Arts
Film | Theatre | Art | Opera | Music | Television | Festivals
Welcome to ABR Arts, home to some of Australia's best arts journalism. We review film, theatre, opera, music, television, art exhibitions – and more. Reviews remain open for one week before being paywalled.
Sign up to ABR Arts and receive longform arts criticism to your inbox every fortnight on Tuesdays. And if you are interested in writing for ABR Arts, tell us about your passions and your expertise.
Recent reviews
In his introduction to the Folio Society edition of Twelfth Night, Peter Hall describes the play as a transitional work. Moving on from the light-heartedness of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in Twelfth Night Shakespeare mixes grief and cruelty in with the comedy. We are advancing towards ...
... (read more)Bravo ABC, Mike Parr at the NGA, Amanda Joy and Paul Hetherington at Winter Arts 2016, After Shakespeare, 'Ball of Wax', Robert Alagna, and giveaways from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Melbourne Opera ...
... (read more)With a needle on cloth, Mary Jane Hannaford preserved her sharp observations of people as stout appliquéd figures set amidst interpretative renditions of Australian animals. Late in life she embroidered favourite verses and slyly captioned her pictures in quilts for her family. Close to one hundred ...
... (read more)Two productions of Così fan tutte' (Opera Australia ★★★★1/2 and Vienna's Volksoper ★★★)
Mozart's third great collaboration with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, Così fan tutte, has enjoyed a chequered performance history since its première in the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1790, a year before Mozart's death. Its initial series of performances were interrupted by the death of Emperor Joseph ...
... (read more)Degas: A new vision is an exhibition of 206 works selected and presented by Henri Loyrette, the distinguished Degas scholar, former director of the Musée d'Orsay and subsequently director of the Musée du Louvre. In its range and variety the exhibition confirms the verdict of the writer and critic ...
... (read more)'Ihave no money and no husband,' comments Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) in Love and Friendship, Whit Stillman's adaptation of Jane Austen's novella, Lady Susan. The dilemma is common both to Austen's heroines and to this American director's: his five films have charted the ...
... (read more)Whatever else Peter Evans's production of Othello has going for it, and it has indeed much, the speaking of Shakespeare's verse is outstanding. It is never declamatory, in the way that some famous actors of earlier decades dealt with it. The verse emerges entirely intact, but is always made to ...
... (read more)Mona Brand Award, Natasha Bieniek: Archibald Prize 2016 finalist, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Academy, Three Stravinsky ballets by David Robertson, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera giveaway ...
... (read more)To open its Melbourne winter season, The Australian Ballet has invited the handsome and talented Houston Ballet to make its Australian début in Romeo and Juliet by Houston's Australian artistic director, Stanton Welch. After reaching leading soloist and resident choreographer status in ...
... (read more)Afilm sequel is always a risky venture, and thus it is with Goldstone, Ivan Sen's follow-up to his 2013 outback crime drama, Mystery Road. But it is just one risk the writer–director–cinematographer director takes with this film. Goldstone re-introduces us to the indigenous police detective ...
... (read more)