Reviews

Brett Dean and Matthew Jocelyn tread on dangerous ground when adapting Shakespeare’s iconic masterpiece Hamlet for the opera stage. It could be a raging success or a dismal failure. Fortunately, it is the former. This production, staged by the Metropolitan Opera, delves deep into the psyche of the Prince of Demark, revealing his darkest fears.

Cast member Jing-Xuan Chan (as herself?) thanks us for coming to this performance of Caught but she warns us that there is content some may find distressing.  However, Red Stitch staff are on hand in the foyer to help.  Curious.  No other Red Stitch show that I’ve seen has begun like this.  Of course, we accept that this is ‘real’.  By the end, we’ll realise that this welcome was another fiction, one of many serial fictions (or tricks), that we have kept accepting as ‘real’ only to have our trust disabused and the carpet

Nick Payne’s award-winning play Constellations is based on the possibility that there are multiple universes that can “pull people’s lives in different directions”. Or, that, as his character Marianne, a physicist, suggests: “several outcomes can coexist simultaneously” where “the decisions we do and don’t make will determine which of these futures we actually end up experiencing.”

The concept behind Anna K is a very clever way to suggest that sexism continues to reign in society despite historical progression. Anna K makes direct reference to Tolstoy’s famous novel Anna Karenina, its iconography and its themes. Contextualising it in a contemporary digital media landscape, where the damaging expression of societal disapproval can go completely unchecked, beautifully mirrors the ruthlessness of the aristocratic ambience of the novel. The parallels are extremely feasible and the alternative narrative outcome also is also very plausible.