Shows by Gravity & Other Myths fall into the realm of “contemporary circus”. It’s an off-putting moniker, bringing to mind a performance where there’s no clowning but quite possibly much “thought-provoking” interpretive dance. The decade-old troupe from Adelaide, Australia, appearing tonight in Brighton’s Dome Theatre, deliver a show that is certainly contemporary circus, but they reinvent the term in in a riveting, entertaining way.Proceedings begin with the house lights coming up to reveal the stage cluttered by a rack of clothes, a line of steel buckets, a suit of armour and more. It’s Read more ...

For Brits below a certain age Leo Sayer is the curly haired middle-aged chap who swearily walked out of the Celebrity Big Brother house in 2007 and disappeared. However, for those around in the 1970s his diminutive dancing form, ever-ready grin and wild coiffure were a constant presence as he had pop hit after pop hit, notably the contagious, disco-friendly “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”. He’s taken a couple of shots at returning this century, notably on the chart-topping club remix of his own “Thunder in my Heart”, but Selfie has a particularly personal sense of engagement.This is because Read more ...

Stella Donnelly does not suffer fools gladly. On her debut LP, she calls out all manner of bad behaviours, from crappy bosses to creepy guys, annoying family members to disappointing boyfriends. Donnelly’s very much a part of the new guard of songwriters who aren’t going to sit in silence, and aren’t afraid to stand up for themselves and others. And yet, angry music this is not. There are no pounding drums, no squealing riffs, no hateful growls. Rather, a quiet confidence and self-assuredness defines Beware of the Dogs.  Album opener and first single "Old Man" sets the tone with Read more ...

Picture this. You’re sailing in the Timor Sea with family and friends on your luxurious yacht, hoiking the occasional plump fish out of the ocean to provide a ready meal washed down with Aussie plonk, when you suddenly chance across a decrepit, broken-down fishing boat crammed with mostly Iraqi refugees. What do you do?There are too many of them to fit on your yacht, so you can either try to tow them to where they want to go (Australia) or, since you’re currently out of radio range of coastguards or police, leave them while you go in search of rescue. Other options might have been tow them Read more ...

Reckless, unstoppable, one step ahead of everyone else, a hell of a lot of fun, utterly charming, street smart – descriptions of the artist Sidney Nolan (1917-1992) poured out from colleagues, rivals, curators, art historians and dealers, not to mention friends and family, in this persuasive film. One remarked with rueful admiration that the painter’s acute survival instincts involved a little bit of clawing here and there. Even his appreciative grandchildren saw him as a vital force, with a sly Irish sense of humour.All agreed you could not compare this working-class original with anybody Read more ...

Presenting the last Mozart symphonies as a three-act opera for orchestra, as Richard Tognetti and his febrile fellow Australians did on Monday, was always going to be a supreme challenge. It worked, as Boyd Tonkin reported here. Since then, the Barbican's grandiosely-named "International Associate Ensemble" has opened up the repertoire, synchronising with film (on Tuesday) and ending its mini-residency with the kind of vibrant rattlebag for which it's rightly celebrated. How it all added up remains to gel in the mind, but the bonuses were splendid: world-class Australian soprano Nicole Car Read more ...

Following the runaway success of Bodyguard, Jed Mercurio is no doubt popping more champagne and saying “follow that”. Stepping up to BBC One’s Sunday 9pm slot is The Cry, which transports us from suicide bombs and political intrigue and instead immerses us in the emotional plight of new mother Joanna (Jenna Coleman) and her partner Alistair (Ewen Leslie).Adapted from Helen FitzGerald’s novel, The Cry is going to be a dark and tortured journey into failed relationships, parenthood in crisis, accusations and loss, and this first of four parts set the ball rolling ominously. Screenwriter Read more ...

North of Brisbane, south of Cairns and a short boat trip from the turquoise waters around the Great Barrier Reef, Townsville is the site of a north-east Australian military base. Despite its dry-tropical beachside glories, it’s not necessarily the most obvious setting for a world-class chamber music festival. Yet here, for 28 years, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music (AFCM) has been soundly embedded in the annual calendar, a much-loved national fixture.I attended this year’s session as both writer and participant, performing my narrated concert, Being Mrs Bach, which was Read more ...

In basic creative terms of the ingredients that make it up, this is not a bad record. Hip hop production is in extraordinary period right now, and the six tracks on this EP have the best production that money can buy: woozy, narcotic, digitally surreal, vast in scale, perfect for heatwave listening as they boom and slither their way along, every one built around microscopic but lethally memorably bleeping hooks. “Tokyo Snow Trip” and “Kawasaki” in particular are extraordinary.The lyrics, too, in theory at least, work on this instant level: they're about money, stripping, weed, swagger, Read more ...

How many people were watching Picnic at Hanging Rock as it took its bow on BBC One? This opening episode happened to be preceded by a rival attraction on ITV. The premise of the story, set in Australia in 1900, is that almost no one sees three girls in their long white summer dresses abscond from the eponymous school outing to explore a local attraction and vanish without trace, to be followed by their teacher. Thanks to an unlucky accident of scheduling, the audience may have vanished too.This is a six-part adaptation of the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, but the story is far better known for Read more ...

A much tinkered-with show needs to go back to the drawing board, if this latest iteration of Strictly Ballroom: The Musical is any gauge. Having travelled across Sydney, Leeds, and Toronto on its extensively revised way to the West End, director-choreographer Drew McOnie's musical adaptation of Baz Luhrmann's enjoyably whacked-out film emerges as an overextended and bloated cartoon.Sure, the dancing grabs the attention now and again, as one might expect, and Zizi Strallen steps up to the plate as a genuinely charming female lead. But the forced grins on the cast's faces are likely to be met Read more ...

Recently the world has been entertained by the shameless amateur theatricals from some of Australia’s lavishly-paid cricketers, but Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country transports us back to a harsher, crueller Australia, where men might have justifiably shed a tear as they scraped a hard living from the land and broiled under a crushing sun. Set in 1929, the film also depicts a world where brutish racism was taken for granted, and Aboriginal workers were treated little better than farm animals.At its core is the tightly-wound, powerfully dramatic story of Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris), a stockman Read more ...