REVIEW: Sister Anzac (Stark Theatre)

August 25, 2016

[Honour & Horror] Theatre can do certain tones well. Visceral dread is not usually one of them. Sister Anzac is the rare drama that manages to feel like a completely theatrical yet horrifically immersive experience. Told from the perspective of three green New Zealand Red Cross nurses and their formidable matron, Sister Anzac (written by Geoff Allen) presents the battlefields of […]

REVIEW: Sister Anzac (Stark Theatre)

September 4, 2015

Women at war [by Sharu Delilkan] We’ve all seen numerous theatrical incarnations this year commemorating the centenary of WWI but one heralding women is definitely a departure from the norm. And that’s exactly what sets Geoff Allen‘s show Sister Anzac apart from the otherwise male dominated war stories. Inspired by Allen‘s grandfather A. S. Allen’s experience of ANZAC nurses on […]

REVIEW: Loving Kurt Vonnegut (The Basement)

August 23, 2015

The Bourgeois and The Beautiful [by Jess Holly Bates] It’s the middle-class girl in me that loves the set of this play the moment I sit down: the blonde wood of the stage boards, the stark clarity of three white doors, and the the central divan, draped with shagpile. Everything is like the display bedroom in a linen store, down to […]

REVIEW: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (AUSA Outdoor Summer Shakespeare)

February 26, 2015

A strong and vital theme [by James Wenley] British Shakespeare great Simon Russell Beale (who toured here as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale alongside Ethan Hawke) was recently quoted in The Observer arguing that it is fine to take liberties with Shakespeare. “You can do what you like with it – as long as you make coherent, emotional sense… I see […]

REVIEW: King Lear (Summer Shakespeare)

March 4, 2013

Game of Thrones [by James Wenley] When I consider King Lear I think of the high grand tragedy, the demands of the title role and the master actors who have played him, and I conjure the harrowing image of the old man against the storm on the heath. It was pleasing to be reminded that the play begins (where it […]