Arts and culture
She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism
Art movements and fashions may come and go but Australians love of their impressionists seems only to grow stronger. The…
A Murder of Crows
Sometimes a crime show on TV turns into something higher and better, a transfigured thing. The Victim, from Scotland, falls…
Opera on the Harbour: La Traviata
These days, you’d need to be as game as Ned Kelly to run an opera company. It’s a chancy enough…
La Streep
It’s one of those secrets that we keep even from ourselves that great acting, everything that we know in terms…
Boy Swallows Universe
It is difficult not to be irritated by the preoccupations of the funded state theatre companies. They seem to be…
The Virtues
It’s a bit amazing that Hamilton is opening in Sydney on 27 March. Only a few months ago it was…
A Nation Imagined: The Artists of the Picturesque Atlas at the National Library of Australia
If you go to Canberra to see the NGA’s exhibition Botticelli to Van Gogh and are mildly disappointed, your journey…
Ray Lawler
When Brett Sheehy, the departing artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company took the stage of the Sumner with the…
French Impressionism from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Victoria
While admiring the collections of French impressionist paintings in American galleries, it is easy to think of them as evidence…
Britney Spears
The arts world in general —and with it theatre in particular— is opening up. Not only is the Botticelli to…
Johannes Fritzsch
It is hard to imagine a city with a richer cultural history than Dresden or a better place for a…
Christopher Plummer
A few weeks ago that great Canadian actor Christopher Plummer died. Everyone knows him as Captain Von Trapp opposite Julie…
Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London
Saint Zenobius was a Florentine nobleman who was converted to Christianity and baptised as an adult, ultimately becoming the first…
Anne-Marie Duff
Melbourne was just stirring into public cultural life when the hotel quarantine mishap led to that last alarming lockdown that…
Australian Love Stories: Celebrating love in all its guises at the NPG
The National Portrait Gallery seems to be floundering. That may be unfair but the announcement of the next exhibition left…
The Dig
It was gratifying to see such a quiet and impeccably made film as The Dig make it to independent cinemas…
Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo
Second thoughts are sometimes better thoughts. The NSW government had second thoughts about closing down the Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo…
Das Rheingold
You could hardly ask for a more exorbitant return to mainstage theatre than a production of the first part, the…
Robyn Nevin
The Adelaide Festival program describes her, accurately, as ‘our finest stage performer’. Robyn Nevin is appearing there (2 Feb-14 Mar)…
It’s a sin
It’s easy to forget what Russell T. Davies has achieved to date. Twenty-odd years ago, Queer As Folk altered a…
Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli
For 60 years, in an idyllic location at Kirribilli, the Ensemble Theatre has been providing entertainment in an intimate format.…
On The Beach
The aftermath of Australia Day seems like an appropriate time to watch On the Beach, for a belated first time,…
Elijah Moshinsky
Earlier this month, the opera world sadly absorbed the news of the death of Elijah Moshinsky. Born in Shanghai in…
The Investigation
Slowly, after what seemed like infinite, malingering delays, virus-driven, the world of arts and entertainment is starting to open again…
Masked opera
We were all excited to be there. You would have thought that we hadn’t been to an opera performance. Well,…
