US academic John Greenway first visited Australia in 1955, finding himself enthralled by the country in general and Aborigines in particular. Gloriously opinionated, enthusiastic and entirely admirable, his often grim truths have seen him 'disremembered' for being far too honest

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Espionage story, family story, incredible story -- that's the essence of Victor and Frances Metianen's journey from the cricket-club social scene of suburban Sydney in the 1930s to the dark world of what they believed in their fervent innocence to be Stalin's workers' paradise

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Gloria played at the Griffin Theatre from August 26 to October 8. Guerilla: Le jour où tout s’embrasa by Laurent Obertone Éditions Ring, 2016, 425 pages, 20 euros   Gloria may well be a love song to the great women who act on our stages, who we call upon to embody the imaginative state of […]

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Andrew Bolt was attacked and ridiculed for factual errors when exploring Aboriginal biographies. In this regard he has company, as one of the most vocal assailants in the infamous 'white Aborigines' trial appears no less ignorant of her antecedents

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Saturday, July 30. Much publicity and crowds of theatregoers and curious in London for the opening of J.K. Rowling’s play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The following day the rehearsal script was published internationally as an e-book and in a lavish hardback edition. Rave reviews for the play, huge sales for the script. First […]

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Australian theatre generally ignored the overheated climate change conversation, and so missed being able to offer the real reason for hot weather and rising seas. The identity of the anonymous Weatherwoman, whose revolutionary theory is expounded in this play, will perhaps always remain unknown because at the time these events occurred the Climate Change Corporation […]

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Samuel Beckett played and enjoyed cricket. He also won a Nobel Prize, but only for literature. There have long been rumours that in his youth he wrote a play about the sport. In recent astonishing news the lost play appears to have been found. In 1957 Beckett’s Endgame was first performed at London’s Royal Court […]

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Comédie française: Ça a débuté comme ça… by Fabrice Luchini Flammarion, 2016, 256 pages, 19 euros   A fabled actor has written a book, a good one. His face will be familiar from films like Gemma Bovery, Bicycling with Molière, Potiche, The Women on the 6th Floor, In the House, Molière—or, filmed before his days […]

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There is a tall mound of black earth on stage. I like it very much. Naturally, at the Sydney Theatre Company, it looks to be a clean, neat, trim and well-behaved pile of soil, nothing at all like the “colossal cowpat” the Sydney Morning Herald described. The play is Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age, the […]

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Although the “Iraqi money affair” is regarded as a post-Dismissal sideshow it may well be part of a much larger endeavour: the flow of Middle Eastern money to unions and pro-Arab, anti-Israel activists in Australia. The cast of shady characters makes such speculation impossible to avoid

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