Reviews

Three of the most interesting characters in Black Swan's Rising Water are the rudderless, motorless and sailless yachts, Goodness, Shirley and Mercy, which form the set of Tim Winton's play. Gorgeously designed by Christina Smith, they have distinctive personalities and are wonderful metaphors for the characters that live aboard them, tethered to a Fremantle marina.

Frederico Garcia Lorca describes duende as a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought - the duende surges up inside from the soles of the feet.

One can sense that Lorca’s play Blood Wedding is full of this ‘mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained’. But unfortunately Iain Sinclair’s production of this Spanish classic falls short and rather than being full of passion it feels more like an academic display of what he thinks Lorca is all about.

It is a little presumptuous of HIT to advertise this production of The Sum of Us as the “Australian Stage Premiere”, considering that it has been staged – and staged well – by community theatre groups ever since the rights became available. Nevertheless, this is a very contained production.

EYEBROWS were raised when Isobel Denholm was named as the director of The Club. What would a woman know about the wheeling-dealing and disputes that went on in the world of players and committee members of a football club?

But Denholm has had a husband and three sons, all football fanatics, so she’s well aware of the passions sports can raise. That was certainly evident in this production, which was the best of many stagings of The Club I have seen since its 1977 premiere.