Things to do in Sydney today

Take one glance at the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Hyde Park Barracks and it’s obvious the big brick structure is dripping with history. It started out as a place that housed male convicts in the early 1800s, but Japanese-Australian artist Hiromi Tango is shining a light (literally) on its lesser-known significance as a site of women’s history this May and June. Watch the Barracks become a canvas for larger-than-life projections showcasing the stories of the women who passed through the building that was once the Female Immigration Depot and Hyde Park Asylum from 1848 to 1887. Recorded voices offer deeply personal stories of hope, and a visual collage that appears after dark until 10pm gives passersby a peek into the Barracks’ archaeology including its rich collection of textiles and fabric fragments inside.  Being a Japanese immigrant, and now a resident of Northern NSW, Tango was inspired by the “voices of those who are often left out of history”. Watch as the site also transforms into the ‘Hope garden’ with large ‘hope flowers’ and a collaborative installation of upcycled textiles that will keep growing.  Hope is on until June 15 at the Hyde Park Barracks, projected nightly until 10pm. Visitors can check it out for free. Find out more info here. The Hyde Park Barracks museum is also open daily from 10am to 6pm with free entry and includes an immersive self-guided audio experience which takes about an hour and a half to complete.

If the leading lady of a daytime telenovela was to read too many pop-psychology books while downing a double Espresso Martini, you might get something close to Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. This musical comedy based on Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 cinema cult classic is given a neon-lit, red-curtained makeover at Sydney’s Hayes Theatre. With precision taking a backseat to passion, director Alexander Berlage (Cry-Baby, American Psycho) delivers a stylish descent into screwball mania. The action takes place in Madrid, Spain, where Amy Hack’s (Yentl) heartbroken actress, Pepa, is having a terrible, very bad day, which we see play out from depressive start to high-flung resolution. Her lover Iván breaks up with her over answering machine, and thus, her Odyssey-styled mission to find and confront him begins. Along the journey, Pepa butts heads with Iván’s scorned ex-wife Lucia (Tisha Keleman), his son and his own frustrated fiancée, as well as her wildly unravelling best friend, Candela (Grace Driscoll).  With a book by Jeffrey Lane (known for his musical adaption of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and music and lyrics by David Yazbek (Dead Outlaw), the original Broadway production of Women on the Verge had a relatively short lifespan – closing soon after it received poor reviews, and even poorer ticket sales. This is where Berlage’s adept hand at re-inventing cult flops takes charge – finding a space for his avant-garde style through sharp angles, frenetic choreography, and...

Two one-act Harold Pinter plays starring three actors across five roles for a total of two hours entertainment plus intermission – if we judged theatre by weight, that’d sound like a pretty good deal. And it is, because you tend to get more than you expect from Ensemble Theatre, and certainly from Pinter, if you’re not ready for him.  The relatively confined space of the Ensemble stage is a good fit for Pinter’s drawing room dreadfuls. The fact that we’re getting a double feature – a twofer! – speaks to the Music Hall traditions underpinning Pinter’s work, the way he was keyed to the rhythms of working class and middle class voices. It’s also the first hint that this is Pinter-as-comedy, although it’s still the comedy of menace. Pinter was the most mercurial of the angry young men who barreled through mid-20th-century British culture, and his work invites diverse interpretations. Here, director Mark Kilmurry has leaned into laughs, although often rueful. The Lover (1962) puts us in the ’60s-chic suburban home of housewife Sarah (Nicole da Silva – The Memory of Water, TV’s Wentworth) and businessman Richard (Gareth Davies – Benefactors, Belvoir’s The Master And Margarita) as they exchange pleasantries and also frank details of their extra-marital affairs. She has a lover, Max, who visits while Richard is at work. Richard admits to frequenting an anonymous whore (his words) for after-office dalliances. Then we meet Max – and Max, is Richard. The Lover is a brittle, nervy...

Samuel Beckett’s Winnie, the hapless, half-buried heroine of his 1961 play, Happy Days, is one of those pinnacle roles in theatre. Comparisons to Hamlet are common, but apt. It’s such an actor’s role that it makes sense, arguably with certain caveats, that the actor in question takes up at least one directorial rein. It certainly makes sense to Sydney Theatre Company, who are giving us the legendary Pamela Rabe (Belvoir’s August: Osage County) directed by Pamela Rabe (and Nick Schlieper) in this production. Winnie (Rabe) is immured in a mound of earth up to her waist. She wears what might be a faded ball gown. Harsh light beats down on the dark ground (which looks hand-painted) and a kind of horizontal proscenium structure is reminiscent of a CinemaScope screen or the jagged glow of a flatscreen TV, further heightening the sense of artificiality – or at least, a kind of constructed reality. But Winnie is all too human and real. She fends off the sun’s rays with a broken umbrella, she comments on her station (although we’re never given much context in regards to how she got where we find her), she chats with her laconic husband, Willie (a fantastic and funny physical performance from Markus Hamilton) who occasionally drags himself onto the stage, but rarely into her field of vision. Above all else, she tries to maintain an upbeat attitude, repeatedly declaring this to be yet another “happy day”. Even after the second act arrives, following a dark and ominous interlude...

As the distinctions between the digital and the material worlds become increasingly blurred, the way we think about art, society and technology is radically shifting. In the latest exhibition at Artspace, Amongst the clouds (digital materialities in the 21st century), we see a group of six artists exploring new ways that art and technology can work together to shape our physical and digital worlds.  The result is an intriguing collection of work that proves that, while new technologies are worth exploring as part of creative practice, human intervention is essential for creating inspired and interesting art.  Bombay-based artist Archana Hande’s immersive installation ‘Weaving Light’ transforms an entire room – a warm source of light permeates from a central column of Jacquard loom punch cards, casting intricate patterns in the shadows and onto viewers themselves (referencing Ada Lovelace, the artist explores the changing nature of industrialisation in a postcolonial world). On the other end of the spectrum, London-based artist Lawrence Lek’s ‘Guanyin (Confessions of a Former Carebot)’ invites us to play a videogame featuring a cyborg therapist; and local Sydney artist Sophie Penkethman-Young’s ‘Robot // Dog’ is a kaleidoscopic video essay on human relationships with programmable beings – from service robots, to pedigree dogs – that might affect the way you look at your four-legged friend.  As you enter the busiest space of the exhibition, the soundscape grows more noisy,...