FILM VENUS & ADONIS 8/10 Awaiting classification, 144 minutes In cinemas January 20 Damien Ryan’s commanding film-directing debut opens with a quote from writer Peter Handke: “If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.” We now know what that’s like, at least in relation to our on-stage storytellers.…
Category: Features
Had there been no plague to close the London theatres in 1592, Shakespeare may never have penned his epically erotic poem Venus and Adonis. Had there been no COVID in 2020, Damien Ryan would certainly not have made a film based on that poem. Ryan had written a play interweaving…
NON-FICTION Tony Wellington Monash University Publishing, $34.95 “If you remember the ’60s,” goes winking the old line, “you weren’t really there.” Author Tony Wellington was there as a child and teen: young enough to avoid terminal brain damage; old enough to be infatuated by the music. He became a musician…