Arts and culture
Jaime Martín
They’re changing guard at our two major orchestras; the Melbourne Symphony and the Sydney Symphony. A couple of months ago…
Singing Shakespeare
Britain is certainly revving up when it comes to culture. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s defiance about social distancing for his new…
The Dictionary of Lost Words
These days I don’t read many novels although occasionally I have to read one for my book group. Recently our…
Anya Taylor Joy stars in the new Mad Max
It’s funny to reflect how the performing arts, theatre in particular, are a lot stronger when they have a literary…
Spring Waters
Recent decades have seen the opening or upgrading of numerous performing arts centres throughout regional Australia enabling the development of…
Andrea Riseborough
National Treasure is a remarkable piece of TV drama, and it looks for a long, bewildering moment like a masterpiece.…
Divine Vinyl Survives
Two weeks ago, a fire broke out at the Universal Studios in Hollywood, 13 years to the day after another…
Dylan
Bob Dylan turned 80 the other week. Does that seem to consign not just the vanished twentieth century but the…
Festival music in Townsville
For those music lovers who can travel, the prospect of a festival in Townsville in mid-winter is an alluring one.…
Chekhov
The trouble with the performing arts in Melbourne is that you blink and they’re gone. The other week we were…
European Masterpieces from The MMA, New York at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art
This is a very active period for the visual arts. The Archibald Prize finalists have been announced, Vivid is returning,…
Macbeth
It’s an extraordinary thing that a director of Bruce Beresford’s reputation should be directing for Melbourne Opera until you remember…
Brett Whiteley : Drawing is Everything (31 July – 31 Oct)
Demonstrating excellent timing, the Bendigo Art Gallery has announced a major exhibition Brett Whiteley : Drawing is Everything (31 July…
The Dry
It’s a hard thing, harder than it should be, to film a detective story. Is Billy Wilder’s version of Agatha…
Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert series
Last weekend’s sports pages told us that ‘the crowds have not yet been flocking back to the footy with pre-pandemic…
Ulysses
If you wanted a college at the University of Melbourne that had no hint of imitation Oxbridge you would turn…
The Truth About China by Bill Birtles
As news came through of China’s suspension of high-level trade dialogue with Australia, I read The Truth About China by…
Reese Witherspoon
There are moments when the very idea of live entertainment including its high cultural expression, thrills the soul. On 6…
Francesco Cavalli’s The Loves of Apollo & Dafne
Venice in the 17th century was the birthplace of opera. Its dominant and most successful exponent was Francesco Cavalli. Once…
Killing Comrade Hampton
Fred Hampton, the young chairman of the Illinois Black Panthers, makes a brief appearance in The Trial of the Chicago…
Kate Winslet
It’s been a strange week in the world of arts and entertainment as we slouched to the weirdest plague-governed Oscars…
Science Gallery Melbourne
Sydney is still thrashing around with the historic Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, known as the Powerhouse Museum, while…
Helen McCrory
At a time when people like Prince Philip looked as though they would live forever and the world was a…
The 23rd Biennale of Sydney
Advance notice has been given about the Biennale of Sydney for 2022. No one else should get overexcited about this…
Berlin
Theatre is slowly, tentatively opening up again and there’s no denying that a good play with however small a cast…
