John Shand | Music & Other Spheres Posts

September 6, 2015 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

Wharf 1 Theatre, September 1 Is morality an absolute or is it coloured by perspective, whether of culture, power, religion, wealth or passage of time? Is it merely a matter of convenience? What of retribution? In his exceptional 1990 play Ariel Dorfman shuns the obvious and obliges us to question…

September 4, 2015 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

Belvoir Downstairs Theatre, August 29 Verdi’s Violetta got off lightly. She merely died of consumption at the end of his La Traviata. The Violetta in this reinvention by Sisters Grimm (Ash Flanders and Declan Greene) dies the much slower and more horrible death of struggling to hold an audience. In…

September 1, 2015 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

Old Fitz Theatre, August 27 You can’t get closer to the action than the Old Fitz’s front row. The actors brush your trouser cuffs and you breathe their cigarette smoke. In such proximity any gaps in the truth would be gaping fissures, magnified further by the extravagant silences that punctuate…