

Laughing Out Loud in the Depths of Despair
✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Anton Chekhov's Ivanov Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Eamon Flack The word is not explicitly mentioned in Eamon Flack’s adaptation, but his Ivanov shows all the signs of a modern man deeply depressed. He is unable to work, and everything seems to be a source of anxiety. As an educated man of some social standing, Nikolai Ivanov is expected to do better and everyone waits for him to get his act together. Nikolai himself blames no one else for his predicament,


Floyd is dead, long live the King!
✮✮✮✮ August Wilson's Seven Guitars Two River Theater | Red Bank, NJ directed by Brandon J. Dirden “Floyd Barton is gonna make his record. Floyd Barton is going to Chicago!” Except that he isn’t. Floyd Barton only makes it as far as the cemetery. That’s no spoiler, mind – we find this out in the very first scene. The beauty of Seven Guitars, like all good storytelling, lies not in the ‘what’, but in the ‘how’ and ‘why’. August Wilson is back at the Two River Theater in what is


The Greatest Love of All
✮✮✮ Sisters Grimm's La Traviata Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Declan Greene Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La traviata is about love and money. In Ash Flanders and Declan Greene’s radical re-imagination, a third theme of art is added to create a work of theatre that moves emphasis away from sentimental indulgence to something that is altogether more contemporary and intellectual. The exploration of ideas becomes an explicit one. Through five separate sequences, we are encou


I Should Be So Lucky
✮✮✮✮ Arthur Miller's The Man Who Had All the Luck King's Head Theatre | London directed by Paul Lichtenstern The Man Who Had All the Luck wasn't so lucky for its creator: Arthur Miller's first Broadway production shut after five days in 1944 following dismal reviews, and threatened to nip his career in the bud. It hasn't been performed much at all since then, which is unfair. This revival in Miller's centenary year by the top notch young theatre company End of Moving Walkway