Monthly Archives: February 2016

I saw Opera Australia’s dazzling production of The Pearlfishers last weekend and I’ve been swimming in Bizet’s music ever since.  The score was an exotic delight from the first note of the overture to the last echo at lights out – … Continue reading →

Tom Stoppard is a staggeringly brilliant playwright!  The somewhat Georgian symmetry of the stage set belies the chaos of the intersection of ideas and times that will play out across the space until some order is restored and most questions … Continue reading →

This is the fourth year for Opera New England – an initiative that couples great vision with bold ambition.  Their offering this January was Verdi’s La Traviata in which Violetta, a high-class courtesan (read ‘party girl’) returns to society but … Continue reading →

I really love this play.  It effervesces with Oscar Wilde’s legendary wit, reveling in and at the same time lampooning the British upper classes with lines such as Gwendolyn’s:  I always have my diary with me – I like to … Continue reading →

The first of Sport for Jove’s summer season was a Shakespearean comedy that is rarely performed.  Full of scintillating, at times inscrutable wit, the play was quite possibly written for an eclectic, sophisticated audience.  Described by the director, Damian Ryan … Continue reading →

November and the stage blood keeps flowing! Geoffrey Rush as Lear! Almost impossible to get tickets but I was lucky. I also bumped into Stephen Fry! Another great Sydney Theatre Company exploration this time in a minimal white landscape, cold … Continue reading →

Sport for Jove continues to make a brilliant contribution to the cultural life of Sydney with their Edward II this October ’15. The surge of human emotion proves ultimately uncontrollable for King Edward when news arrives that the barons and nobles, despising … Continue reading →