Things to do in Sydney today

The story of Salome – the princess who demands the head of prophet John the Baptist on a silver platter in return for performing a dance – is a biblical one, referred to in the books of Mark and Matthew. But this young woman, who may have altered the course of history through the power of her dance, is never named in the text. It really wasn’t until Oscar Wilde’s controversial 1891 play, Salome, that her story became widely known and studied. The play, which forms the basis for Richard Strauss’s 1905 opera, places Salome at the centre of the action as she comes under the lustful gaze of her stepfather, Herod. In biblical versions, Salome’s mother, Herodias, is insulted by the prophet’s criticism of her second marriage, and encourages her daughter to demand his execution. In Wilde and Strauss’s versions, Salome is her own woman with her own reasons for doing so. Gale Edwards’ production of the opera premiered in 2012, and explores how male artists have constructed images of femininity over the centuries. It’s most obvious in her approach to the infamous ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ – her version features a series of dancing women embodying male fantasies of female sexuality: innocent child with teddy, French maid, dominatrix pole dancer, Marilyn Monroe with her billowing white skirt, mother Mary as a saucy go-go dancer – but the male gaze and battles for power are unpacked in every scene. If anything, Edwards’ approach rings with even more clarity in 2019 – it constantly thro

What’s sweeter than childhood? According to Jess and Joe Forever, a gentle but full-bodied play by UK writer Zoe Cooper, a lot of things. Childhood friendship, on the other hand, and the first blushes of young love? You can’t beat it. Enter Jess and Joe. Jess (Julia Robertson) and Joe (Nyx Calder) meet on the Norfolk coast when they are children. Joe is smaller than the other boys; Jess is teased for the way she looks in her summer dresses. Joe is working class and Jess’s lifestyle is worlds apart (ask her about her family’s ‘real’ holidays in Italy; ask Joe about digging holes for wooden fence posts). But they are two lonely souls, and they forge on ahead into a friendship. They bridle at each other occasionally, but they’re intensely fond of each other with the sudden but unshakeable conviction of children. It’s very charming.  Of course, life doesn’t run on charm alone, and as Cooper’s clear-eyed, beautifully constructed script unfolds, with Jess and Joe sharing narrating duties (occasionally bickering about what to include), life – in all its thorny, shaded complexity – seeps in. Jess’s cavalier demeanour masks her anguish over family struggles – it all becomes harder to manage as she gets older – and Joe’s everyday caution proves well-founded when members of the community seek to tease the two friends and keep them apart. You get the sense that Joe is often held apart from the rest of the town.  But Jess isn’t the rest of town, and even when the friends fall out, yo

There’s a key moment in the middle of Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahue’s wildly successful, consistently funny and surprisingly uplifting solo play about a child grappling with their mother’s suicide attempts. The performer who plays the role of the child and narrates their story – in Belvoir’s production it’s Kate Mulvany – offers one piece of advice for anybody contemplating suicide: “Don’t do it.” Why? Because things get better. They mightn’t always get brilliant, but they will get better. It’s not the most profound piece of advice, and it’s unlikely to actually bring somebody back from the brink, but any piece of theatre that tries to provide a solution to life’s toughest challenges is doomed to fail. Every Brilliant Thing is more concerned with bringing together a group of people to hear one person’s experiences and deal with the social complexities of mental health with empathy and good humour. The play was originally performed by Donahue, but at Belvoir the character has been gender-swapped for Mulvany’s unique talents. When this character was seven years old, her mother made her first suicide attempt, or, as her father informed her, she did “something stupid”. The child’s response? She started to write a list of all the brilliant things in the world, starting with ice cream, water fights and staying up past your bedtime to watch TV. Of course, simply being reminded of the brilliant things in the world will never be enough to save somebody from suicide or allevi

We all know that Sydney has lost plenty of bars, clubs and late-night venues in recent years, but we’re not totally alone in that struggle. If you look to the UK, the neighbourhood pub is under threat; across England, Scotland and Wales, pubs are folding at a rate of one every 12 hours. The number of small pubs – the ones with fewer than ten employees, and the kind that tends to prop up a community – has almost halved between 2001 and 2018. The Choir of Man, a breakthrough hit of the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe that falls somewhere between pub gig, cabaret, choral performance and scrappy musical, is an ode to pub culture and the communities that exist within them. There’s not much going on in terms of narrative, but there are nine men from England and Ireland onstage leading the audience through a night at their local. George Bray is the narrator; Sean Keany is the angel-voiced tenor known as the “Casanova”; Christopher Norton is the deceptively gentle “beast”; Richard Lock is the “pub bore”, who dresses like a character from an Agatha Christie novel. Each has their moment to shine and all are superb singers – Lock delivers an impressive rendition of ‘The Impossible Dream’ while attempting to make a house out of coasters, Keany belts the bejesus out of Adele’s ‘Hello’, and Bray performs a touching version of Luther Vandross’s ‘Dance with My Father’. But it’s when they perform together that the roof really starts lifting; there are quiet, introspective, acapella versions of Sia’s

It’s taken eight years of Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour (HOSH), but it finally happened: a downpour on opening night. Of course, there’ve been some performances that have taken place in the rain or were called off, but openings have always happened under clear skies. You’d think that West Side Story, the first musical to be performed on the harbour-side stage, mightn’t fare too well in wet conditions given the athleticism required in Jerome Robbins’ choreography. But it turns out not much can stop the committed ensemble of performers, who gave their absolute all performing under a downpour that lasted most of the first act. Yes, the women swapped their regular heels for safer plain black sneakers (of course their safety comes first, and these are the backup shoes for wet weather), but the dancing was still spectacularly realised. And in a number like ‘America’, which is all high kicks and swishing skirts? The rain actually adds a little something, as the dancers joyfully kick water high up into the air. It’s enough to make you forget just how soggy you’re getting under your poncho. (A word of advice: if it looks at all like it might rain, pick up a $5 poncho from a merchandise stand before the show starts.) The opening night conditions make it a little hard for us to accurately judge the quality of dance – and dance is a key narrative element in the first act of West Side Story – but it’s clear that Robbins’ choreography, with its exuberant jazz-meets-ballet-meets-Latin

It’s taken eight years of Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour (HOSH), but it finally happened: a downpour on opening night. Of course, there’ve been some performances that have taken place in the rain or were called off, but openings have always happened under clear skies. You’d think that West Side Story, the first musical to be performed on the harbour-side stage, mightn’t fare too well in wet conditions given the athleticism required in Jerome Robbins’ choreography. But it turns out not much can stop the committed ensemble of performers, who gave their absolute all performing under a downpour that lasted most of the first act. Yes, the women swapped their regular heels for safer plain black sneakers (of course their safety comes first, and these are the backup shoes for wet weather), but the dancing was still spectacularly realised. And in a number like ‘America’, which is all high kicks and swishing skirts? The rain actually adds a little something, as the dancers joyfully kick water high up into the air. It’s enough to make you forget just how soggy you’re getting under your poncho. (A word of advice: if it looks at all like it might rain, pick up a $5 poncho from a merchandise stand before the show starts.) The opening night conditions make it a little hard for us to accurately judge the quality of dance – and dance is a key narrative element in the first act of West Side Story – but it’s clear that Robbins’ choreography, with its exuberant jazz-meets-ballet-meets-Latin

We all know that Sydney has lost plenty of bars, clubs and late-night venues in recent years, but we’re not totally alone in that struggle. If you look to the UK, the neighbourhood pub is under threat; across England, Scotland and Wales, pubs are folding at a rate of one every 12 hours. The number of small pubs – the ones with fewer than ten employees, and the kind that tends to prop up a community – has almost halved between 2001 and 2018. The Choir of Man, a breakthrough hit of the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe that falls somewhere between pub gig, cabaret, choral performance and scrappy musical, is an ode to pub culture and the communities that exist within them. There’s not much going on in terms of narrative, but there are nine men from England and Ireland onstage leading the audience through a night at their local. George Bray is the narrator; Sean Keany is the angel-voiced tenor known as the “Casanova”; Christopher Norton is the deceptively gentle “beast”; Richard Lock is the “pub bore”, who dresses like a character from an Agatha Christie novel. Each has their moment to shine and all are superb singers – Lock delivers an impressive rendition of ‘The Impossible Dream’ while attempting to make a house out of coasters, Keany belts the bejesus out of Adele’s ‘Hello’, and Bray performs a touching version of Luther Vandross’s ‘Dance with My Father’. But it’s when they perform together that the roof really starts lifting; there are quiet, introspective, acapella versions of Sia’s

What’s sweeter than childhood? According to Jess and Joe Forever, a gentle but full-bodied play by UK writer Zoe Cooper, a lot of things. Childhood friendship, on the other hand, and the first blushes of young love? You can’t beat it. Enter Jess and Joe. Jess (Julia Robertson) and Joe (Nyx Calder) meet on the Norfolk coast when they are children. Joe is smaller than the other boys; Jess is teased for the way she looks in her summer dresses. Joe is working class and Jess’s lifestyle is worlds apart (ask her about her family’s ‘real’ holidays in Italy; ask Joe about digging holes for wooden fence posts). But they are two lonely souls, and they forge on ahead into a friendship. They bridle at each other occasionally, but they’re intensely fond of each other with the sudden but unshakeable conviction of children. It’s very charming.  Of course, life doesn’t run on charm alone, and as Cooper’s clear-eyed, beautifully constructed script unfolds, with Jess and Joe sharing narrating duties (occasionally bickering about what to include), life – in all its thorny, shaded complexity – seeps in. Jess’s cavalier demeanour masks her anguish over family struggles – it all becomes harder to manage as she gets older – and Joe’s everyday caution proves well-founded when members of the community seek to tease the two friends and keep them apart. You get the sense that Joe is often held apart from the rest of the town.  But Jess isn’t the rest of town, and even when the friends fall out, yo

There’s a key moment in the middle of Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahue’s wildly successful, consistently funny and surprisingly uplifting solo play about a child grappling with their mother’s suicide attempts. The performer who plays the role of the child and narrates their story – in Belvoir’s production it’s Kate Mulvany – offers one piece of advice for anybody contemplating suicide: “Don’t do it.” Why? Because things get better. They mightn’t always get brilliant, but they will get better. It’s not the most profound piece of advice, and it’s unlikely to actually bring somebody back from the brink, but any piece of theatre that tries to provide a solution to life’s toughest challenges is doomed to fail. Every Brilliant Thing is more concerned with bringing together a group of people to hear one person’s experiences and deal with the social complexities of mental health with empathy and good humour. The play was originally performed by Donahue, but at Belvoir the character has been gender-swapped for Mulvany’s unique talents. When this character was seven years old, her mother made her first suicide attempt, or, as her father informed her, she did “something stupid”. The child’s response? She started to write a list of all the brilliant things in the world, starting with ice cream, water fights and staying up past your bedtime to watch TV. Of course, simply being reminded of the brilliant things in the world will never be enough to save somebody from suicide or allevi

In the immortal (and very Russian) words of Tolstoy, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Darlinghurst Theatre Company’s production of Erika Sheffer’s 2012 play Russian Transport focuses our gaze onto one particular Russian-Jewish migrant family living in Brooklyn as each character chases their own version – or perversion – of the elusive American Dream. Uncle Boris (Nathan Sapsford) has come to stay. He waltzes into stern matriarch Diana’s (Rebecca Rocheford Davies) home, charmingly innocent to American colloquialisms and brandishing a babushka doll filled with vodka. Boris is charismatic and suave, and quickly establishes himself at the centre of the family’s life. Anna Gardiner’s two-level dolls house set fits all the action compactly within it, easily moving our attention from domestic dramas about Chinese takeout to jaunts driving around Flatbush. It works to reflect the split between the younger and older family members, with interloper Boris going between them: as both the bridge, and later, the division between the two generations. Fourteen-year-old Mira (Hayley Sullivan) and older brother Alex (played by the excellent Ryan Carter) are both quickly drawn into Boris’s underworld hijinks. Mira’s ongoing battle with her mother about travelling for the summer has the markings of a typical adolescent push-and-pull, but leads to the revelation of some pretty unsavoury family secrets. Alex lets his ambitions take him in way over his head. Comedy is at the he