163 stories by "Alison Croggon"
A quick pointer to George Hunka's excellent roundup of the scandal unfolding around Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, in which journalistic and theatrical ideas of truth…
A quick pointer to Jana Perkovic's fascinating critique of The Wild Duck, and the conversation which it's prompting. Warning: long. But stimulating.
I missed the opening night of The Seed. From other reviews I've read, this was probably a good thing: sometimes it strikes me that press night is probably the worst time to review anything. …
Over the past week or so, I have announced in every possible internet way my intention of seeing less theatre and giving some necessary time to my other writing hats. It is somewhat awkward …
Ms TN is heading up to Sydney tomorrow to participate in Belvoir St's upcoming Sunday Forum on Reviewing Theatre: In Print and Online. My fellow panelists, moderated by The Chaser's Chris Ta…
Under the curation of new artistic director Jonathan Holloway, the 2012 Perth Festival generated more energy than a windfarm in a tornado. My only real regret - and regret it I do - is that …
When I emerged from Beautiful Burnout, the National Theatre of Scotland and Frantic Assembly's examination of the art of boxing, I tweeted enthusiastically (in twitter language, which as you…
From the moment that Philip Glass's insistent, spiralling score erupts in the auditorium, this revival of Lucinda Child's 1979 work Dance is relentless. Each dance in this trilogy begins and…
On this mercifully cool Perth day, Ms TN found herself in a fragile state. This is entirely the fault of the "festive" part of "arts festival". After last night's show I …
UK Shakespearean company Propeller is an odd beast. Under the artistic direction of Edward Hall, its mission is to refresh Shakespeare using physical theatre. With this goes an attempt to re…
Mozart's The Magic Flute often seems to me like a quintessence of opera, equal parts nonsense and delight. It's an absurd fairytale, with all that form's arbitariness and illogic. It also in…
NB: Serious spoiler warnings.
After I left Teatro de los Sentidos's Oráculos last night, I wandered back to my hotel room through the Perth streets feeling as if my skin were luminous, a…
Regular readers will know that Ms TN has spent the past few years vainly attempting to find a balanced life. Every year I vow to see less theatre; every year my vow crumbles spectacularly, l…
After an interesting week in Melbourne, about which more soon, Ms TN is off to the Perth Festival tomorrow. It may do me good to be locked in a hotel room for a week, with my scope for procr…
In today's Age, critic Cameron Woodhead buys into the recent controversy around Shit on Your Play. For once, a sensible, informed piece about theatre blogging in the mainstream press. As he …
This really is from the archives. I was looking for something else when I stumbled across this piece, which I have no recollection of writing. It was in a folder that dates from when I was W…
Ever since the Atreides clan established the dramatic template for dysfunctional relationships, the theatre has been a burning glass in which the psychoses of everyday life are focused to a …
The launch of an independent news organisation is a major event in Australia, where the fiercest debates about our media circle around the fact that we have the highest concentration of medi…
The Midsumma Festival occurs at an awkward time of year for Ms TN. Through January, I am usually cowering in a bunker, resolutely ignoring the explosions as the year's first press releases b…
One of the paradoxes of art is the uneasy legacy of success. As soon as a work is labelled a "classic", it becomes curiously invisible: it transforms into a monument, cobwebbed by …
Was that 2011? I'm thinking of the Venerable Bede's story, in which one of King Edwin's thanes compares the life of a man (with the Anglo-Saxons it was always a man) to the swift flight of a…
It's tempting to consider what Mary MacLane's life might have been, had she been born male. For one thing, I might have had a better chance of having heard of her: the work of interesting wo…
The great holiday guillotine has now slammed down across Ms TN's diary, and so last week I saw my last shows for the year. And then, in the way of the these things, I promptly came down with…
Ms TN seems unable to get her sentences together today, so let me briefly flag a couple of theatrical events that opened this week, both from Melbourne's thriving independent scene. Get thee…
George Hunka at Superfluities Redux (whom I'm sure you all read religiously) blogs on the recurrent death of criticism, and in particular on the argument that its death sentence is signed b…
