They Are Worse Than Us
✮✮✮ 1/2 Disapol Savetsila's Australian Graffiti Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Paige Rattray Asian restaurants are a familiar sight in Australian towns everywhere, but what we know is restricted only to their dining rooms and service areas. In his debut play Australian Graffiti, Disapol Savetsila, the youngest ever playwright (23) on the company's main stage, presents a fantastical, yet bleak, look at what happens behind the kitchen door of these inscrutable spac
A Woman's Work is Never Done
✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Kip Williams Betty takes a long time to grow up. In fact, it is centuries before she becomes her own woman. In Act I, she lives in Victorian era Africa, having moved from Britain with her husband, a “colonial administrator”. In Act II, we find that not only has she advanced in age, time itself has moved abruptly to the current day. Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine is about the way gender, with all
Immortal Comedy if the English Tourists
✮✮✮ Aphra Behn's The Rover Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Eamon Flack It is mid 17th century, and a bunch of rowdy English tourists descend upon Naples to partake in the masqueraded festivities of Carnival time. Aphra Behn’s depiction of wild revelry may be restricted by mores of the Restoration era, but its spiritedness is nonetheless unmistakable. In its atmosphere of debauchery, the characters talk of love and marriage, preoccupied with the sport of spouse hunting
