AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮ 1/2 Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Eamon Flack It is late 19th century, and the widowed Mrs Alving is building an orphanage so that her dead husband’s money can be released from her conscience. She is still unable to find peace, even though her poisonous marriage is now over, after having suffered in silence for decades. Ibsen’s Ghosts is about the incontrovertible links between past and present. It looks at how we are controlled by beliefs,

✮✮✮✮ Suzan-Lori Parks's The Red Letter Plays Signature Theatre | NYC directed by Jo Bonney | Sarah Benson An audience is usually prepared to experience a vast array of emotions when taking in a piece of theatre. If the theatre is especially good they’ll be caught off-guard by something that hits them in a way that nothing ever has - or perhaps something has struck them like that before and the audience member is brought back to that moment. When a play can do these things and

✮✮ Moira Buffini's Dinner Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Imara Savage Paige is throwing a pretentious dinner party, for people she dislikes. Moira Buffini’s takedown of the English upper class, Dinner, begins promisingly enough. Pathetic women and impotent men tearing into each other, to expose the ignorant indulgences of those at the top who seem to have things much easier for no good reason. Touches of surrealism give the play an enjoyable whimsy, but we quickl

✮✮✮ John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, A Parable Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Ché Walker It’s 1964 and we find ourselves gathered today at the Church of St Nicholas. It’s a school in the Bronx, New York City. However all is not rosy, through manipulation or suspicion or maybe just sweet innocence. The Father of the Parish has been reported to the principal sister. His crime? Well, that’s never explicitly revealed and cleverly left to the depths of our cynical imaginati