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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.
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Recent reviews
Of all Richard Wagner’s operatic works, it is Parsifal that divides audiences most. As with the Ring, its ambiguity lends itself to multiple interpretations. The music has been praised and admired by the greatest of critics and musicians, including those who heard it when it was ...
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‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ William Faulkner’s much-quoted line from Requiem for a Nun (1951) could be the subtitle for Diane Samuels’s play Kindertransport, first performed in London by the Soho Theatre Company in 1993, which has just opened at the ...
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Rupert Murdoch is one of those towering but flawed figures of power beloved of dramatists. Shakespeare would have used him, if he’d had a time machine. David Williamson had a go in his play Rupert (2013), and he is reported to be writing a screenplay for a US television mini-series ...
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In this fortnight's Update: The 2017 Archibald Prize winner, Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues, VCA's new Director John Cattapan, Love Your Bookshop Day, Switzerland, David Robertson, STCSA's Macbeth, A Feast of Music, Bollywood and beyond, The Perfume Garden, Latin American Film Festival, and giveaways from Black Swan State Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Studio Canal, and Transmission Films ...
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Since 2011 many senior Australian musicians from international orchestras have gathered each year to form the Australian World Orchestra. This year’s project included a national tour of a chamber ensemble of eight (AWO Chamber 8), with masterclasses and lessons to young ...
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Michael Winterbottom’s three Trip films are, in essence, all the same: two middle-aged men motor through beautiful locations around the world and eat sumptuous meals in high-end provincial restaurants while impersonating celebrities, sniping at each other, and complaining about ...
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The career of Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona began with The Orphanage (2007), a gothic drama godfathered by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006) that shared his interest in the imaginative life of children, and in ghosts. In the 2012 survival pic The Impossible and his latest film ...
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Few singers make riveting autobiographers, it must be said, but one who should have penned her memoirs was Sybil Sanderson (1864–1903). She seems to have been too busy, on and off the stage. Hers was the kind of short, turbulent life that Puccini might have done something with ...
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The Merchant of Venice is a troublesome play. I have seen productions that have played up the comic aspects to an absurd and irritating degree while confining Shylock to the stereotype that bears his name. Some interpretations exploit the play as anti-Semitic propaganda ...
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In this fortnight's Update: Kafmann in Parsifal, The Feuerle Collection, Pieter Wispelwey, MONA's anti-casino, The Pop-Up Globe, Kestin Indigenous Illustrator Award, Australian Dance Awards, SALA Festival, Australian Shorts at MIFF, Boîte Millennium Chorus, Ballarat International Foto Biennale, La Sonnambula on demand, and giveaways from Melbourne Opera, Melbourne Recital Centre, and Transmission Films ...
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