Don’t expect to come out of this production with your faith (or otherwise) in a Higher Power shifted one way or the other. But you can be reasonably sure that you will emerge in some way moved. Anthony Gooley and Elijah Williams in A Case for the Existence of God. Photo © Phil Erbacher Samuel D. Hunter’s single set play opens in an office cubicle in Twin Falls, Idaho, where two men have come together to talk over a mortgage. The hopeful applicant is Ryan (played by Anthony Gooley), the recently separated dad of a toddler daughter. He’s hoping to buy a remnant of the land on which his forebea ..read more

Australian actor Sarah Snook is among the winners in the 2024 Olivier Awards, staged in London last night in a ceremony hosted by actor Hannah Waddingham. Receiving the award for Best Actress, Snook’s win is yet another feather in the cap for the Kip Williams-directed Sydney Theatre Company production The Picture of Dorian Gray, now playing on the West End until 11 May. The production also earned a Mithridate Award for Best Costume Design for Marg Horwell. On receiving the award, Snook said: “It’s an incredible honour to be on the stage in the West End and this is not something that I thought ..read more

Longtime housemates Amaliah and Kaveh are a couple in some ways, not so much in others. She’s a Pakistan-born singer and actor trying to extend her residency in Australia. He’s a gay Kabul-born doctor, now an Australian citizen. Antony Makhlouf and Almitra Mavalvala in For the Love of Paper. Photo © LSH Media With a possible deportation, looming, they decide to suppress their ethical concerns, ignore suggestions from parents in their countries of birth (where Kaveh, understandably, has yet to come out) and enter the bureaucratic maze as a couple in the hope that Amaliah can also gain citizen ..read more

Traditionally the “merry month” in the northern hemisphere, May is very much the “busy month” here in Australia. The May edition of Limelight is proof of it. This month’s cover image features a production shot from Tosca, directed by Edward Dick for Opera North in the UK. Opera Australia presents the production in Melbourne this month and at the Sydney Opera House between June and August. Photo © James Glossop It’s 100 years since Giacomo Puccini died after suffering a heart attack aged 65 in 1924. His music lives on however – and as strongly as it ever did, despite the various criticisms le ..read more

The 41st annual Green Room Awards were presented in a ceremony held at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre on Monday evening. Melbourne Theatre Company took away awards for six of its 2023 productions, with Patricia Cornelius’s play My Sister Jill recognised with awards for Outstanding Production, Outstanding Ensemble, Direction (Susie Dee) and Outstanding Lighting Design (Rachel Burke). Melbourne Theatre Company’s My Sister Jill. Photo © Sarah Walker MTC’s Bernhardt/Hamlet was awarded Outstanding Costume Design (Marg Horwell), Declan Furber Gillick’s Jacky collected the Outstanding New Australian Wr ..read more

After more than a quarter of a century, Patrick Marber’s Closer retains its power to shock its audience. That was audibly apparent on this opening night, especially among audience members too young to have seen the original La Boite production in 2000, and who presumably hadn’t watched the 2004 film version either. Their gasps continued throughout Marber’s excoriating examination of a London foursome’s intertwining obsessions conflating love and sex. Sometimes it was at the situations, sometimes the extreme expletives. The reaction surprised me, because social mores have become a lot less rig ..read more

Out bush somewhere live farming couple Ray (Colin Friels) and Floss (Kerry Armstrong). They’re plenty used to hard times around here, but we’re meeting them in a period of maximum stress. Drought pushed them to the edge and now heavy rains have arrived, stranding and drowning dozens of heifers, which now have to be hauled from the mud and buried. Debts to the bank are mounting and the gun-happy neighbours – a local dynasty of crooks and stock thieves – are becoming more and more troublesome. Pretty much par for the course, you might think. Australian farming life in a nutshell. But Ray and Flo ..read more

Sydney Theatre Company has announced that its Artistic Director Kip Williams is stepping down from the role. The move comes in the wake of the recent West End opening of his STC production of A Picture of Dorian Gray and ahead of its transfer to New York City later in the year. STC Artistic Director, Kip-Williams. Photo © Daniel Boud Williams will direct one production for STC in 2025 and oversee a tour of his adaptation of Dracula, the third play in his ‘Gothic trilogy’ (alongside Dorian Gray and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) scheduled to open in Sydney in July. Since taking ov ..read more

The British actor Adrian Schiller, who played the role of Henry Lehman in the touring production of The Lehman Trilogy seen recently in Sydney, has died. He was 60. A statement released by his representative, Scott Marshall Partners, said: “[Adrian] has died far too soon, and we, his family and close friends are devastated by the loss.” “His death was sudden and unexpected and no further details around its cause are yet available.” Adrian Schiller (centre, with Aaron Krohn, left and Howard W. Overshown, right) in The Lehman Trilogy, Sydney 2024. Photo © Daniel Boud In a social media tribute ..read more

The Green Room Awards have played host to more than a few upsets over the years. 2023 wasn’t one of those years. Everyone expected Kip Williams’ excellent The Picture of Dorian Gray to sweep the boards and it did. But the 2024 awards may feature a surprise or two (or three, to be exact), because there’s an underdog. The Marvellous Elephant Man: Annelise Hall, Kanen Breen, Sam Harmon and Marc Lucchesi. Photo © Paul Scott In less than 18 months, an original, independent Australian production rose from complete obscurity to headline the world-famous Spiegeltent at the 2023 Sydney Fringe Festiva ..read more