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Arts

The Poison of Polygamy 

La Boite and Sydney Theatre Company
by
13 June 2023

The Poison of Polygamy originally appeared serially in Melbourne’s Chinese Times in 1909–10. Wong Shee Ping’s novella is a kind of Cantonese Rake’s Progress by way of Rider Haggard, relating the wanderings and misadventures of a man sojourning in Australia, and the yearnings of the wife he leaves behind at home.

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A Streetcar Named Desire 

Redline Productions
by
09 June 2023

For fans of Tennessee Williams and this most famous of his plays, this production (directed by Alexander Berlage and produced by Redline Productions) is superb! Buy a ticket now, for the shoebox theatre of the ‘Old Fitz’ can seat only fifty-five people and, like the candles of a Tennessee Williams imaginary, this show will burn brightly, but only for a short time.

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Australian Chamber Orchestra 

Australian Chamber Orchestra
by
06 June 2023

As much as it is a continual delight to hear the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) giving unfailingly wonderful performances in its national touring programs, one is often left yearning to know more about this ensemble’s inner workings and how it creates its magic. For in its artistic director, Richard Tognetti, one might say there is indeed something of the magician, evident both in his own uniquely arresting violin playing and in the way he elicits quite startling results from his fellow musicians.

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Recently, it was disclosed that the National Gallery of Victoria now pays the salaries of ten per cent of its permanent staff from donations. The Art Gallery of New South Wales’s Sydney Modern Project currently derives around a third of its budget from private donors.

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One Fine Morning 

Palace Films
by
05 June 2023

In French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning (Un beau matin), books play a significant role: as physical objects, gifts, talismans, sources of connection, works in progress. Above all, books can represent a life.

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John Farnham: Finding the voice 

Beyond Oz
by
05 June 2023

John Farnham nearly missed the launch party for his most successful album, Whispering Jack (1986) – he was stuck on a couch in a foetal position. He was under immense pressure. His three-year stint as lead singer of Little River Band (LRB) had left him saddled with some of LRB existing debt. Whispering Jack was clearly his last chance to show the world the kind of artist he thought he could be.

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Do Not Go Gentle 

Sydney Theatre Company
by
31 May 2023

Do Not Go Gentle, presented by the Sydney Theatre Company, is a marvel of a play, and this is a marvel of a production. Patricia Cornelius’s words, spoken by Scott of the Antarctic and his ragtag bunch of fellow travellers, are poetic, quixotic, trenchant, and potent. The liminal space offered by the ice and the snow of the setting takes the characters deep into their own psychic extremities. They become ruminative, playful, despairing, and libidinal as they encounter the limits of their physical and emotional capacities. They yearn for the ever-elusive South Pole, seeking to reach an end that promises liberation and obliteration.

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Melbourne Jazz Co-Operative 

Melbourne Jazz Co-Operative
by
30 May 2023

It is hard to believe that an organisation founded forty years ago could still be flourishing today under the helm of its original founder. When current creative director Martin Jackson, in 1982, conceived the idea of a co-operative aimed at fostering the development of jazz and improvised music in Melbourne, I doubt he could have foreseen where it might lead. But here we are, four decades on, part of a full house at the Melbourne Recital Centre, here to celebrate the numerous achievements of the Melbourne Jazz Co-operative (MJC).

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Backstage with Robyn Archer

by Australian Book Review
June 2023, no. 454

Robyn Archer is a singer, performer, writer, artistic director, and public advocate of the arts. She was appointed an ABR Laureate in 2016. She has been performing professionally for more than sixty years, throughout Australia and the world, and is known internationally for her expertise in the Weimar repertoire and her artistic direction of major arts festivals.

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Worstward Ho 

Victorian Theatre Company
by
26 May 2023
It is a curious fact that perhaps the most famous lines in all of Beckett are contained in one of his least-known works, the 1983 prose piece Worstward Ho. ‘All before. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ ... (read more)