AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮ Shakespeare's King Lear Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Neil Armfield Lear finds himself rejected by all his daughters, and loses his mind. Redemption is eventually found when he discovers grace and purity. But what remains of interest is the rationale behind his torment. In King Lear, we look at issues surrounding mortality, kinship and honour, and examine how it is that good people can turn bad. The provocative difference between the elder “vicious sisters”

✮✮✮✮ Sarah Ruhl's Orlando based on the novel by Virginia Woold Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Sarah Goodes Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography was published in 1928, when discussion of sexuality was made in hushed tones, and inseparable from notions of gender identity. If a person loved a woman, they had to take the form of the masculine, and the reverse was true. The centrepiece of Orlando‘s story is a man’s magical transformation into a woman, wistfully

✮✮✮ Angela Betzien's Mortido Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Leticia Cáceres At the centre of Angela Betzien’s Mortido, is a wretched life. Jimmy is a soft and kind soul, misguided by family and exploited by every person he trusts. Emerging into adulthood from a background of poverty and addiction, the only barometer he possesses for a better life is a need for acceptance, along with our definitive measure of success, money. Without the support of anyone who has Jimmy

✮✮✮ 1/2 Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape The Old Vic | London directed by Richard Jones A gold prospector in Honduras, a plant-packer in Argentina, a mule-keeper on a voyage to South Africa…and all this before the age of twenty-seven. Eugene O’Neill’s CV offers up a few hints as to his inexhaustible worldliness, and it is this breadth of unfiltered experience that established him as a literary champion of the underdog. From the Provincetown Players to his four Pulitzer Prizes,