Set in Galway, Ireland between May 2016 and March 2019, Duck Duck Goose explores sexual assault and its impact. I refer to the effect on the accuser and the accused, along with friends and family. Jane Scully (Rachel Nutchey) meets Chris Quinn (Mitchell Holland) in the aftermath of a house party, where Chris got wasted. Jane alleges she…
Following the award-winning Cormac Riley crime fiction series set in Ireland, Australian crime author Dervla McTiernan turned her attention to the United States. Her first novel set there was The Murder Rule, a courtroom/crime thriller based around the Innocence Project which was not all that successful. Her follow up, What Happened to Nina?, is something…
PIP Theatre’s first offering for 2024 is the hilarious Banging Denmark, written by Van Badham and directed by Heidi Gledhill. Badham wrote the play as a way to cope with the horrendous online trolling she faced as a journalist for The Guardian. Banging Denmark was shortlisted for the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Nick Enright…
Celebrity – it’s the dream of many and the nightmare of some. Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli (in his English-language debut) takes a quirky but deep dive into the nature of celebrity in the current cultural moment with Dream Scenario. The result, while a little uneven, is nonetheless intriguing. Depicting dreams in cinema – or any…
Rebecca F Kuang is better known as fantasy author RF Kuang, responsible for the Asian-inspired Poppy Wars series and the alternate history Babel. Her latest novel, Yellowface is something else entirely – a takedown of the modern publishing industry and a scathing critique of social media as a mode of criticism review and attack. It…
In our increasingly connected world, it’s ironically easier than ever to feel disconnected. How you deal with that disconnection is the subject of the disturbing comedy-drama, Ingrid Goes West. Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) is an unhinged social media stalker. She has a history of confusing “likes” for meaningful relationships. Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) is an Insta-famous “influencer”,…
