Set in 1998, amid the proliferation of chatrooms, a fascination with the occult and some of the witchy horror movies of the era, such as May (2002) and The Craft (1996) – The Exact Dimensions of Hell sets out to examine the desires of young women and the abuse of power within uneven relationships. This production reflects the themes and aesthetic, albeit with an Australian suburban twist. Despite its promising premise, however, Bridget Mackey’s latest work doesn’t quite reach the heights it could. Matilda Gibbs in The Exact Dimensions of Hell. Photo © Darren Gill The play commences with an e ..read more

Play Video about Cover of Limelight's May 2024 issue The May 2024 issue of Limelight is now available online, with hard copies on their way to those with a print subscription. Click below to go straight to the issue, or continue on to find out what’s inside. May 2024 The Power of Puccini Why are Puccini’s operas so popular a century after his death? by Alexandra Wilson Bow & Baton Umberto Clerici’s rapid rise from cellist to chief conductor. by Yvonne Frindle Child’s Play What makes a child prodigy and how to nurture them. by Shamistha de Soysa New Ways to Dream Sar ..read more

Kip Williams is to step down as Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director at the end of 2024 after eight years in the position. STC made the announcement following the huge success of his adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in London’s West End, starring Sarah Snook. The production, which premiered in Sydney in 2020 with Eryn Jean Norvill in the solo role, is slated for a 2025 Broadway season. Williams will soon begin rehearsals for his new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – the third play in his Gothic ‘cine-theatre’ trilogy (alongside Dorian Gray and Strange Case o ..read more

Few of us have been untouched by mental illness, directly or indirectly, which partly accounts for the success of London-based Australian playwright Kendall Feaver’s debut work. Premiering in Manchester in 2018, when it won the UK Theatre Award for Best New Play – one of several accolades – The Almighty Sometimes has been presented by companies around the world including Queensland Theatre and Sydney’s Griffin Theatre. So, one could say this MTC production is overdue. However, director Hannah Goodwin’s focused, sensitive interpretation and the fine cast, particularly Nadine Garner and Max McKe ..read more

“It’s not the end of the world,” sings The Girl in Tell Me On A Sunday, as she picks herself up after another failed relationship and prepares to start anew. As performed here by the luminous Erin Clare, your heart goes out to her. Erin Clare in Tell Me On A Sunday, Hayes Theatre Co, 2024. Photo © John McRae The bittersweet one-woman song cycle, featuring music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Don Black (who co-wrote the book and lyrics for Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard), first saw the light of day at the Sydmonton Festival – held on the grounds of Lloyd Webber’s country estate – in 19 ..read more

In 1943, a group of refugee aliens – most of them ‘Dunera Boys’ – created and performed a revue titled Sergeant Snow White at the Union Repertory Theatre at the University of Melbourne. This year, on its 81st anniversary, the University of Sydney’s Ian Maxwell, chair of Theatre and Performance Studies, has recreated the show with its original script and a cast of student actors for showings in Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre. “This project investigates, in and through performance practice, this extraordinary work, the circumstances in which it was created, and its complex – and overlooked– l ..read more

It’s not a spoiler to say that by the end of Red Stitch’s arresting new staging of Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God, there is a pamphlet for a mortgage broker floating in pitch black water onstage. It’s the perfect symbol for the play, which often finds near-divine (though never explicitly religious) meaning in the everyday, seemingly banal things that make a life. We begin the show in the middle of what is perhaps the most banal thing: a meeting with a mortgage broker. The recently divorced, blue-collar Ryan (Darcy Kent) is trying to secure a loan for a 12-acre piece of land ..read more

We seldom see Thomas Bernhard’s play performed on the Australian stage. In 35 years of fairly hardcore theatre going, this is only the third play by one of the most important writers in the 20th-century Germanosphere I’ve seen. The second was an STC production of The Histrionic, back in 2012. The first, Force of Habit, directed by Jean-Pierre Mignon for Anthill Theatre in Melbourne in 1993, featured Julie Forsyth, who is (fun fact) also in this production. We shouldn’t be surprised. Like his German language contemporaries Peter Handke and Botho Strauss, Bernhard (who died in 1989) is, in box o ..read more

A ..read more

A ..read more