163 stories by "Alison Croggon"
For the first thirty seconds I thought we were in for something special in Queen Lear. Robyn Nevin in the titular role, regally costumed in red, is lushly illuminated backstage studying her …
Briwyant
On the evidence of Briwyant, Vicki Van Hout is rightly celebrated as one of our up-and-coming choreographers. There are moments of brilliance in this performance, which takes a Dre…
The Golden Dragon
L-R: Jan Friedl, Ash Flanders, Rodney Afif and Roger Oakley in The Golden Dragon. Photo: Melissa Cowan
Roland Schimmelpfennig's deconstructed play The Golden Dragon te…
Limitations. I haz them. And right now, I have to face the fact that I'm unable to run this blog as I would like. My other activities - which mean, among things, that I have a prospect of pa…
This week has been unexpectedly busy (in a non-theatrical manner), as the final copy edit for Black Spring arrived, marked "urgent", and has taken all of my time. And I also had to…
First, an apology and an explanation. Your humble blogger is heroically attempting to get out less, but Melbourne, you make it hard. I seem to be presently measuring the worth of Melbourne p…
In Macbeth, the ruling metaphor is darkness. Macbeth's "black and deep desires", pricked into life by the prophecies of the witches, overthrow the deepest oaths of feudal manliness…
Over the past couple of years, Chamber Made Opera, under the direction of David Young, has been investigating domestic space as a means for creating contemporary opera, quite literally produ…
Over the past few years, I've lost count of the number of columns I've read which lament the Youth of Today. Pundit after pundit has informed me that young people, Generation Whatever, are s…
As you probably know, Ms TN has been trying to get out less. I am writing a novel which I'd like to finish before September, or at least in the next decade, and then there are all the number…
The art of light writing, as playwrights like Oscar Wilde demonstrate, is a serious business. Writing a light play about serious business is even more serious. The danger is that "light…
Part of the problem in responding to the Next Wave Festival 2012 is knowing where to start. After much dithering, I'm going to begin by talking about the festival itself: I'll be posting abo…
A pointer to my latest review on Overland, which looks at Melbourne poet Philip Salom's recent heteronymic collections The Keeper of Fish and Keeping Carter, out from Puncher and Wattman Poe…
It may sound banal, but the most important thing, both in film and in the theatre, is the human being - the study of human beings. What you want above all, whether you are doing film or thea…
The Next Wave festival - a look at up and coming artists from around Australia, with a significant international component - is now in full swing, illuminating all sorts of hidden corners of…
Because Richard Bean's play The Heretic is about climate change, it attracted the notice of hardline climate change denier Andrew Bolt in the weeks running up to its opening. There was a min…
Today the Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean, is announcing the long-awaited review of the Australia Council. Early reports indicate that one of its major recommendations is the abolition of…
I'm going to be very bloggish today, gentle reader, and tell you all about my week. As always, I've had a problem with hats. My misfortunes began when I accidentally finished a novel. I say …
Below is the text of a talk I gave at the Wheeler Centre last month as part of the series Australian Literature 101. I was asked to discuss Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, which…
I may have mentioned that I am now reviewing poetry for Overland Literary Journal's swish new blog. My most recent review, of Ian Hamilton Finlay: Selections, is now online. Finlay's a s…
From outer-edge indie theatre to main stage is an crucial and delicate transition for any company. One of the best things that has happened in recent years is the opening of both the Malthou…
The Malthouse/Sydney Theatre Company production of Thomas Bernhard's 1984 play The Histrionic is, apparently, the first professional production of Bernhard's work anywhere in Australia. The …
For the past couple of weeks, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival has crashed over our fair city like a tidal wave, dragging the crowds and a bunch of increasingly exhausted critics …
A few years ago, I spent some time with the Seagram Rothkos in the Tate Modern collection. Grouped together in a specially designed gallery, they are extraordinary paintings: their profound …
Once upon a time, O my best beloved, when the jungle was so primitive that not one animal had an iPhone, Ms Alison did one thing at a time, and that thing was mostly poems. But the gods of b…
