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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 1980, Brett Whiteley completed his famous portrait of Patrick White, Patrick White at Centennial Park 1979–1980, disagreements over which caused a terminal rupture in the friendship between the two men. Of his intentions for the painting Whiteley said ...

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Ah, Will Eno. The poet of the people, chronicler of twenty-first century angst, humorist, satirist, famously labelled ‘a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation’, is back in dazzling form. The Realistic Joneses showcases Eno to the power of ten as he holds up a mirror to ...

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The Update - April 26, 2017

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26 April 2017

In this fortnight's Update: Once in Royal David's City, Anna Netrebko, Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Clunes Booktown, Awakening at fortyfivedownstairs, Blood and guts, Noel Tovey at La Mama, Pulitzer and Man Booker Prize winners in Adelaide, Ian Potter Cultural Trust, SALA’s twentieth anniversary, and giveaways from the Hong Kong Philharmonic and fortyfivedownstairs.

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Nathalie Chazeaux (Isabelle Huppert) is a married professor of philosophy, with two adult children, a sunny, book-lined Parisian apartment, and several published works to her name. Success has granted her self-assurance, at least in public. Early in Things to Come (or L’Avenir, to ...

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There is something more than a little ersatz about Three Little Words, the latest play by Joanna Murray-Smith. It has all the usual parts, but it doesn’t feel like a real play ...

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Berlin Syndrome ★1/2

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19 April 2017

Australian director Cate Shortland has made three feature films about young women who find themselves out of their depths. Her first, Somersault (2004), set in wintry Jindabyne, featured Abbie Cornish in an early and memorable role as a troubled teenage runaway ...

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Opportunities to see nineteenth-century American art are rare in Australia. This beautiful small exhibition offers fascinating parallels between Australian and American landscape painting of the period, both popularly admired as expressions of a national psyche, revealing ...

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The Update - April 11, 2017

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11 April 2017

In this fortnight's Update: Vale John Clarke, Baiba Skride at the SSO, La Sonnambula, The Avengers in Australia, Tasmania’s Tarkine, The man in the iron mask, Black Swan Production Fund, and giveaways from Victorian Opera and Entertainment One ...

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William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), about a group of British schoolboys marooned on a tropical island during a nuclear war, has been adapted for radio, stage, and screen. Acclaimed theatre director Peter Brook’s austere, 1963 black-and-white film, with a superb cast, is by far ...

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Denial ★★★★

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06 April 2017

The opening scene is a stunner. David Irving (Timothy Spall), top of the pile of Holocaust deniers, is giving a lecture. He is framed by darkness, we do not see the audience. ‘I say to you quite tastelessly,’ he says, ‘that more women died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy’s car ...

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