sun 24/09/2023

Australia

The Red Shoes: Next Step review - teen dancer's crisis

Fans of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's timeless classic The Red Shoes shouldn’t rush to The Red Shoes: Next Step expecting a sequel. This sentimental Australian teen drama is more of a step-change than a follow-up.At least its American...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Maureen / Common Dissonance

Maureen, House of Oz ★★★★Make yourself comfortable – we’ll be here for a while. That’s what our host, 80-something Maureen, advises us several times during the course of her unhurried, hypnotically vivid reminscences of a life lived to the...

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Album: Genesis Owusu - Struggler

There’s been a sense of anticipation around Ghanaian-Australian Genesis Owusu ever since his ebullient 2021 debut album Smiling with No Teeth. He won a bunch of Arias, Australia’s Grammys, but could he break internationally? He’s toured the US with...

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Talk to Me review - teens tempt fate in Aussie alienation allegory

Keeping up with viral teenage trends is nearly impossible – they travel at the speed of light – but here’s a new one, or ancient one given an electronic makeover.In Talk to Me, the new horror movie directed by twins Danny and Michael Philippou...

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The Great Escape Festival 2023, Brighton review - a long, hot, messy Day Three

“stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover.” So said Charles Bukowski in his poem “how to be a great writer”. Who am I to argue. It’s a bright day and 11.50 AM. The sun isn’t past the yard-arm but the beer is cold and good....

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Hannah Gadsby, Netflix special review - shaggy dog story of marital bliss

Hannah Gadsby had a memorable lockdown; it was when the Tasmanian comic got together with producer Jenney Shamash. And it's their courtship that forms the basis for Something Special, the wonderful new show by Gadsby which is now a Netflix special,...

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Ten Pound Poms, BBC One review - a new life in the Great Southern Land

The Ten Pound Pom programme (or to use its official title, the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme) was devised to encourage British emigrants to Australia after World War Two. The idea was that the volunteers could escape from drab, rationing-...

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Gravity & Other Myths: Out of Chaos, Brighton Festival 2023 review - eye-boggling acrobatics

With acrobatics at this level, they make it all look so easy, it’s possible for an audience to become complacent. By the time the show Out of Chaos, by the troupe Gravity & Other Myths, from Adelaide, Australia, has finished, the Brighton Dome...

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Colin from Accounts, BBC Two review - winning mix of great performances, nuanced writing and a cute dog

As Australia's greatest comedic export exits the stage, strewing gladioli, a promising contender for that title makes an entrance, trailing a dog on wheels. The dog is the titular Colin from Accounts, for the few who still haven’t tried this...

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Black Superhero, Royal Court review - ambitious, but messy

The act of idol worship is, at one and the same time, both distantly ancient and compellingly contemporary. Whether it is Superman, Wonder Woman or Black Panther, our love of the superhero is both an aspiration and an abnegation. Looking at a star,...

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Robert Forster, Lafayette review - élan, spontaneity and thoughtfulness from the former Go-Between

“Learn to Burn” generates the loudest and most sustained applause. As it was originally the opening track of Robert Forster’s 2015 album Songs to Play, the response is unexpected. It’s preceded by a version of his old band The Go-Betweens’ “Spring...

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Album: Robert Forster - The Candle and the Flame

Reflections on how the past relates to now suffuse The Candle and the Flame. The album’s closing track is “When I Was a Young Man.” When he was 21, sings Robert Forster, “I wrote songs, I was unsung, unheralded and undone”. His figurative brothers...

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