Australia
Sue Hubbard
In The Importance of Being Earnest, first performed in 1895, Oscar Wilde wittily quipped that Algernon must choose between “this world, the next and Australia”. At a time when it took weeks to reach the other side of the globe most Britons, if they thought of it at all, thought of that far-flung continent as a convenient corral for undesirable fellow citizens. Baron Field, the first Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, wondered whether Australia was, in fact, an aberration, calling it a “barren wood” and an “after-birth”. In 1906 an English geologist, J.W. Gregory, wrote a book Read more ...
Jeremy Eccles
London is by now festooned with images showing the back-end of a horse surmounted by a black figure holding a gun across his chest. The man's head is a square black mask – a rectangular slit in it fails to reveal the expected eyes, instead taking us straight through to the clouds and sky. Sid Nolan was creating an iconic image, especially for his fellow Irish-Australians, which would go on to become shorthand for the rebel, the larrikin spirit of the Aussie outfacing both the land-owning squattocracy and the land, which stretches out, deserted into the flat and boring distance.Ned Kelly – for Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Newcomer Ronny Chieng doesn't waste any time trying to get the audience on his side. He outlines his interesting ethnic background – born in Malaysia to Chinese parents, several years spent in the United States and Singapore, and he did a law degree in Australia - but that mix is distilled into his Chinese ethnicity and its innate superiority to anything Western.He says he's tried reclaiming the word 'chink', in the style of black rappers and the n-wordIt's a refreshing approach, as generally comics crave our affection. In The Ron Way Chieng runs through various stereotypes about Chinese and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Australian stand-up Matt Okine made his UK debut at the Edinburgh Fringe last month and earned himself a best newcomer nomination in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, to add to his best newcomer award at 2012's Melbourne Comedy Festival (jointly won with Ronny Chieng). He's certainly an assured performer, even if his observational humour relies too heavily on the everyday in Being Black & Chicken & S#%t.Chicken – whether the companies Okine keeps in business to feed his habit or a controversial television advertisement back home in Australia – features prominently in the first 10 minutes, Read more ...
David Nice
It was mostly Russian night at the Proms, and mostly music you could dance to, as a hand jiving Arena Prommer rather distractingly proved in the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony. Even Prokofiev’s elephantine Second Piano Concerto was transformed into the ballet music Serge Diaghilev thought it might become in 1914. Much of this was thanks to the fleet feet and mobile shoulders of febrile BBC Philharmonic conductor Gianandrea Noseda. But even he could do very little with the odd man out in every way, Edward Cowie’s Earth Music I.One blunt question has to be asked: why a BBC commission Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Back in the Eighties, Australian TV brought us Bodyline, retelling (with some extravagant exaggeration) how Douglas Jardine's 1932 England side caused an international rumpus by zapping Australia with "leg theory" bowling. Even more seismic for the somnolent world of international cricket was Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket of the 1970s, whose story is reconstructed in this two-part drama from Australia's Nine Network (itself a part of the Packer empire).In the days before the IPL, Twenty20 and Sky Sports had been dreamed of, cricket still retained a quaint, parochial air and a virtually Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Every so often, an album comes along that reminds you why you love the medium: not because it’s a simple collection of individual songs, no matter how good they are, but because it’s a carefully curated statement of artistic intent. Taken individually Emily Barker’s clear voice and pretty melodies are pleasant enough, but what sets her fourth album apart is its immersive flow.It’s there right from the album’s seductive opening notes: Barker, close to unaccompanied, intoning the album’s title and opening words; crooning and cajoling the “dear river” to lead her away from her Australian Read more ...
Ismene Brown
It's the uniqueness of the Royal Ballet ballerina Leanne Benjamin that tomorrow night at Covent Garden, aged nearly 49, she will be playing a sex-mad teenager, and no one will have the slightest difficulty believing it. Then she'll retire. Not for her a soft swoop into long dresses and matronly gestures, easing decorously into the sunset, but an all-out assault on physical and emotional extremes that is typical of the career of this tiny stick of dynamite from the Australian outback.In a season full of goodbyes - Mara Galeazzi, Alina Cojocaru, Johan Kobborg and Tamara Rojo have all signed off Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Knee Deep, the show by four-person Brisbane acrobatic troupe Casus, is only an hour long but packs more eye-popping antics into its first 10 minutes than many circuses muster in three hours. Their fluid, almost faultless displays of gymnastic skill have a theatrical dynamic that’s so gripping I feel I’ve missed something vital every time I look down for a few seconds to scribble a note on what's occurring. They really are something special.The show begins with Casus company leader (and manager) Emma Serjeant walking on eggs, a big screen above her enlarging the action. Previously Knee Deep Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Family dramas don't come much fruitier than The Eye of the Storm. Fred Schepisi's film adaptation of Nobel laureate Patrick White's 1973 novel will speak most potently to those for whom the (far superior) Amour was too po-faced by half. An Australian deathbed drama that is as loopy and overripe as Michael Haneke's French-language Oscar-winner was rigorous and austere, the movie is best thought of as the celluloid equivalent of those pulpy page-turners that go with us on holiday. You may feel guilty for devouring such material, but you'll stay with it to the very last and breathless moment.And Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The new South Bank Show has glided into its second season with a seemingly effortless profile of multi-hyphenate Tim Minchin. In case we’ve forgotten what exactly we admire him for these days – so varied has been his decade-long career been, through satire, rock, musical comedy, stage performance, to co-creator of the RSC transfer-spectacular Matilda that's now storming Broadway – then this was a good reminder.Self-deprecation may be one of his fortes (not that he doesn’t excel at deprecating others), but Minchin proved a thoughtful guide to his achievements to date, in that beguilingly Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s clear that Sarah Blasko is in a defiant mood right from the timpani roll that opens her fourth solo album. A lush, gorgeous work, in which the frantic strings of the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra offset the Australian singer’s husky, intimate vocals, I Awake is an enthralling and unsettling listen.Blasko is the first of the three singers behind Seeker Lover Keeper, her project with countrywomen Sally Seltmann and Holly Throsby, to release her own material since their collaborative album was released last year. Although her contributions to the project tempered its more sugary-sweet Read more ...