Ben Brooker
That Eye, The Sky (State Theatre Company) ★★
Although his natural humility would make him dislike my saying so, Tim Winton is these days omnipresent in our national culture. Anywhere you look there is bound to be a new book, a television or film adaptation, or a More
A Doll's House, Part 2 (Melbourne Theatre Company) ★★★
Creditors (State Theatre Company) ★★★
August Strindberg thought Creditors, which premièred in its original Swedish in Copenhagen in 1889, his ‘most mature work’. Sitting alongside the more often performed The More
Brothers Wreck (Odeon Theatre) ★★★★
One would have hoped that in the four years since Jada Alberts’s fine début play Brothers Wreck premièred at Belvoir Street that its concern with the issue of Indigenous despa More
Gloria (Melbourne Theatre Company) ★★★★
Ninety years ago, the British economist John Maynard Keynes forecast that by now, thanks to technological advances, we would all be working fifteen-hour weeks. Instead, we are drowning in More
Kings of War (Adelaide Festival) ★★★★★
In a Festival glutted with plays about war and the violence wrought by powerful men, Dutch theatre company Toneelgroep’s Kings of War stands tall. A four-and-a-half-hour conflat More
Thyestes (The Hayloft Project/Adelaide Festival) ★★★★
I think it was Peter Brook who said the longest that a staging of a play could remain vital was five years. The Hayloft Project’s Thyestes, directed by Simon Stone and adapted f More
Ben Brooker reviews 'The Inner Life of Animals: Love, grief and compassion – surprising observations of a hidden world' by Peter Wohlleben, translated by Jane Billinghurst
In a 1974 paper, American philosopher Thomas Nagel famously wondered what it was like to be a bat. He concluded that we could never know what it was like to be a member of a different spec More
Macbeth (State Theatre Company of South Australia) ★★1/2
Macbeth, directed by Geordie Brookman, artistic director of the State Theatre Company of South Australia, is the second production to showcase the STCSA’s new acting ensemb More
Ben Brooker reviews 'Ethics in the Real World: 86 brief essays on things that matter' by Peter Singer
In its original meaning, the word ‘philosopher’ simply meant ‘lover of wisdom’. At a time when theories of knowledge were still in their infancy, it was applied to thinkers – oft More