Theatre vultures will kill
Having a sportswriter father is no excuse. The young man was tall, long fair-haired with a hat. ‘What do you…
Never mind the cracks
If you wanted confirmation that the world can change dramatically you need only remember the Berlin Wall coming down in…
Devotion and betrayals
There is a Roman saying, ‘What the barbarians started the Barberinis completed’ with reference to one of the great dynastic…
In every kind of film
The fact that the eminent Irish actor Stephen Rea is doing Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at the Adelaide Festival from…
Knowing how to cast
Simone Young conducted Mahler’s Third at the Opera House on Wednesday 19 February and with its dense lyricism, its lush…
Newsreader fascinates
It’s a fascinating thing that The Newsreader is back on ABC iview. This is the soap about a couple of…
Sweeping exit
It will be fascinating to see what Jamie Martín, the head of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, makes of Mahler’s Second…
It ain’t me, Bob
It’s always a bit extraordinary how much an art form lives on the legends it has created. Everyone is looking…
Nothing like a Dame
Art takes every possible shape and size. The exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e prints (running at the National Gallery of Australia…
Pacific Paradise Lost
Back in the childhoods of the baby boomers everyone seemed to know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 because there…
Thrillers
It’s funny the preconceptions you have about the Christmas/New Year period. I hadn’t anticipated seeing Juror #2 the new Clint…
Summer Reading
There are a thousand ways of celebrating the Christmas holiday that are culture specific but have a universal appeal. You…
Take it easy on a long, hot summer
It’s a strange time, the summer holidays in Australia. Some people have riveting memories of Boxing Day tests, of Australian…
The most immodest thing
So they’re having another go at removing the varnish and the accumulated dark oiliness and other accretions from that most…
Drunk in a midnight choir
Biography can create the most heightened sense of drama. Just at the moment SBS On Demand is showing a streamer…
Such grandeur in the mind
There’s always something breathtaking about the prices great art can fetch but the sale of Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ at Christie’s…
Striving of the individual soul
The Australian Ballet seems to have had a smash hit with Oscar. Not only did the ballet, choreographed by Christopher…
Narrative robbery
So the silly season, the festive season when we celebrate the incarnation of the Good is looming, yet again, and…
The all-powerful hand of the director
When that writer of spare French prose André Gide was asked who the greatest French poet was he replied, ‘Hugo,…
Such wild and tumultuous art
Jonathan Mills’ opera Eucalyptus based on the superbly designed novel by Murray Bail has left audiences dazzled and rushing to…
A level of grandeur
You can hardly complain about the state of classical music in this country at the moment. The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra…
Grave and terrible elements
There’s something horrifying about Monsters, the Netflix streamer about the Menendez brothers who, back in 1989, murdered their mother and…
Distinctive ambitions
It will be fascinating to see the retrospective of work by Jan Senbergs who died this year and who looms…
Maturity and tenderness
So now it is spring and that carnival season with its promise of Melbourne Cups and AFL grand finals hits…
And then there was the voice
It was at Cape Liptrap that the call came through. The setting was almost absurdly beautiful, the sea one way…
