AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮ Annie Baker's The Flick Seymour Centre | Sydney directed by Craig Baldwin Almost every cinema in the world has completed the transition from analogue to digital. With it comes aficionados bemoaning the loss of authenticity and tradition, in an art form that touches the lives of all. In Annie Baker’s The Flick, not only is celluloid under threat, the employees at a small picture house have friendships that are challenged by what they think to be real or illusory. They spe

✮✮✮✮ Lucy Kirkwood's The Children Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Sarah Goodes Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children imagines what it would be like, if an all-consuming ecological disaster were to strike today. Instead of the pandemonium surrounding earthquakes and tsunamis, we see an aftermath involving three scientists who are partly responsible for the catastrophe. It is a story about technology, concerned with the way inhabitants of the developed world are failing to f

✮✮✮ Michele Lee's Going Down Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Leticia Cáceres After the publication of her first book, young author Natalie finds herself at a crisis of authenticity. What she had thought to be a good representation of her life and times, has turned out a commercial disappointment. In the search for success, she embarks on a process of self-redefinition. Michele Lee’s Going Down is a tricky story to tell. The play begins at a point where we have to

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Kip Williams A gangster film is projected on screen, as we witness it being shot on a sound stage. The action happens across not two but three platforms. We watch a film, the making of the film, and a theatre production, all simultaneously and frantically taking place before our eyes. Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui is concerned with artifice and image, wri

✮✮✮✮ Caryl Churchill's Top Girls Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Imara Savage Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls exposes our discomfort with stories that talk of societal problems, without the service of convenient villains. We have a hard time thinking about structures that have proven themselves unacceptable, without being able to place blame on individuals or archetypes. Churchill encourages us instead to examine the ways in which those systems insist on our acquiesce

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses Old Fitz Theatre | Sydney directed by Dino Dimitriadis Mary Zimmerman’s 1996 play Metamorphoses based on the classic Ovid poem is a retelling of Greek tales; a collection of short stories from ancient times that continue to fascinate, in this epoch of secular pragmatism. Celestial beings and supernatural events that defy explanation, yet instinctively comprehensible and resonant with our natural appreciation for the magical, conspire as

✮✮✮✮ Daniel Keene's Mother Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Matt Scholten Christie’s misfortune is deeper than any we have ever encountered. Having lost everything, she is on the streets with only memories of trauma, to while the days away, like a waking recurring nightmare. Daniel Keene’s Mother is about the hardest life a person can bear, a shocking Greek tragedy made real and salient for our times. It goes beyond an examination of mental health deterioration, to cre

✮✮✮ 1/2 Jason Klarwein, Jimi & Dimple Bani's My Name is Jimi Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Jason Klarwein Jimi Bani hails from Mabuiag Island, in the near Western part of Torres Strait. His show My Name Is Jimi, is about culture and tradition, and the resolve to keep the uniqueness of his Wagadagam tribe alive and thriving in the modern age. True to form, the production features performers from his own family, across four generations, illustrating the essence and th

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Muriel's Wedding book by PJ Hogan music & lyrics Keir Nuttall & Kate Miller-Heidke Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Simon Phillips Like legions of girls through the ages, Muriel was brought up to believe that life is incomplete without a man. It is a fallacy so deeply ingrained into our consciousness, that many are never able to outgrow the absurd notion, that marriage is required as a fundamental validation of our very being. In PJ Hogan’s Muriel’s Weddin

✮✮ 1/2 Lally Katz's Atlantis Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Rosemary Myers Lally Katz’s new play Atlantis is an autobiographical fantasy. It sprouts from something personal and authentic, then leads to something entirely imaginary. Lally, the protagonist, is consumed by anxiety. At 35, she finds herself single and childless. We follow her on an odyssey that takes her from Sydney to the East Coast of the USA; an eventful, wacky journey that comprises a string of amusi