Reviews

It’s hard to think of a more thrilling decade than the 1920’s, so catastrophically bookended by wars and tyranny, but so explosive in its arts, modernity and social advances.  

Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s one-hour concert series here squeezes in three compelling works from the roaring twenties.  It begins with Igor Stravinsky’s spirited suite drawing on works attributed to the 18th-century composer Giovanni Pergolesi , and relishing the Italian’s  theatricality and comedia dell arte.  

A loose adaptation of American gothic feminist/horror story The Yellow Paper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892), writer/director Eleanor Golding has offered an ambitious modern interpretation that takes this tale to another level.

Oy vey, what a play! A delicious mix of mysticism, gender politics, lust, suspense, Yiddish, ancient Jewish lore and cross dressing. And yes, and there is some nudity.

Enough schmutz* to drag people away from the Hot Rabbi on Netflix.

Isaac Singer penned the short story Yentl the Yeshiva Boy – but hated Barba Streisand’s 1983 film adaptation. Streisand kept the core of the story about an orthodox Eastern-European Jewish woman, who dresses as a man so she can study Jewish scriptures, but shaped it as a vehicle for her own talent.

This show features 15 iconic First Nations songs, reworked by smooth singer Adam James, backed by a 13-piece jazz orchestra – and it is one of the most enjoyable evenings of Australian music you will ever experience. I absolutely loved every minute of it. Having made his mark as a country singer, Adam James is getting back to his childhood roots and reinventing himself as ‘The Quandamooka Crooner’, revisiting the African-American swing, soul, jazz and blues that he and his family grew up singing and dancing to.