7 UP
THE MONO-MAGNIFICENT SEVEN: CINEMA’S ICONIC LONERS
THEATRE
By John Eagle
REVIEWS
1. Alain Delon in Le Samourai (1967)
WICKED
2. Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952) 3. Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (1976) 4. Alan Ladd in Shane (1952) 5. Clint Eastwood in A Fistful Of Dollars (1964) 6. Steve McQueen in Bullitt (1976) 7. Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967)
THIS WEEK IN TUESDAY 8 Circa - the physically extreme circus with feelings. Opening Night. Sydney Opera House until 13 June. Creative Sydney - workshops, talks and panels on the future of creative industries. MCA until 13 June. Full Body Contact No Love Tennis - weekly improv comedy night. Roxbury Hotel, Glebe. Green - a group show of environmentally responsible and sustainable artists. Brenda May Gallery Waterloo until 4 July. Sex Bondage And Books - Gretel Pinniger, AKA Madam Lash, and her biographer Sam Everingham, in conversation. Riverview Hotel, Balmain. Stereo Portraits - Closing night of Alex Fry and Jamie Nimmo’s 3D photography show. Oh Really, Newtown. Sydney Film Festival - screenings include I Killed My Mother, Lemmy and The Disappearance Of Alice Creed.
WEDNESDAY 9 Body And Soul – Classic 1947 boxing film about an Upper East Side Jewish kid making good but succumbing to the seedier side of success. AGNSW. (Also screening Sunday afternoon.) Sixteen – launch of a survey of contemporary Australian photography. Somedays, Surry Hills until 16 June. Sydney Film Festival - screenings include The Runaways, Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Mr Vampire and The Waiting City. Taller Than Wide – video portraits by Harriet Body, Joel Burrows, Hugh Marchant and Stella Rosa McDonald. Opening Night. Mils Gallery, Surry Hills until 16 June. Unfolding Florence: The many lives of Florence Broadhurst – the mysteriously murdered designer is examined in this film with a panel discussion afterward. Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts, Pitt St.
THURSDAY 10 PechaKucha – six presenters and a screening from Portable.TV. SuperDeluxe @ ArtSpace. Russell Brand – appearing one night only, live, as himself, at the Entertainment Centre. Stand-up comedy. Sydney Film Festival - screenings include Last Train Home, Teenage Paparazzo, Oil City Confidential and To Die Like A Man. Unsettling Country – an exhibition of Caroline Rannersberger’s emotive, windblown landscapes. Opening Night. Dominik Mersch Gallery, Waterloo until 10 July. W;t – the Pulitzer-winning drama of a professor of English re-evaluating her life after being diagnosed with • 50 • THE DRUM MEDIA 8 JUNE 2010
ARTS ovarian cancer. Opening Night. New Theatre, Newtown until 10 July.
FRIDAY 11 La Bohème – a recording of the Royal Opera’s version of the Puccini masterpiece screens at the Norton St and Verona Palace cinemas between today and 16 June. New York Genius – last day of Lou Reed’s selections from the Magnum Photos Archive, on display in the Western Foyer, Sydney Opera House. Sydney Film Festival – screenings include Women Without Men, Cane Toads: The Conquest and I Am Love.
SHOT SNAP-
BECOMING CYCLONE, 2010, TRIPTYCH (PIGMENT, BEESWAX, RESIN ON CEDAR WOOD PANELS) CAROLINE RANNERSBERGER Displaying as part of Caroline Rannersberger’s Unsettling Country exhibition at Dominik Mersch Gallery, Waterloo, Thursday 10 June to Saturday 10 July.
BARD IN A BLENDER
SATURDAY 12 After The Rainbow – last day of Soda Jerk’s interrogation of cinematic time via Judy Garland. Kudos Gallery, Paddington. Lady Gaga: Diva or Muppet? – a debate on the cultural legitimacy of her pants-less, Beyoncécollaborating innovations. Serial Space, Surry Hills. Medium: Vinyl – last day of this exhibition of works on records by local and international artists. Hardware Gallery, Enmore. Picasso At The Lapin Agile – Steve Martin’s play about Picasso arguing with Einstein has its final show tonight. TAP Gallery, Darlinghurst. Redemption – closing night of Fiona Pulford’s vision of a family and a stranger as survivors of a plague. Old Fitzroy Theatre, Woolloomooloo. Sydney Film Festival - screenings include The Killer Inside Me, Love Serenade, No One Knows About Persian Cats, Drive, Four Lions, Thirst and Cyrus.
SUNDAY 13 Sinister Cinema – scary films and free popcorn hosted by Dark Elvis. Forest Lodge Hotel, Glebe. Sydney Film Festival - screenings include Wasted On The Young, The Ghost Writer, The Game Of Death, Senso, Dracula AS 1972 and Dracula: Pages From A Virgin’s Diary. War Is Menstrual Envy – Annie Sprinkle in a Nick Zedd post-punk polemic, showing at SuperDeluxe @ ArtSpace as part of the Biennale of Sydney film festival. When Coreys Walked The Earth – ’80s film night/pyjama party hosted by triple j movie guy Marc Fennell. Powerhouse Museum.
MONDAY 14 Prosperity Without Growth – author Tim Jackson talks about sensible things to do about the economy with Clive Hamilton. Gleebooks, Glebe. The Rocks Fire Water – fourth and final night of performances, markets, music and flame sculptures harbourside as part of Vivid Sydney. Sydney Film Festival – screenings include Hesher, Creation, The Most Dangerous Man In America and Me, Too.
Believe it or not, the above image is actually from the Bell Shakespeare’s upcoming performance of Just Macbeth!, which, yes, is a new(er) version of the Bard’s classic play. This time with blenders. Based on children’s author Andy Griffiths’ book of the same name, Just Macbeth! turns tradegy into the tragically silly. And we can’t wait. Starring Patrick Brammall, Pippa Grandison, John Leary, Rhiannon Owen and Mark Owen-Taylor, Just Macbeth! (not just for kids) runs Saturday 26 June to Saturday 31 July at the Playhouse, Sydney Opera House. More info and tickets from bellshakespeare.com.au.
JUST MACBETH!
Capitol Theatre Two years, several new principal cast members and one million visitors later, the Australian production of Wicked, one of the most important and successful musicals of the last decade, is still flying high. Many people, it would seem, won’t be able to watch The Wizard Of Oz the same way ever again. It must be said that, given everything that Wicked has going for it, Stephen Schwartz’s songs and lyrics don’t quite rise to meet the dizzying heights of the rest of the production – the Wicked cast’s recent Into The Woods concert highlighted the superiority of a certain other musical theatre Stephen. Still, there are some fine moments, such as the opening No One Mourns The Wicked (a close relative of the overture from Les Misérables) and What Is This Feeling? (a close relative of the school dance from West Side Story). Anyway, it’s perhaps remarkable that Wicked is an enjoyable night out even without the strongest score to come out of Broadway. First and foremost it’s one of the most visually spectacular shows you’re likely to see in this country (though I’m actually not sure about the relevance of the dragon), Winnie Holzman’s book is genuinely funny (Lucy Durack nails most of the show’s comedy as Glinda) and, even if the teeth of the Gregory Maguire novel it’s based on have been dulled a bit, the story is fairly ingenious. There are plenty of fabulous ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ moments for new audiences – and certainly enough for audience members making a return visit to enjoy all over again. Season ongoing DARRYN KING
LET THE DORE SWING LIZ GIUFFRE TALKS TO CANADIAN COMEDIAN JON DORE, IN SYDNEY PERFORMING STAND-UP FOR THE FIRST TIME.
C
anadian comic Jon Dore has never been to Australia before, but is here thanks to a little headhunting by Sydney’s Comedy Store management at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. Just as well we’ve got our comedic cowboys all over the globe. “I met one of the guys from the Store and we talked about me coming out, which was great,” Dore explains. “Initially it was going to be January, but my schedule wouldn’t allow it, then it was going to be March, and then this spot popped up and they asked if I could and it all worked out. I’ve always wanted to come to Australia so it was a combination of that and a willing participant on this end.” At the time of this interview Dore had only been on this side of the equator for a day, and he’s cheery without being too ‘comedy zany’. In Canada he’s made his name not only with stand-up, but also on TV, with time on the box including cameos on Canadian Idol (not as a singer, mind, and it was a while ago), and with his own show. “Some people called it a mockumentary but it wasn’t really one. I think one journalist once called it that and then that spread. But the
show was just me, or my character, going through certain situations and trying to test them. So ‘could I have children’, ‘what would I do if I had an STD’, those types of things,’” he says, as you do. For those fond of YouTube reconnaissance work Dore’s stand-up is also easy to access, with a recent routine about returning from Iraq particularly cool. Although he was there to perform for the troops, he feels the need to point out the rest of his audience there as well. Not every comedian talks about performing for the Taliban and ‘blowing the roof off the place’. “I realised there was an opportunity for comedy there ... but the aim was just to tell jokes, not anything more serious or anything like that.” Although Dore hasn’t done a lot of international travelling to date, he’s not too concerned about how his material will translate to local audiences. Feeling a responsibility to represent this country well, this writer felt compelled to make sure Dore was up on the local lingo here. “I haven’t asked for a lot of advise, but do I need to?” he asks. Well we begin with a warning about using the word ‘rooting’- means something a little different here than it does in the North.
“Ah, yeah, it means sex, doesn’t it? But how do you conjugate that verb? You wouldn’t say you were ‘rooting’ someone, would you?”, asks Dore. A little surprised at the comedian’s grasp of grammar, this writer, assuming a temporary role as unofficial representative of Tourism Australia replies, “Um, well no, probably just bogans.” “Right. And what’s a bogan?” More problems in the Tourism Australia end, but this writer tries
again. “Ah, a bit like trailer trash mixed with a redneck.” “OK. So Bogans would be ‘rooting’. I shouldn’t say that?” “Well, no, not if you want to root someone again,” replies Tourism Australia, now feeling under pressure. “Excellent, thanks for the tips very useful.” WHO: Jon Dore WHERE & WHEN: The Comedy Store until Saturday 12 June