Melbourne Reviews

Details: Stephanie Glickman; 26 January 2007

The monks' current touring show, Legendary Masters of Kung Fu, has a much more integrated theatrical approach, with acts blending comfortably into one another and plenty of fast-paced ensemble action. It's not short on entertainment, even for Kung Fu virgins like myself.

Details: Carol Middleton; 15 January 2007

Photo - Jeff Busby

The play has certainly dated to some extent and has become a drawing-room drama, albeit in Australian suburbia, where the initially shocking issues of promiscuity, wife-swapping and lesbianism now seem rather tame, but that is not the only problem.

Details: Lola MacMillan; 28 December 2006

The Melbourne Theatre Company's production of Entertaining Mr. Sloane, written by British playwright Joe Orton, is their first of the new season, and I'm afraid it is a disappointing beginning.

Details: Darryl Emmerson; 22 December 2006

Charles Dickens Performs A Christmas Carol

This famous, almost too familiar story still has a lot to say about compassion triumphing over greed, shared humanity over loneliness, and delight over misery.

Details: Matthew Clayfield; 22 December 2006

Photo - Branco Gaica

Contemporary audiences are at once both made for and yet terribly ill-suited to opera. On the one hand, we live in the society of the spectacle, thriving on a diet of bigger-is-better media events. On the other, we also live in a permanent state of disinterested distraction, weaned on the faddish impermanence of a commodified mediascape.

Details: Matthew Clayfield; 13 December 2006

Modernity is something that happens to the body. It takes it and it breaks it. It commodifies and rapes it. It empties it out and renders it hollow. It displaces and disembodies it.

Details: Jan Chandler; 09 December 2006

True describes himself as being trapped in a skin made up of three parts; the yellow is the good guy, the white is the bad guy and the middle is the blackness he lives within.

Details: Jan Chandler; 07 December 2006

Language and its role in culture and identity is central to this work and it is explored in all its complexity. Do we need to hang on to the language of the past in order to be ourselves?