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...