Ray is a farmer. Ray is dying. Ray is falling in love. Ray has had a tough year. Ray mourns his wife. Ray meets his wife. Ray doesn’t want to live in a nursing home. Ray’s kids don’t understand him. Ray doesn’t understand why the world won’t let him live his life. Ray, played with impressive physicality and nuance by veteran actor Colin Friels, is the central figure of Into the Shimmering World – a new work commissioned by Sydney Theatre Company that makes the intimate epic, seesawing back and forth in time but remaining locked in space. The main arena of conflict is the family farm that Ray and his wife, nurse Floss (fellow veteran Kerry Armstrong) have run their entire adult lives. It’s a hard existence, but a rewarding one, contending with droughts, floods, fluctuating markets, and unruly neighbours (one dubbed “The Crook” remains an unseen presence, but a constant source of grievance). Written by 2020 Patrick White Playwrights Fellow Angus Cerini and directed by STC’s Director of New Work and Artistic Development Paige Rattray, Into the Shimmering World is a study of Australian masculinity – as were the previous works in Cerini’s Australian gothic trilogy, The Bleeding Tree and Wonnangatta. In many ways this play is a study of stoicism, its strengths and its limitations. The laconic Ray meets every challenge with a resigned determination that borders on fatalism, an attitude that has served him well for decades. But the sons his work put through university don’t want to
As well as crisp, autumnal mornings, the month of April is blessed with two public holidays – this is your reminder to get planning a weekend away before the best stays get snapped up. It’s also a month of light and laughter, with the Sydney Comedy Festival lighting up venues across the city, the ever-outrageous Rocky Horror Picture Show popping up at Theatre Royal from March 31 until May 12, and incredible immersive light shows coming to this historic harbourside spot and a forest in the Blue Mountains. On the art front, the Biennale is giving Sydneysiders front-row access to exhibitions from globally leading contemporary artists, and a blockbuster photography exhibition documenting the life of Princess Diana is popping up in Ultimo. Plus, this month we’ll see the first iteration of a new monthly laneway party from the forward-thinking folks behind Kyiv Social, our 2023 bar of the year El Primo Sanchez is hosting a tequila-spiked high tea, and Goros has had a cherry blossom makeover.