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...