Reviews

M.C. Escher, the Dutch artist who explored concepts of alternate realities, impossible objects and infinity in his works, provided the inspiration for Dawson Nichols’ Escher’s Hands.  Named for Escher’s well-known artwork ‘Drawing Hands’, which depicts two hands drawing each other, Escher’s Hands explores ideas of control, of cause and effect and of freewill.

Australian playwright Wendy Beckett’s tribute to twentieth century French artist Camille Claudel premiered in French, in Paris, at the Théâtre de l'Athénée Louis Jouvet in 2018 in the midst of the #MeToo movement.

Think about it! An Australian playwright dramatizing the work of a famous female French artist, but one who was terribly ill-used by the society of the time. How did the critics react, I wondered? Here are just a few snippets of what they said:

A piece all powerful in its subtlety …  (Publik Art Review)

The Ensemble Theatre revisits this 1995 Melbourne play under the banner of Australian Classic, and I can see why. It has played in London and New York and just about everywhere else. Author Joanna Murray-Smith has given an assured take on comfortable middle class marriage and its essential failure to deliver happiness to all concerned: wife, husband, daughter and interloper.

Kicking off as the new artistic director of the Australian Ballet, David Hallberg follows his recent debut with New York Dialects with another artful triple bill spanning decades in classical ballet. As Counterpointe leaps from Petipa to Balanchine to William Forsythe, the echoes are compelling.