2009 - some year, eh?

Yep, it's been a big twelve months for Ms Geraldine Pascall Crrritic of the Year. And it behoves me, before I hang up the sash and hand ...

Off to the coast

Ms TN is slipping away incognito for a week's actual holiday. She'll be lounging in a secret location on the Bellarine Peninsula, re...

Review: Godzone

At what point does politics move beyond parody? Maybe when you have a Prime Minister who looks as if he belongs in a Lego set, and who ought...

Navel gazing

In the past week or so, the Age has been running a series of opinion pieces on criticism that amount to a mini-forum. Check out The changing...

NPF update

Richard Watts reports on the National Play Festival web page debacle on Arts Hub. PlayWriting Australia AD Chris Mead declined comment, sayi...

Review: BC, Progress and Melancholy

In one of those interesting synchronicities, there is a rash of contemporary theatre examining the foundational Christian myths. As Hayloft...

National Play Festival FAIL

As several appalled women have pointed out: with the marginalisation of women playing the theatre headlines, could there be a worse time for...

Gender and all that: where are the magic bullets?

Ms TN is back in Melbourne listening to the gentle patter of the rain, after a packed couple of days in sun-drenched Sydney. The major event...

Another week, another few thousand words...

Ms TN pushed her delicate nose right onto the grindstone this week (hey, it's hard doing all that heavy-duty ratiocination), but for all...

Review: Glasoon

Black Lung Theatre and Whaling Firm's eight-day season of Glasoon is the hot ticket in town. It sold out in five days after its announce...

Review: The Harry Harlow Project

Love is a wondrous state, deep, tender, and rewarding. Because of its intimate and personal nature it is regarded by some as an improper top...

Review: Structure and Sadness

The melancholy of modernityThere’s a poignancy in looking down over a city from a plane that in certain moods can be overwhelming. The struc...

So I gave in...

...and am now twittering. Anon Commentator was right: in some circumstances it would be useful. You can find my tweet (singular) on twitter....

Ms TN prevaricates. Again.

In the two weeks since I returned from the UK, I have been out at the theatre for seven nights. Given that I swore a solemn oath to keep my ...

Bits, bobs

Briefly: a kerfuffle has emerged in Sydney over Belvoir St's decision to hand the Philip Parson's Memorial Lecture over to a panel w...

Review: Life is a Dream, When The Rain Stops Falling

The most contemporary thing about contemporary art is its crisis...The Accident of Art, Paul VirilioIt's always interesting to revisit a...

Review: Africa

I’ve often pondered the astounding ability of puppets to generate intense emotional responses. How is it possible that we can identify so fi...

Women in theatre: the Philip Parons Memorial Lecture

Keen theatrenauts will have no problem calling to mind the on-going debate over the place of women in Australian theatre. Sparked by a seaso...

The Native Returns

Yes, faithful readers: your truant blogger has returned from the fleshpots of the northern hemisphere, having bounced around England and Ire...

Packing

Tickets, check. Passport, check. Itinerary, check. iPhone A-Z, check. Ms TN is a traveler who likes to know where her towel is, and most par...

Fringe: A Black Joy, Yuri Wells, In the Absence of Sunlight

In the interests of organisation, Ms TN has been tidying her desk. This bland, anodyne phrase cannot begin to comprehend the dimensions of t...

Fringe: Attract/Repel, The Ridiculusmus Readings

Attract/Repel is an intriguing work of theatre at the Store Room which meets, head-on, the question of racism. One of the best things about ...

Sex and stuff

Fringe shows are now piling up, but not the wherewithal to write about them. Ms TN's got a headache, not of the hangover variety but of ...

The trouble with Craven

The National Times - aka Fairfax's op-ed pages - yesterday hosted a Peter Craven polemic which purported to analyse "the trouble wi...

Yes, I know...

Ms TN has been taking care of some extra-blog deadlines this week. As well as sneezing copiously and considering her upcoming stint as an In...

Thursday portmanteau

'Tis the season for launches. Last night the Melbourne Fringe Festival launched itself into the giddy stratosphere. More than half a mil...

Kantor to leave Malthouse

Hot off the Malthouse's press machine: Michael Kantor today announced that he will depart the Malthouse at the end of 2010, after six ye...

Housekeeping

A reminder that the easiest way to navigate reviews on this site is to go to the review listing page (link in the sidebar), which lists ever...

Review: One Night The Moon

The lost child is an iconic, even obsessive, figure in Australian folklore, the subject of song, story and painting. Frederick McCubbin’s 18...

Review: Persé

Theatre is, perhaps more than anything, an act of translation. Acts are translated into words, words translated into actions and images. Wat...

Response from Neil Pigot

On Monday, I pointed to Neil Pigot's recent Age op-ed as part of a global sweep of items of interest, making a couple of brief comments....

Drama as literature

Having spent today addressing an empty screen in the increasingly vain hope that the god of critics will bestow some benediction, or at leas...

Off the shelf

ABC Radio National's Book Show grabbed me during the Melbourne Writers Festival and, as we stood huddled from the wind in a corner of Fe...

Mini-review: God of Carnage

By popular demand (or at least, for the three people who asked): my mini review for the Australian.God of Carnage by Yamina Reza. Melbourne ...

Monday morning rantaround

The Public Intellectual (PI, for the acronymic among you) debate continues with a Guardian blog post by Andrew Haydon, in which he robustly ...

MTC Theatre

My feature on the impact of the MTC's new Southbank theatre is in today's Australian.

Review: Oedipus - A Poetic Requiem

The unspeakable is spoken.Howard Barker, Theatre Without a ConscienceThe naming of the intolerable is itself the hope.John Berger, And Our F...

Vale Hilary Crampton

Sad news this morning on Chloe Smethurst's blog: dance critic Hilary Crampton died on the weekend. Crampton was a passionate educator an...

Seen last week: and The Question of The Intellectual

Last week's shenanigans, in brief: Tex Perkins in The Man in Black: The Johnny Cash Story at the Athenaeum (Australian review in Friday...

Criticism in the age of PR spin

Stephanie Bunbury today reports on the film industry's hard ball tactics with critics and journalists in today's Age, remarking that...

Review: The Lower Depths, The Colours, En Trance

Yes, Ms TN has been whinging heroically this past fortnight, but that hasn't stopped her getting out to the theatre. Writing about it ha...

On turning into a crrritic

This might surprise some of you, but I never really meant to be a Critic. I began with an irresistible loquacity, a desire to talk about the...

Fabulous women

My paean to the women on our stages is in today's Australian. And yes, it was a hard list to make.

Review: Quartet

Artaud, the language of pain. Writing from the experience that the masterworks are the accomplices of power. Thinking at the end of the Enli...

Ministering to the arts

Gobsmacked to read in the Age this morning that every single former Victorian Arts Minister, Labor and Liberal, has written to University of...

Monday portmanteau

* I forgot yesterday to mention James Waites's continuing meditations on the Bacchanalian qualities in Barrie Kosky's work, includin...

Blowin' in the wind

Even gale-force winds couldn't stop the theatrical event of the week: to wit, the Save VCA protests, which culminated in a 1000-strong m...

VCA debate

In lieu of a post: a pointer to the discussion on TN about the reforms at VCA.

Media rash

Or something like it. I have 470 unread messages in my gmail inbox, 299 unread messages on my Facebook account, and I don't know how man...

Saving the VCA

Update: more info on VCA action - tent cities! flash mobs! sing outs! - and links to more info at Twitter and Facebook.This week, SaveVCA is...

Review: Poppea

George Orwell once remarked that if a writer says he can't write, he can't write. It's not laziness or malingering or disorganis...

Review: Knives in Hens

(Note: there are spoilers in this review).Written in 1995, David Harrower’s first play, Knives in Hens, already has the status of a modern c...

News from Tassie

Those of you with antideluvian memories might recall that, way back in April, I spent a a few days in Hobart helping to run Critical Acclaim...

Review: Ontroerend Goed, Forced Entertainment

For Ms TN, North Melbourne is the Twilight Zone of Melbourne suburbia. The first challenge is getting there. Theoretically, you can get ther...

Interview: Ross Mollison

"The one rule of producing," says Ross Mollison, "is that nobody knows nothing. The things that you least expect to be succes...

It's all happening in North Melbourne

A short note to alert you to some shows on at North Melbourne Arts House, because if you blink you'll miss them. Three must-sees are run...

But I don't wanna be a pirate!

Born Dancin' gets all Coleridge on the Critic Question. Dudes! Pirates! Sharks! Whales! Poetry! Is he totally taking the piss, or what?

MIFF

I feel remiss for not mentioning the Melbourne International Film Festival, which is now in full swing, with a good dose of political contro...

Et cetera

You're probably all sick to death of last week's Meyrick/Woodhead/Croggon showdown but, as is the way of these things, it is prompti...

Craven on criticism

In today's Age, Peter Craven writes a sober and sensible analysis of this week's excitement, namely Julian Meyrick's attack on C...

Ross Trust play readings

Before I miss the boat, let me alert you to Flashpoint, a series of readings of new writing for theatre. The scripts being performed are all...

The Birthday Party revisited

Director Julian Meyrick has answered reviews of his production of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party with an essay which is posted today on ...

Review: Savage River

Last Friday, the Melbourne premiere of Steve Rodgers' Savage River also saw the opening of a significant new theatre: the Melbourne Thea...

Merce Cunningham dies

This morning I read, via George Hunka at Superfluities Redux, that Merce Cunningham died on Sunday night, aged 90. Cunningham was one of the...

The guilty pleasures of schadenfreude

I've long thought that plays about writers ought to be banned. With rare exceptions (none of which, admittedly, I can think of at this p...

Poetry hat

I've been uncertain whether to post this properly, since official announcement dates seem to have shifted backwards; it was supposed to ...

Review: Happy Days, Care Instructions

Over the past few days. Ms TN and the man to whom she's a spectacularly Bad Wife (although, of course, a deeply empathic partner and awe...

Review: Miracle, Disagreeable Object

It's difficult to think of two works more contrasting than BalletLab's Miracle and Chunky Move's Disagreeable Object. One is exp...

Review: Aviary

Aviary at La Mama is an elegant showcase for three young writers: Anna Barnes, Dan Giovannoni and Ming-Zhu Hii. It stems from an intriguing ...

Parochial notes

Today, dearly beloved, let me speak of the parish. I'm beginning to think that, here on the east coast of Australia, we have the livelie...

Interview: Ariel Dorfman

Ariel Dorfman is by any standard a distinguished writer. The Chilean-American author of many novels, plays, poems, essays and films in both ...

Glomming

I've been sitting at my keyboard for hours now, trying to get a thought to evolve in my head. It's just not happening. Gah. Is it sw...

Groan

Here at her outrageously messy desk, Ms TN feels like a cartoon character running as fast as she can, while still going backwards. Given the...

MIAF 2009

Brett Sheehy, the artistic director of the Melbourne Festival, freely admits that he's nervous about announcing his first program. ...

Oh no!

Update: some early industry responses on the Ragged Claws blog.The Productivity Commission today released its long awaited report on the par...

Family diary: Keene and Beckett

A busily theatrical weekend is looming in the Keene/Croggon household. To begin with, those who bemoan that Daniel Keene's work is never...

Happy Days/Care Instructions

My reviews of Happy Days and Care Instructions, which both opened last week at the Malthouse, are respectively in Friday's and today...

The Birthday Party and other late thoughts

I briefly reviewed Julian Meyrick's MTC production of The Birthday Party just over two weeks ago and have been meaning to write about it...

Helpmann nominations

The nominations for the Helpmann Awards, our national awards for the performing arts (yes, I know it's problematic), were announced earl...

Back to the desk

Well, I'm dug back into my burrow after a fortnight out of the office. I've been doing some in-depth theatrical investigation of a s...

Jersey Boys

My review of Jersey Boys is in today's Australian.

Amateur journalism

I see the chairman of News Ltd, John Hartigan, has some harsh words for bloggers. In an address to the National Press Club yesterday, he cla...

Pina Bausch

I just woke up to the sad news that Pina Bausch has died at 68. Her tours of Australia had an electrifying influence on Australian theatre a...

Pinter

My review of the MTC production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party was in yesterday's Australian. Lots more to think about, and I...

Review: The Man from Mukinupin

Dorothy Hewett would have been amused. Last Tuesday, Ms TN high-tailed it to the Sumner Theatre to see The Man from Mukinupin. I turned up t...

Circus Oz

My review of Circus Oz's fab new show, Barely Contained, was in Monday's Australian.

Sunday night

'Twas the night before Monday, and all through the house, the only thing stirring was Alison's mouse. Or so quoth the poet, poets ha...

Bits everywhere

Ms TN is showing signs of wear and tear. (Not the usual ones that are to do with aging gracelessly, which would be ok...) Anyway, what with ...

Review: Poet No. 7

Any play with "poet" in the title is going to catch Ms TN's attention, although I have to admit that poetry doesn't necess...

Pascall Prize speech

My acceptance speech for the Geraldine Pascall Prize for Critical Writing is now online at the Geraldine Pascall Foundation site. The import...

Review: Oh the Humanity, A Commercial Farce

Feeling, real feeling, is the hardest thing to recreate in art. Too crudely represented, and it is coarsened to sentimentality, a victim of ...

Signs of the times

The worst of the GFC (which, incongruously, always makes me think of Roald Dahl's Big Friendly Giant) is yet to hit us here in Australia...

Rush again

My profile of Geoffrey Rush, post-Tony Award, is in today's Australian.

Mainstage explorations

Ms TN was intending to be at this morning's launch of the Melbourne Theatre Company's Lawler Studio Season, an event I was anticipat...

Go Geoffrey!

Yes, a little bit of parochial preening is in order. Our Geoffrey just won the Tony for best actor for his role in the Broadway run of Exit ...

Review: August: Osage County

The first thing to say about the MTC's production of August: Osage County is that it is a brilliant example of this kind of well-made th...

Laid low by lurgy

Along with half the population of Williamstown, Ms TN has been struck by a nasty cold. No sign of trotters and snouts as yet, (though obviou...

Review: Optimism

In 1958, when the horrors of World War 2 were still fresh, Roland Barthes wrote a fascinating essay about Voltaire. Voltaire, said Barthes, ...

Australian theatre

My thoughts on the shifting main stages, the decline (and rebirth) of naturalism and other symptoms of the current renaissance in Australian...

Reviews: Gatz, Clickity Clack & Aoroi, The Wonderful World of Dissocia

At first blush, the idea of reading the entire text of The Great Gatsby on stage seems intriguing. Rather than approaching F. Scott Fitzgera...

A reminder

The more a critic becomes an insider, the better. I see nothing but good in a critic plunging into our lives, meeting actors, talking, discu...

SOS updates

Lately I've been getting emergency notices for a couple of cultural institutions close to my heart. As someone who gets around to quite ...

Again back again

Sydney yesterday was a blast. The Geraldine Pascall Foundation event at the Bangarra Theatre was packed, and the panel debate, chaired by th...

And now to Sydney again

This time it's my turn. I was flabbergasted (but delighted) a couple of weeks ago when a nice man phoned me, told me to sit down and inf...

Life! Don't talk to me about life!

Actually, you can if you like; but Ms TN can't quite believe how difficult it's been to get to the blog this week. I'm still int...

Back in town

By now, most of you would know I have been in Sydney being Daniel Keene's handbag as he picked up the NSW Premier's Play Award for T...

Australian Theatre forum

Posting will probably be a little light over the next few days, as I am attending the Australian Theatre Forum. This is a gigantic event whi...

Review: Tom Fool, Leaves of Glass

I keep hearing, here and there, that these days "text-based theatre" (to you and me, "plays") is out of fashion. The con...

Holding note

Today I planned to write reviews of Hoy Polloy's Tom Fool (highly recommended) and Red Stitch's very creditable production Leaves of...

Meaty conversation

This Sunday The Hayloft Project is hosting a panel on “the art of direction” with some of Melbourne’s leading directors. Mediated by your hu...

Award season

Yes, it's that time of year: I seem to be knee-deep in nominations. The shortlist for the 2009 Australian Dance Awards was announced tod...

Malthouse Season 2

Last night the Malthouse announced its second season for the year, and Ms TN selflessly trotted along and consumed the bubbly in order to br...

Ketchup

Or was that catch-up? Or just sauce? Ms TN is getting very behind, wandering off on the Primrose Path of Good Intentions while up-to-the-min...

Review: Kafka's Monkey

Kafka's Monkey is based on Kafka's darkly comic story, A Report to An Academy, in which an ape, Red Peter, lectures the "honour...

Interview: Franz Xaver Kroetz

On Saturday evening, Hoy Polloy Theatre is presenting what is, unbelievably, the Australian premiere of Franz Xaver Kroetz's 1978 play, ...

Review: 3xSisters, Spring Awakening

In his stories and plays, Anton Chekhov is a pitilessly intelligent observer of human beings. A writer of enormous moral scrupulousness, he ...

Review: Beckett's Shorts

Beckett Shorts: Breath, Not I, That Time, Rockaby, A Piece of Monologue, by Samuel Beckett, directed by André Bastian, designed by Peter Mum...

Dylan Moran

My review of Dylan Moran is published in today's Australian.

Notes on the back of a seat

Last night, the theatre glitterati of Melbourne clustered at the Playhouse for the Green Room Awards (winners here). Benedict Andrews' p...

Miscellany

My review of Stomp 09, now at the Princess Theatre on its Australian tour, is in today's Australian.And permit me to point you to a coup...

Patrick White shortlist

Sydney Theatre Company today released the judges’ shortlist of six plays in the running for the prestigious 2008 Patrick White Playwrights’ ...

Parallel importation: a disaster for Australian writers

Update: The Australian Publishers Association, the Printing Industry Association of Australia, the Australian Literary Agents’ Association a...

Review: Realism, Travesties

Life, as you may have noticed, sometimes has a way of behaving as if there is a grand (or at least modestly intentional) design, as if behin...

O Melbourne!

I land home after buzzing about interstate like a maniacal (but disease-free) blowfly... and what happens? I catch a cold! Is it something i...

Four Days on the Island

Last week was, I'm ashamed to admit, Ms TN's first visit to Tasmania. It won't be my last: I've returned enamoured, feeling ...

Back in harness

Yep, your indefatigable blogger - never was an adjective more worthily earned - is back on duty. I got back last night from Hobart, where I ...

Quick note

Blogging from my iPhone here, at an Adelaide motel next to the airport at 2.30 am. O brave new world! I've been out of mobile phone and ...

Review: Peer Gynt

Peer Gynt. What a loser! Liar, narcissist, storyteller, dreamer, wild boy, arms dealer, Emperor of the Self, so fixated on his own desires t...

Ushering in an old era?

Will the new Age arts editor, Michelle Griffin, herald a new era of accurate, in-touch arts journalism? Not if alleged arts journalist Robin...

King of Broadway

News bulletin #153: Our Geoffrey has conquered Broadway with his genius portrayal of the dying Berenger in Ionesco's Exit the King. Amon...

Before I forget...

I should have been on the quivive, as I'm a member of the Companies panel ... but better late than never. The 2008 Green Room Awards nom...

More over there

This should have been a continuation of yesterday's post about peripatetic Australians, but only arrived in today's mail: to wit, an...

Here and over there

Some titbits from the TN mailbox that might interest theatrenauts:* The Australian Script Centre is turning 30, and to celebrate its birthda...

TN shenanigans

I'll be doing light posting over the next couple of weeks, due to some heavy extra-curricular activity. Yes, in answer to some who have ...

Review: And When He Falls

I have an acquaintance to whom the mention of Shakespeare is as the red rag to the bull. Mention the "S" word and veins start thro...

Dance Massive: Lawn, Rogue, Untrained

I've had one of those months where writing a sentence - any sentence - feels like I'm trying to sculpt a hammer out of porridge. Or ...

Review: Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd

Back in 2000 I was, for six months, a writer-in-residence in the hallowed halls of academe, viz. Cambridge University. This was a most inter...

Holding note

Ms TN is nearing the end of what has been an extraordinarily high-quality, buzzy week of theatre/dance going. In fact, I've been so busy...

STC does Churchill

The Sydney Theatre Company is presenting a reading of Caryl Churchill's controversial short play Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza....

Review: The Year of Magical Thinking

If criticism were simply a matter of ticking boxes, it might be safely assumed that I would hate The Year of Magical Thinking. It's a 90...

Hunger

"The difference between hunger and appetite is very important. And the harder it becomes to feed the population of the world, the more ...

Review Dance Massive: Inert, Mortal Engine

"What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy! - There is nothing like dancing after all. - I consider it as one of th...

From the Land of the Blahs

Your fearless blogger made several Resolutions at the end of 2008, most of which - rather unusually - she has stuck with. One of them was to...

Review: Van Diemen's Land

I first encountered the story of Alexander Pearce around 15 years ago in Robert Hughes's indispensible history, The Fatal Shore. It'...

Fillums, old and new

Last Friday, irretrievably sealing her reputation as Frivolous Arts Wanker, Ms TN flew to Adelaide to see a movie. The idea was that I would...

Email problems

Aapt, my service provider, has been doing something mysterious to my emails over the past three months or so. I am getting too many reports ...

Review: Wretch

A prison is a place where people are watched, and know that they are watched. In these spaces, behaviour shapes itself beneath the pressure ...

Be a Wretch

Ms TN is having lively dialogues with her brain, which have currently gone into arbitration. Viz.: said brain refuses to go to work. While I...

Seven Jewish Children

Update: George Hunka on British playwrights, responding to David Cote's Time Out blog, is a must-read. And see Andrew Haydon in the Guar...

Review: I Love You, Bro; Poupee

“I am a famous liar,” boasts Johnny, the swaggeringly vulnerable teen protagonist of Adam Cass’s fascinating one-man play I Love You, Bro. H...

Review: The War of the Roses

History is the discourse of power Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended Here's a good world the while! Why, who's so gross That ...

Smoke, war and Mudd

Ms TN flew back into the smoke haze of Victoria yesterday afternoon. It was all a bit spooky, peering out from my little metal tube 38,000 f...

Optimism...

...seems to be the word for the zeitgeist. A brief hoy before I step on the plane to Sydney to see The War of the Roses, so I can point you ...

Review: Yellow Moon, Jerker

We're all a bit shellshocked here in Victoria, as the death toll from the weekend's bushfires keeps spiralling up. Saturday was a te...

Review: Woyzeck

Before I begin today's sermon, it might be worth pondering for a moment the meaning of "masterpiece". My favourite definition,...

Inspiration elsewhere

Every now and then the absurdity of my existence bursts on me afresh. There is that French existential sense, ie, M. Camus (how cool was he?...

Scriptoria unbound

The virtual library thing is now escaping from Borges' imagination and into the real world. Consider, for instance, the Australian Scrip...

Review: Poor Boy

It was the end of the first punishing day of this century-busting Melbourne heatwave, and Ms TN dragged out the gladrags and made her way in...

The natives are getting restless, Carruthers...

"Come on, Croggers," irascible commentator Fog said yesterday. "Where are ya? ... Really hoping you're not dead..."N...

Guest Essay: Olive Branches

Pondering whether to attend a theatre conference or the weekend protests in London against the violence in Gaza, Chris Goode decides he will...

Review: Grace

Happy New Year, y'all. Ms TN is still motoring along in holiday mode, letting her other writerly selves out of the barouche for a run, b...