Saturday, October 13, 2012
Melbourne Festival Diary #3
It may have only opened on Thursday, but the Melbourne Festival is now well into its stride. Aside from the Forsythe Dance Company, my highlight so far has been …
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 09:55PMThursday, October 11, 2012
Melbourne Festival Diary #2
I Don't Believe in Outer Space, Forsythe Dance Company; Never Did Me Any Harm, Force Majeure.
I used to say that I enjoyed seeing dance because it gave me a …
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 11:59PMFestival Diary #1
The Melbourne Festival officially opens tonight, but a couple of pre-opening events have already tempted Ms TN out of her burrow. Over the past two nights, I've seen two c…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 01:03AMThursday, October 4, 2012
Know someone who's made an outstanding contribution to the Australian performing arts? I thought so. You should be nominating them for the 2012 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards. Right now,…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 11:38PMFriday, September 21, 2012
As we all know, three members of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot were recently imprisoned after a farcical trial in which they were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious …
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 06:43PMSaturday, September 15, 2012
Okay, okay, I know I swore that I was writing no reviews for a month. But just this one, because it's important.
I was completely unprepared for the emotional impact of watching Jenny Kemp'…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 10:11PMWednesday, September 12, 2012
Dear everybody: as we all know, good intentions are the road to hell. And Ms TN is full of good intentions. I wrote them all out this morning, having cleared some space to catch up on the sh…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 11:22PMMonday, September 10, 2012
'Tis the season for theatre launches, which gives Ms TN ample opportunity to exploit her genius for SNAFU. Recently my trigger finger gave the MTC's pr department conniptions by blithely twe…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 08:21PMTuesday, September 4, 2012
Regular readers will be chortling into their coffee to hear that Ms TN has been yet again ruefully contemplating her total inability to control any aspect of her writing life. Viz: yet again…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 07:59PMSunday, August 26, 2012
A brief talk on the plays of Patrick White, which I delivered yesterday at the Melbourne Writers Festival as part of the event Remembering Patrick White. My fellow panelists were David Marr,…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 07:23PMThursday, August 23, 2012
Brett Sheehy's first season as artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company was launched last night. It's fair to say that the 2013 program been rapturously received: it's the most ima…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 07:59PMSunday, August 19, 2012
It's that time of the year again, and I have a busy weekend coming up. If you want to stalk me at the Melbourne Writers Festival, here's the roadmap. I'm part of four sessions: two events ar…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 09:38PMThursday, August 16, 2012
There's a certain discomfort and sharpness, a sense of reaching beyond the limitations of merely making "good" theatre, that filled me with relief when I was watching On the Miscon…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 10:36PMTuesday, August 14, 2012
The shortlistings for the Victorian Premier's Literary Prize were announced recently, and are now online at the Wheeler Centre's website. I mention it because this year the Wheeler Centre, i…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 09:24PMMonday, August 6, 2012
Briefly, before the week disappears into the irrevocable past. And a suggestion that if you have an idle nine hours, you should spend them at Robert Lepage's Lipsynch, now on at the Arts Cen…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 10:10PMSaturday, August 4, 2012
Some notes
I saw Back to Back's Hell House - or, at least, the Hell House part of it - on Friday. I've been thinking about it ever since, and I want to get some thoughts down before I head …
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 09:27PMTuesday, July 31, 2012
"Publish? I don't publish my plays... Plays are made to be felt in the theatre. They should last as long as the performance does, that's enough... That is what makes the theatre so love…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 10:55PMMy review of folk singer/poet Kate Fagan's collection First Light is now up at Overland Journal.
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 07:36PMWednesday, July 25, 2012
The debate around Queen Lear has been going on, and on. It's not only in the monster thread under my review, which broke even the record for Baal - hitherto the holder of TN's Most Commented…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 07:54PMTuesday, July 24, 2012
North Melbourne Arts House is making my life very complicated this year. It has always been a venue notable for its curation of contemporary performance, but under the eye of creative produc…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 09:14PMFriday, July 13, 2012
For the first thirty seconds I thought we were in for something special in Queen Lear. Robyn Nevin in the titular role, regally costumed in red, is lushly illuminated backstage studying her …
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 12:42AMSunday, July 8, 2012
Briwyant
On the evidence of Briwyant, Vicki Van Hout is rightly celebrated as one of our up-and-coming choreographers. There are moments of brilliance in this performance, which takes a Dre…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 09:50PMWednesday, July 4, 2012
The Golden Dragon
L-R: Jan Friedl, Ash Flanders, Rodney Afif and Roger Oakley in The Golden Dragon. Photo: Melissa Cowan
Roland Schimmelpfennig's deconstructed play The Golden Dragon te…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 10:15PMTuesday, July 3, 2012
Limitations. I haz them. And right now, I have to face the fact that I'm unable to run this blog as I would like. My other activities - which mean, among things, that I have a prospect of pa…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 08:37PMFriday, June 29, 2012
This week has been unexpectedly busy (in a non-theatrical manner), as the final copy edit for Black Spring arrived, marked "urgent", and has taken all of my time. And I also had to…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 07:53PMThursday, June 21, 2012
First, an apology and an explanation. Your humble blogger is heroically attempting to get out less, but Melbourne, you make it hard. I seem to be presently measuring the worth of Melbourne p…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 08:27PMSaturday, June 16, 2012
In Macbeth, the ruling metaphor is darkness. Macbeth's "black and deep desires", pricked into life by the prophecies of the witches, overthrow the deepest oaths of feudal manliness…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 12:41AMSunday, June 10, 2012
Over the past couple of years, Chamber Made Opera, under the direction of David Young, has been investigating domestic space as a means for creating contemporary opera, quite literally produ…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 10:03PMSunday, June 3, 2012
Over the past few years, I've lost count of the number of columns I've read which lament the Youth of Today. Pundit after pundit has informed me that young people, Generation Whatever, are s…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 11:20PMSaturday, June 2, 2012
As you probably know, Ms TN has been trying to get out less. I am writing a novel which I'd like to finish before September, or at least in the next decade, and then there are all the number…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 03:20AMThursday, May 31, 2012
The art of light writing, as playwrights like Oscar Wilde demonstrate, is a serious business. Writing a light play about serious business is even more serious. The danger is that "light…
SOURCE: Theatre Notes at 12:06AM 
