Grand Folly - Bernhard’s ‘Histrionic’
The Histrionic is part of an honourable tradition of ‘director on the verge of a nervous breakdown’ plays. It’s a riveting and extremely funny work about megalomania and its consequences, laced with unexpected pathos. Lauded director Bruscon (Bille Brown) finds himself in a backwater called Utzbach, a provincial Austrian town that couldn’t be further from his glorious past. He is there to kick off the latest production of what he believes to be his life’s work. Gigantic, ludicrous props – an outstretched hand, a moose, ducks, a pig, a pumpkin – are strewn about in preparation for the big show. Bruscon, like many doomed characters, suffers from a mammoth surfeit of self-confidence. Actually, ‘self-confidence’ doesn’t really do justice to his attitude toward life, which he sees as an opportunity for self-aggrandisement.
Comedy Calendar – Tim Roberts at the MICF
Some facts: The Festival was launched in 1987 by Barry Humphries and Peter Cook. Twenty-five festivals later, with attendances of over 500,000, it has grown to be Australia's largest cultural event. The MICF sells more tickets than any other Australian Festival. With an average ticket price of just $22, the Comedy Festival is not only hugely popular but also extremely accessible.
A Solitary Pleasure - Every Breath at Belvoir
As a theatre director widely (though not universally) acclaimed for brave and imaginative interpretations of classic plays, you could forgive Benedict Andrews if he believed that what matters most in theatre is directorial vision. On the evidence of his new Belvoir production, Every Breath, this does seem to be what he believes. Andrews seems most determined here to make a theatrical impact, but when this comes at the expense of story, character, and ideas, what we are left with is a series of empty, onanistic climaxes.
District and Circle - Seamus Heaney
A Seamus Heaney poem is like a rock dolman in the Irish countryside: immovable, unconcealed and imbued by humans with mystical qualities. In his Nobel Lecture, he described the ideal poem as a “retuning of the world.” The poems in 'District and Circle', his twelfth collection, retune Heaney’s world, which is unlike any other.
