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Recent reviews

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

The Australian première of Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, created on the Royal Ballet’s brightest talents, was one of the happiest nights of ballet on record. It boosted The Australian Ballet’s small repertoire of full-length narratives in which all the elements ...

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The Update - September 12, 2017

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12 September 2017

In this fortnight's Update: The Coming Back Out Ball, An Octoroon giveaway, Sweet Country, Archibald returns to Geelong, Maria Callas Live, Crush Festival, You Know We Belong Together, the Abbotsford Convent, Australian Dance Awards, Oddlands, The Nettelbecks at fortyfivedownstairs, and giveaway tickets to Mountain (Madman Films).

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Mother! ★★

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12 September 2017

Mother!, the new film from Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky, premièred a week ago at the Venice Film Festival. It was met with a smattering of boos, followed by mostly rapturous reviews. Aronofsky’s earlier films – Requiem for a DreamThe WrestlerNoah – were ...

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Movie tickets cost five dollars at the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg, Virginia. It’s an old gem – a distinctly American marriage of Art Deco and Spanish Colonial Revival. There are red velvet seats and oak banisters; the walls are lantern-lit, and lined with tapestries from the 1930s ...

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On display in the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane is a series of thirteen paintings by Vincent Namatjira, great-grandson of Albert, titled Albert’s Story. Each painting shows an important moment in the life of the seminal painter, who died in 1959. One shows him painting with ...

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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 ensemble. The first, A Doll’s House, with an updated text by Elena Carapetis and also directed by Brookman ...

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The Update - August 29, 2017

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29 August 2017

In this fortnight's Update: Mark Leonard Winter, Opera Australia 2018, Hamlet in Adelaide, SSO's new CEO, Windmill Pictures, Opportunities at Abbotsford Convent, St Albans Writers' Festival, The Way Out, The paper piano, giveaways from Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and Madman Entertainment ...

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It seemed apt that Adam Simmons chose to perform his large-scale suite The Usefulness of Art in a space generally devoted to art and theatre, rather than in one of Melbourne’s jazz clubs. Incorporating visual design by Christine Crawshaw and Diokno Pasilan – wooden chairs hung from ...

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Thaïs (MSO) ★★★★

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28 August 2017

Equally welcome was the second opportunity to hear Massenet’s opera Thaïs (1894) within a matter of weeks. Once again it was a concert version – a ‘mid-season gala’ from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. ABR Arts wrote about Opera Australia’s recent concerts in the Sydney Town Hall ...

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Florian Zeller’s play The Father (Le Père, 2012) comes to us after acclaimed productions in Paris, London, and New York, where the playwright was hailed as an exciting young talent, and one of France’s finest writers. He wrote the play for the French actor Robert Hirsch, who was ...

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