Australian Arts

Diamond-bright hoot

23 September 2023 9:00 am

Oh to be in London with Barrie Kosky calling the shots in the first part of Wagner’s Ring Cycle Das…

Mermaid out of her depth

16 September 2023 9:00 am

It’s strange the different strands of culture we constantly negotiate. The Rolling Stones bring out a new album and this…

Poets don’t stink

9 September 2023 9:00 am

The Australian Book Review poetry prize is upon us again and it’s worth mentioning that the ABR editor Peter Rose,…

Everybody’s friend

2 September 2023 9:00 am

It was cheering in its way to hear, from the lips of that shrewd urbane man Tony Burke, that 246…

The masterful technique

26 August 2023 9:00 am

Isn’t it weird to hear reports of eminent curators at the British Museum leaving because various priceless artworks (often of…

Bob, Robbie & Robert

19 August 2023 9:00 am

It’s fifty years they tell us since the creation of Utzon’s Opera House and it’s strange to think how this…

Dazzled by her gift

12 August 2023 9:00 am

If you have never seen Bernadette Robinson give yourself a treat and see her current one man show, Divas. It’s…

An air of baffled honesty

5 August 2023 9:00 am

It’s an exciting prospect, Helen Morse in a play by the great Caryl Churchill. The artistic director of the Melbourne…

Magniloquent horror

29 July 2023 9:00 am

The experience of watching Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy, his film with Cate Blanchett as the nun running an orphange…

Kundera’s last laugh

22 July 2023 9:00 am

So now Milan Kundera is gone at the age of 94. It’s easy to forget the tremendous weight, the sheer…

How to build the bomb

15 July 2023 9:00 am

Graham Greene used to say that none of the great literary works he had read as an adult had the…

Keeping Ralph on his toes

8 July 2023 9:00 am

It would have been interesting to hear Barrie Kosky and Kip Williams talk about the theatre on Tuesday night. In…

An icy restraint

1 July 2023 9:00 am

The world has seemed like a procession of deaths lately. Generally, of those in old age. Of all of them,…

Captivating marvels

24 June 2023 9:00 am

It’s fascinating to hear that one of the greater theatre directors we have produced, Neil Armfield, is directing Anthony LaPaglia…

Innocent pertness

17 June 2023 9:00 am

There are times when anyone might decide to throw in scanning the range of literature and art and music and…

A staggering performance

10 June 2023 9:00 am

It would be wrong to belittle the Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria because the emphasis is on…

A campy and colourful role

3 June 2023 9:00 am

It’s good to report that the latest revival of The Rocky Horror Show with Jason Donovan as Frank-N-Furter is true…

One kind of masterpiece

27 May 2023 9:00 am

It’s strange the world of classics and demi-classics and popular classics we inhabit. Right at the moment there’s the chance…

Strange bedfellows

20 May 2023 9:00 am

What a whirlwind the world of the arts can be. Gabrielle Carey who changed forever the image of teenage girlish…

Rattle and HM

13 May 2023 9:00 am

It’s funny to think that at the very moment when King Charles was going through his Coronation, pledging service and…

Dragons, broomsticks and whatnot

6 May 2023 9:00 am

It was saddening to hear of the death of the poet John Tranter the other week. For those of us…

The preternatural nature of his genius

29 April 2023 9:00 am

Is it being a dominion country, a well-heeled colony, that makes this country good at comedy? The death of Barry…

A ravishing sensuousness

22 April 2023 9:00 am

What a world of paradox painting confronts us with. The death of John Olsen is a reminder of his stature…

The pity of war

15 April 2023 9:00 am

‘My subject is war and the pity of war,’ Wilfred Owen wrote in the poems which Benjamin Britten set to…

Erotic intensity

8 April 2023 9:00 am

We think of television – even in this age of a thousand streamers – as something we pig out on…