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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

November 

Palace Films
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08 May 2023
Jean Dujardin as Fred in November (courtesy of Palace Films).
There have been nuanced treatments of the November 2015 Paris attacks, including the docuseries November 3: Attack on Paris (2018), the excellent En thérapie (2021), which deals with post-traumatic stress in a counterterrorist agent who is also a Muslim, and Mikhaël Hers’ sublime human drama Amanda (2018) which looks at the aftermath of terrorism in an understated fashion. ... (read more)

Happy Days 

Melbourne Theatre Company
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08 May 2023
Judith Lucy in Happy Days (photograph by Pia Johnson).
A middle-aged woman, Winnie, is buried to her waist in the middle of a mound, amidst a dry, monotonous expanse while the scorching sun beats down. It is one of Beckett’s indelible theatrical images. She finds solace in her handbag, where she uncovers a domestic detritus that affords her the rituals and distractions that help her endure: comb, toothbrush, mirror, hat, music box. ... (read more)

Mahler’s Seventh 

London Symphony Orchestra
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08 May 2023
Simon Rattle with the London Symphony Orchestra (photograph by Laura Manariti).
Throughout his long, prolific, and fulfilling musical life, Simon Rattle has never misused time; rather, he has relished it, always with the same energetic sense of purpose and clarity of execution that has made him such an extraordinary musician. ... (read more)

SYNERGY: Tony Tuckson – drawing into painting

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05 May 2023
Untitled (Brown and Grey), 1973, TP 200 (courtesy of the Tuckson Estate and Rogue Pop-up Gallery, Sydney)
I bump into two friends at the opening of SYNERGY and we peer into Tony Tuckson’s works, finding allegiances with and hints of other artists: the red, black, and white palette of Philip Guston; Ian Fairweather’s shallow space and densely patterned linework hovering between figuration and abstraction; Cy Twombly’s intricate, repetitive gestures; the torn edge of a calligraphic Robert Motherwell brushstroke in fluid black paint. ... (read more)

Vale Barry Humphries

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24 April 2023
Barry Humphries
Barry Humphries loved telling a story concerning a visit he and the painter David Hockney made to an art exhibition held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991. What drew them there was a reconstruction of the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition the Nazis had assembled in Munich in 1937 to help validate and promote their racial ideology. ... (read more)

Beau is Afraid 

Roadshow
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24 April 2023
Beau is Afraid (courtesy of Roadshow)
When you wake up from a nightmare, it can feel so vivid, so real – so relevant. But over the following minutes and hours, your brain undertakes the important task of synthesising what your subconscious has subjected you to; it interprets symbols, recognises familiar anxieties, and likely suggests that you refrain from boring everyone you encounter that day with a blow-by-blow account of it all. ... (read more)

Julia 

Sydney Theatre Company
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17 April 2023
Justine Clarke as Julia Gillard

First things first, the audience loved it. As Julia Gillard, in a performance that blended naturalism and impersonation, Justine Clarke held the crowd in the palm of her hand. They swooned and sighed to the wholesome depiction of Gillard’s working-class Welsh parents and cackled at the pleasurable jokes made at the expense of Kevin Rudd, Mark Latham, and John Howard.

... (read more)

Catherine Opie: Binding Ties

Heide Museum of Modern Art
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11 April 2023
Catherine Opie, Melissa & Lake, Durham, North Carolina 1998 © Catherine Opie (courtesy of Regen Projects and Lehmann Maupin).

As the self-proclaimed home of Australian modernism, Heide Museum of Modern Art is largely known for its exhibitions focusing on the story of the Heide circle and the interactions between Heide founders and patrons John and Sunday Reed and the group of artists, including Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, and Joy Hester (to name but a few), now referred to collectively as the Angry Penguins.

... (read more)

Melbourne Now

National Gallery of Victoria
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11 April 2023
Troy Emery, One of the most terrifying prospects here on Earth is that of our planet being struck by a large, massive, fast-moving asteroid or comet 2021 © Troy Emery (photograph by Troy Emery).
Melbourne Now began in 2013 as a massive survey championing contemporary art. Ten years on, the National Gallery of Victoria presents the second iteration. As with many sequels, the intent is to be bigger and better. Melbourne Now 2023 styles itself as an extravaganza, an epic journey into the city’s artistic beating heart. ... (read more)

Membra Jesu Nostri 

Pinchgut Opera
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05 April 2023
'Membra Jesu Nostri: Buxtehude’s ‘stairway to heaven’' by Peter Tregear
It was not so long ago that Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707) was best known in classical music circles for the fact that a young J.S. Bach once made a 400-kilometre trek on foot to the North German Hanseatic city of Lübeck to hear him improvise on the organ. ... (read more)
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