Reviews

Imagine taking all the “important” plays of the great Western Canon and stripping them right down to the meaty bits—the bits where people die. Well, you don’t have to imagine, because it’s been done already by Zoë Coombs Marr, Mish Grigor and Natalie Rose in Oedipus Schmoedipus.

This long-running Off-Broadway revue was a perfect fit for the Savoyards audience - a middlebrow look at male-female relationships presented in a series of sketches and songs that covered nerds on a date, macho posturing, baby-talking parents, geriatric romance and others. Not the wittiest or incisive work in the world, the music mines the pastiche basket and lite rock, the lyrics rhyme (even if falsely at times), but it’s genial and undemanding.

human requiem (no capital letters) was the most amazing way to finish off the 2018 Adelaide Festival. This was the counterweight to delving the depths with warring kings, revengeful brothers and murderous uncles.

The examination of the human condition continued in the music of The German Requiem by Brahms, which takes its listeners on a journey that reminds us that we are mortal and will therefore die.

There is grief, that this is so, followed by gratitude for the life lived and acceptance that death is part of life, wonder and joy.  

Woollarawarre Bennelong was an Eora man, from the Wangal clan in the Port Jackson area. In 1789 he was captured by order of Governor Phillip and taken to Sydney, essentially to enable the study of the “savage”. However, Bennelong learnt English and became a crucial intermediary between his clan and the colonial forces.