The Naysayers: Hellfire Sing Sing album launch
“We made an album. Where’s our million bucks?!”
Culture
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Book Who’s Talking mini-episode: La Belle Sauvage
I was lucky to be asked to join Book Who’s Talking producer extraordinaire Josie to chat about master storyteller Philip Pullman‘s latest work, La Belle Sauvage, the first volume in the new The Book of Dust trilogy. Following on from the intelligent, subversive and wildly imaginative His Dark Materials trilogy, Pullman takes us back to…
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The Gonzo Hour
I recently had the joy of seeing Debbie Zukerman’s The Gonzo Hour as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
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Aeon
I have to preface this review by outlining what I will and won’t cover. Part of Aeon‘s specialness is the unexpected, the unsaid and the unpredictable, so I can’t describe the structure of the work too much, lest I spoil the delight and surprise for future audiences. So aside from the small number of details…
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James Vincent McMorrow
Returning to Australia, James Vincent McMorrow has upgraded his digs; last time I saw him perform live, it was the venerable Corner Hotel, shitty viewing angles, background noise clatter, surly staff and all. This time around, he played the Elizabeth Murdoch hall in the Melbourne Recital Centre, that carved wood and acoustically isolated grand parlour.…
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Book Who’s Talking
Book Who’s Talking is an ace new podcast from Fiona, Laura and Cool Ben. Each month the Book Who’s Talking team review a book, and even fantasy cast the film adaptations. The title for this month (and the first episode of the series) is Ready Player One from Earnest Cline. Packed with 80s pop culture references,…
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The Money
In an era heavy with self-publishing, from the selfie to the blogger influencer, from citizen journalism to reality TV, from political outsiders to plebiscites, we’ve rejected the elites and valorised the everywoman and everyman as earthy, connected and wise. Traditional arts and performance are challenged by the practically infinite stream of user-generated content, curated and hosted…
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Lilith: The Jungle Girl
Camp, trashtastic anachronism is the order of the day in Sisters Grimm’s Lilith: The Jungle Girl. Which is unsurprising on some level if you’ve ever seen a show from Declan Greene and Ash Flanders, or indeed just visited the company’s website. Blending the familiar colonial narrative tropes of taming-the-savage and classying-up-the-dame (TBH, pretty much the same story), and queering roles…
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Trailer: The Maze
Trailer shot for The Maze, an upcoming Melbourne Fringe Festival show written and directed by my partner, Kasey Gambling, and produced by The Honeytrap. The Maze takes a single audience member on a walking journey along night-time streets in North Melbourne, following an ‘ideal woman’ as she heads home from a bar. As she walks, the…
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The Punch Brothers, at the Melbourne Recital Centre
The stately Dame Elizabeth Murdoch Hall at the Melbourne Recital Centre is no stranger to hosting top-of-their-game musicians, virtuosos with something to prove. So to some degree, it’s no surprise the MRC programmers have taken another bite of the cherry in having the Punch Brothers return to play this space. The audience milling around the…
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Trailer: Real Piece of Work
A reel of video from a recent performance piece development, Real Piece of Work, by feminist theatre company The Honeytrap. Featuring performances by Debbie Zukerman and Kasey Gambling, directed by Jo Redfearn, and devised by all three women, Real Piece of Work explores a dystopian future and explores learned behaviours for woman, and what it means…
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The Decemberists at Hamer Hall, 29 March 2016
The Decemberists are one of my favourite, all-time bands. Hands down. Right up there. Ever since my sister introduced me to the band in the early 2000s, I’ve devoured each of their albums voraciously, from the consistent, folk-rock-sea shanty-heavy to the increasingly country-rock to the progressively conceptual. The Decemberist’s last visit to Melbourne several years ago…