform costumes… and also the more revealing hints from beneath them. It’s…
Thomas D Lee’s debut Perilous Times is a strange amalgam of post-apocalyptic eco-thriller and classic fantasy liberally laced with plenty of satire. It is set in a Britain ravaged by climate change, features rapacious corporations, plucky revolutionaries and climate refugees. But it also centres around the Arthurian legends and the knights of the Round Table….
I find Ruben Östlund a polarising filmmaker. In my experience, you either “get” him or you don’t. While his 2014 film Force Majeure was well-received, his 2017 art world parody The Square left many cold. Even so, it picked up the Palme d’Or at Cannes; so obviously someone liked it. His latest film, Triangle of…
Think of the notoriously sinful cities Sodom and Gomorrah referenced in the bible that were destroyed by sulphur and fire because of their wickedness. That is the starting point for the satirical opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Premiering in Germany in March 1930, with text by Bertolt Brecht, Elizabeth Hauptmann and…
Pushing the boundaries and then some is a bizarre piece of theatre conceived and performed by Carly Sheppard in the guise of a character known as Chase. It is a persona she has worked with for a decade. The 70-minute production has anything but a straightforward narrative arc. Chase is a larger-than-life character who wants to make…
White privilege receives a pummelling in the satire Admissions. It is 2015 and Sherri Rosen-Mason (Kat Stewart) is head of admissions at an exclusive US high school – Hillcrest in New Hampshire, New England. Over 15 years, Sherri has worked tirelessly to raise the percentage of coloured students at the school. She has succeeded in seeing that proportion…
Writer-director Adam McKay’s new film, Don’t Look Up, spoofs the materialistic, pop-culture world we live in. Earth is about to be destroyed by a comet, but do people care? Apparently not and the lack of interest is led by no less than the US president. PhD student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discovers the comet. At…
