AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮ Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo Old Fitz Theatre | Sydney directed by Claudia Barrie It is a prayer of anguish and pain. In addressing God, Rajiv Joseph offers a meditation on the biggest challenges faced by humankind at this moment in time, from perspectives personal and global. Bengal Tiger At The Baghdad Zoo talks about the ceaseless wars that take place in the middle east, and the sacrifices made to all lives no matter which side of the battle they res

✮✮✮ 1/2 Martin Crimp's The Treatment Almeida Theatre | London directed by Lyndsey Turner A young woman sits in an office describing the experience of having her mouth taped. Two others are present: one silent, one pedantically pinning down the details while spectacularly missing the point. Is this a police interview? A therapy session? It eventually becomes clear that we are at sea in even more treacherous waters – showbiz. The woman is Anne, and these producers are banking o

✮✮✮ 1/2 Falk Richter's Verräter - Die letzten Tage Maxim Gorki Theater | Berlin directed by Falk Richter Falk Richter’s Verräter - Die letzten Tage (Traitors - The Last Days) is an attempt to grasp and examine the recent and radical turns in today’s political climate. The title alone elicits the questions that provide a framework for understanding the entire production. If there are traitors in the world around us, who are they and whom have they betrayed? If these are indeed

✮✮ 1/2 Ivo van Hove's Obsession English language version by Simon Stephens Barbican Theatre | London directed by Ivo van Hove “Everybody wants passion, and to live a passionate life…[but] passion is a devouring force. Though passion is unliveable, we crave it.” So says Ivo van Hove in the programme for his stage adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s 1943 film, Obsession. Passion is indeed is the force to be reckoned with here in the director-of-the-moment’s latest production – the

✮✮✮ 1/2 Brendan Cowell/Lally Katz's The Dog / The Cat Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Ralph Myers We like to subscribe to the notion that there are cat people, and in a separate category there are dog people. This either/or dynamic could easily be applied to this double bill. Brendan Cowell’s The Dog and Lally Katz’s The Cat are both contemporary Australian comedies, but there is little in their respective senses of humour that unites them. Not to say that one is funn

✮✮✮ Le Corsaire Hungarian National Ballet Hungarian State Opera | Budapest Le Corsaire is frothy a ballet as they come, with starry-eyed romance, swashbuckling heroism and remarkably little tension despite all the sword-fighting and slave-trading. Anna-Marie Holmes’s new production, created with ballet director Tamás Solymosi for the Hungarian National Ballet, doesn’t add much weight to this hokey concoction, but it does capitalise on the cheer and bravado that have steadily

✮✮✮✮ Rajiv Joseph's Guards at the Taj Bush Theatre | London directed by Jamie Lloyd What a canny choice of play to celebrate the Bush’s revitalization of their hundred-year-old library venue. Theatre’s new gateway to the West opens with a piece about the jewel of Mughal architecture in the East. The happy difference here is that the smaller of these buildings didn’t involve the bloodshed of its builders (one hopes, at least). Because if you type “Did Shah Jahan…” into a searc

✮✮✮ Jonathan Biggins's Talk Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Jonathan Biggins Journalists are losing jobs every day, while the world transitions from traditional forms of news consumption to what is termed 'new media'. In the digital age, information comes cheap, and its dissemination no longer relies on sources of authority and legitimacy. Instead, we find ourselves obtaining news from literally anyone, with little discernment, through things like social media or

✮ 1/2 Angélica Liddell's Dead Dog at Dry Cleaners: the Strong Schaubühne | Berlin directed by Angélica Liddell Angélica Liddell’s Dead Dog at Dry Cleaners: the Strong opens this year’s Festival International Neue Dramatik (FIND) at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin. The festival is composed of thirteen plays and continues until the ninth of April. For the second time Liddell presents a piece at the Schaubühne during FIND. The performance is the German Language premiè