Things to do in Sydney today

If Melbourne’s exclusive lock on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (the premium Wizarding World stage experience) is too far away, too expensive, or too five-hours-long for you, then you might enjoy Puffs, its plucky unauthorised distant cousin. This frequently laugh-out-loud comedy is a love letter to Harry Potter fandom. If you’ve ever over-thought the books ("Gee, those kids face an awful lot of danger at school, that’s not safe!" or "What about all the kids who aren’t brave, evil, or brainy?!") then you’ll find your match in this play, which traces the incoming group of Puffs (you know, that yellowy, badger-loving house?) in the year that Harry and his pals started their Hogwarts journey. A narrator (Gareth Isaac) takes us through the story, book by book, and the sight gag when he brings out a massive Book Five is the kind of in-joke designed just for you, the die-hard Potter fan. This group even bears some resemblance to the one you remember from the books. There’s an orphan, our protagonist, only this time his name is Wayne (Ryan Hawke) and he’s from Queensland. We also have the best friends with chemistry, Megan (Angelina Thomson) and Oliver (Adam Marks). Megan is determined to be anything but a Puff (her mother was the first Puff to be locked up in Azkaban, so you could say it runs in the family), and Oliver is a maths genius who can’t believe there’s no academics at his new school; he struggles with spells. There’s a lovable ditz, Leanne (the wonderful Lauren McKe

Tippi Hedren kept a lion named Neil in her home; it was especially fond of her teenage daughter, Melanie Griffith. Everything was fine, until Neil attacked his live-in trainer in the family kitchen. Siegfried and Roy raised Mantecore the white tiger themselves; he was a reliable part of their Las Vegas act. Everything was fine, until one night Mantecore attacked his trainer, and then, famously, Roy. And for 14 years, Sandy Herold raised Travis the chimp like he was her son. Everything was fine, until he lunged at Sandy’s friend in an unspeakably vicious attack.   Enter Trevor. Trevor (Jamie Oxenbould) can’t seem to get an audition. He’s getting old, his star has faded, and the world is getting more irritating by the day. He’s been living with Sandra (Di Adams) for as long as he can remember, and they love each other, but things are changing at home. Ashley from next door (Ainslie McGlynn) has a new baby that won’t stop crying; Jim the local cop (David Lynch) isn’t impressed by Trevor taking a joyride, and Oliver (Garth Holcombe), another actor – younger, prettier, more refined – is getting all the plum roles. Also, Trevor is a chimp.  Oxenbould plays the titular role without a scrap of fur. He speaks comfortably in English, and appears recognisably human, but he’s still a chimp, so he’s possessed of an excellently lumbering physicality. It takes a second to realise that he can’t be understood by the humans and vice versa (although he and Sandra use sign language to commu

There aren’t many dance companies in the world that can truly be described as peerless, but the territory that Bangarra Dance Theatre has occupied for the last 30 years as Australia’s leading Indigenous dance company is entirely its own. The company is one of the true wonders of Australian culture. This triple bill, celebrating that 30th birthday, is a look back at some of Bangarra’s most entrancing moments as well as a step in a new direction. It kicks off with Unaipon, choreographer Frances Rings’ 2004 tribute to David Unaipon, the Ngarrindjeri man who is credited as the first published Aboriginal author and whose face is on the $50 note. It’s classic Bangarra territory, with three distinct sections, starting with a sequence about Unaipon’s Ngarrindjeri knowledge, moving into his scientific knowledge and ending with his religious devotion. It’s full of visually inventive moments, such as a tribute to the “string games” used by Ngarrindjeri Elders to pass on knowledge, danced by the male members of the ensemble, elegantly entangling themselves in strings stretching across the breadth of the stage. There’s also a frantically danced full company piece demonstrating Newton’s three laws of motion. Tyrel Dulvarie plays Unaipon at several points in a moving performance, but the most beautiful moment of Rings’ work is four solos representing the four winds, danced by Tara Gower, Rika Hamaguchi, Lillian Banks and Dulvarie in a spectacular grass costume designed by Jennifer Irwin.

Tippi Hedren kept a lion named Neil in her home; it was especially fond of her teenage daughter, Melanie Griffith. Everything was fine, until Neil attacked his live-in trainer in the family kitchen. Siegfried and Roy raised Mantecore the white tiger themselves; he was a reliable part of their Las Vegas act. Everything was fine, until one night Mantecore attacked his trainer, and then, famously, Roy. And for 14 years, Sandy Herold raised Travis the chimp like he was her son. Everything was fine, until he lunged at Sandy’s friend in an unspeakably vicious attack.   Enter Trevor. Trevor (Jamie Oxenbould) can’t seem to get an audition. He’s getting old, his star has faded, and the world is getting more irritating by the day. He’s been living with Sandra (Di Adams) for as long as he can remember, and they love each other, but things are changing at home. Ashley from next door (Ainslie McGlynn) has a new baby that won’t stop crying; Jim the local cop (David Lynch) isn’t impressed by Trevor taking a joyride, and Oliver (Garth Holcombe), another actor – younger, prettier, more refined – is getting all the plum roles. Also, Trevor is a chimp.  Oxenbould plays the titular role without a scrap of fur. He speaks comfortably in English, and appears recognisably human, but he’s still a chimp, so he’s possessed of an excellently lumbering physicality. It takes a second to realise that he can’t be understood by the humans and vice versa (although he and Sandra use sign language to commu

If you leave the Hayes Theatre, turn left, and wander for around 15 minutes – as Potts Point turns into Kings Cross and gives way to Darlinghurst – you’ll find yourself in a small bar called Love, Tilly Devine. It’s chic (GOOP calls it seductive) with expensive wines and exposed brick, and it’s named for one of the most powerful women in East Sydney’s turbulent heyday. A Madam mogul with 30 brothels in her portfolio and one of Sydney’s deadliest gangs at her beck and call, Tilly Devine was a force to be reckoned with. And now she’s sharing the stage at the Hayes with Kate Leigh, her legendary rival, in a new musical called Razorhurst. Kate Leigh’s former home, for the record, is now the site of a Surry Hills coffee shop. But bars were always a Kate Leigh thing – she ran ‘sly grog’ shops, a regular beer baron for the 1920s, back when Australian pubs closed at 6pm. Her gang, armed with razors, would meet Tilly’s in the streets and stab out the women’s differences. In Razorhurst, Devine and Leigh are ghosts who meet up at that coffee shop here in the present (it’s a gently evocative old-world design by Isabel Hudson). The building has just been purchased by Devine’s descendants, and Tilly (Amelia Cormack) is there to evict Kate (Debora Krizak) once and for all. But Kate isn’t going anywhere without a fight. These two women are stuff of Aussie legend, immortalised in Channel Nine’s Underbelly: Razor, books, documentaries, and comic strips. That particular strip was the impet

We probably don’t want to know what most animals really think about humans. We don’t have the best track record of treating them with fairness and compassion, but in Charlie Garber’s new play it turns out the reason they hate us is not so much the slaughter and eating, but rather the way we use them in our cultural storytelling: animals are always the human’s sidekick, never the protagonist. That’s what makes us so self-centred and monstrous, in their eyes. The Astral Plane is a frequently funny if densely plotted piece of fantasy that takes place primarily across two realms: the human realm and the realm of the talking animals. Recently, a portal has been secretly opened between the two worlds and the rat queen Josie (Emma Harvie) and her runt brother-in-law Sam (Michael Whalley) have ventured through to the human world to search for the rat king, who is in the process of negotiating a new system of peace and movement between the realms. But it’s not as easy to get their heads around this human realm as they’d first thought: is Ranger Rachel really the leader they believed her to be? And what are they to make of Romi (Imogen Sage), the wannabe Instagram influencer, who seems to have a platform at her fingertips through which she can address the whole world? Of course, it’s Romi and her boyfriend Dan (Eden Falk) with whom the audience may identify most – but we addressed the animal plot first, as we didn’t want to be accused of reducing them to mere sidekicks. The human c

Halfway through Anatomy of a Suicide, commune dweller and heroin addict Anna snaps, “I am not your misery project”. This statement could also be a manifesto for Alice Birch’s interwoven tale of three women in one family: a mother, her daughter and her daughter’s daughter. You’d be forgiven for imagining that a play with a title like this one would be heavy on the melodrama. But you’d be mistaken. Anatomy of a Suicide, under Shane Anthony’s direction at the Old Fitz Theatre, is haunting and immersive, yet subtle in its manoeuvring of the complexities of motherhood and female pain.   Carol, Anna and Bonnie are the three women at the heart of the action. Spanning decades and three generations, the play charts pivotal moments in each of their lives, which are often also some of the most mundane. There are births and deaths and revelations – but the beauty of the play is in the quiet moments: the planting of plum trees, a cigarette shared in confidence at a child’s birthday party, the single word “radiant” repeated. The play follows the form of a theatrical triptych, where three different scenes play out alongside each other at once. The stories weave and duck around each other, sometimes overlapping in dialogue or pause. The women live their own lives, but beside one another. If this sounds confusing, it’s because it sometimes is. For the most part, however, Anthony directs his skilful actors into a tight rhythm around each other, so their conversation flows and dialogue inter