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# John Shand

Writing in the Dark

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## Posts

- [PEOPLE INSIDE ME](https://johnshand.com.au/10706-2/) - Flight Path Theatre, August 6 6/10 Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, indeed. People Inside Me is the first play I’ve seen set in a crematorium. Plays galore have people dying in them, with the satirically macabre Titus Andronicus serving up 14 of its characters, but few are so specifically about death itself, and the
- [FIDDLER ON THE ROOF](https://johnshand.com.au/fiddler-on-the-roof/) - Theatre Royal, August 5 7/10 Tevye’s is such an indomitable heart as makes him larger than life: a force of nature who wears with all that 1905 Imperial Russia can throw at a poor Jewish dairy farmer. Beyond coping, this champion of tradition even learns to adapt to a changing world. He can find joy
- [GOODNIGHT SWEET PRINCE](https://johnshand.com.au/goodnight-sweet-prince/) - Old Fitz Theatre, August 2 6/10 Hamlet is all the rage. In June, Eddie Izzard brought us one-hander, The Tragedy of Hamlet, and in January, the endearing curiosity that is Hamlet Camp, penned and performed by ex-Hamlets Brendan Cowell, Ewen Leslie and Toby Schmitz, returned to Carriageworks. Last year saw the movie Hamnet contextualising Shakespeare’s
- [PRIDE & PREJUDICE (SORT OF)](https://johnshand.com.au/pride-prejudice-sort-of/) - Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, July 18, 6.5/10 Who knew? Jane Austen seems to have been exhumed, forcibly led to the altea, ordered to place her hand on a dogeared copy of Pride and Prejudice, and married off to a cross between a Carry On movie and some modern-day piece of music hall. Had she
- [THE ADDAMS FAMILY](https://johnshand.com.au/the-addams-family/) - Hayes Theatre, July 14 8.5/10 They’re still creepy and kooky, but they’re also infinitely more of a scream than in the ’60s TV series, of which this 2009 musical is the lovechild. Common to both shows is the centrality of Morticia, on TV played by the lustrous Carolyn Jones, and here by Erika Heynatz in
- [DEALING WITH CLAIR](https://johnshand.com.au/dealing-with-clair/) - Old Fitz Theatre, July 12 6.5/10 Like a single parent and a teenager sharing a cupboard-sized flat, this is two clashing plays trying to inhabit the same stage. British playwright Martin Crimp’s wrote it following the 1986 unsolved disappearance of young London estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, presumed murdered. But he frames the play as a
- [AN ILIAD](https://johnshand.com.au/an-iliad/) - Wharf Theatre 1, April 17 9.5/10 We go to theatre in the hope of a night like this, where the words flare like fireworks, and insights become revelations; where suddenly the stage seems as limitless as life, and you watch and listen in wonderment. An Iliad is that good. Twenty-seven years after he last performed
- [GUTENBERG! THE MUSICAL!](https://johnshand.com.au/gutenberg-the-musical/) - Hayes Theatre, April 15 7/10 For those of you who are reading this on a screen and didn’t know there was another way, about 586 years ago a German bloke named Johannes Gutenberg rather shook things up with a device called a printing press. While this did a thorough job of putting the clerical longhand
- [JON ROSE AT 75](https://johnshand.com.au/jon-rose-at-75/) - People’s Republic of Australasia, April 12 9/10 I first wrote about Jon Rose 43 years ago. While I have the misfortune to be 43 years older, his art is not. It is still just as fresh, funny, surprising, beautiful, subversive, inventive and defiant. The defiance is intrinsic. Rose has devoted his life to art of
- [ENGLISH](https://johnshand.com.au/english/) - Reginald Theatre, April 11 8/10 “When you speak another language… you go years without making anyone laugh,” Marjan says towards the end of this play, in which she helps four Iranian students in Karaj prepare for their Test of English as a Foreign Language exam. Her statement is mildly ironic, given her teaching capacity, and
- [Ten Part Invention](https://johnshand.com.au/ten-part-invention-2/) - Time Is Moved (ABC/Ten Part Invention) 8/10 Somone’s been tinkering under the bonnet of the band I once called the Rolls Royce of Australian jazz. With a few spark plugs changed, it’s purring again – and roaring when the accelerator’s depressed. In the 20 years since Sydney’s 10-piece Ten Part Invention last recorded, their fearless
- [DOUBT: A PARABLE](https://johnshand.com.au/doubt-a-parable/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, July 4 8.5/10 We all suffer from doubt. Even the politicians. They’ve just perfected hiding theirs behind a veneer of certainty. John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 Doubt makes most plays seem absurdly one-dimensional. It was true of Sydney Theatre Company’s 2006 staging, of Shanley’s 2008 film with Meryl Streep and Philip
- [HOUSE OF ROT](https://johnshand.com.au/house-of-rot/) - Hayes Theatre, June 24, 8/10 Finally! Theatre that embraces the bizarre! It makes you realise how just mundane so much art of all stripes really is; how it sets about fulfilling expectations, rather than subverting them. House of Rot is Uber-theatrical, as it dances between Dada, theatre of the absurd and musical cabaret. Like a
- [THE ROOMMATE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-roommate/) - Ensemble Theatre, June 23 6.5/10 “There’s a great liberty in being bad,” Sharon tells us, with all the zeal of the reformed do-gooder. She’s only come to mischief in her mid-50s, having “retired” from her marriage (preceded by her husband), and advertised for a housemate – or “roommate”. Sharon (Lucy Bell) lives in Iowa City,
- [Nancye Hayes: 65 years of doing what she loves](https://johnshand.com.au/nancye-hayes-65-years-of-doing-what-she-loves/) - As a five-year-old, Nancye Hayes had an epiphany when she saw the musical Annie Get Your Gun. “I knew then exactly what I wanted to do,” she says. “I kept saying to my mother, ‘When I grow up, I'm going on the stage’. She'd just sigh and say, ‘Oh, that'll be nice, dear.’” The future
- [THE RIVER](https://johnshand.com.au/the-river/) - Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera Huse April 7 7/10 When I was about eight, I became lost in a forest, and found it the most exhilarating feeling I’d known. I suspect British playwright Jez Butterworth sought to give his audiences a similar sense of disorientation with The River. Time bends, characters swap places, and we’re at
- [Young/Cheviet/Lelievre](https://johnshand.com.au/young-cheviet-lelievre/) - Breath (Newmarket) 8/10 Christopher Young is something of a maverick on Melbourne’s jazz scene, only occasionally releasing albums, but always having something worth saying. He’d known Dom Cheviet, a fellow reeds player from France, for 25 years before they finally got around to collaborating, and what a project it is. They laid down rhythmic beds
- [BETTE & JOAN](https://johnshand.com.au/bette-joan/) - Ensemble Theatre, March 27 8/10 Acting is a challenging art. Playing real people – especially those with whom the audience is readily familiar – is tougher, still. Now the actor is torn between mimicry and shooting for something that blends reality and artistry. The audience, meanwhile, easily becomes preoccupied with the accuracy of the representation.
- [Belinda Bromilow: Wrangling butterflies, families and phones](https://johnshand.com.au/belinda-bromilow-wrangling-butterflies-families-and-phones/) - Belinda Bromilow sprang into the world’s imagination wrangling butterflies. Such was the impact of the Sydney actor’s performance as the eccentric Aunt Elizabeth (whose hobby was training butterflies) in Stan’s series The Great that she’s been mobbed by fans from an airport in Zimbabwe to a restaurant in Portugal. Created and written by Bromilow’s husband,
- [TRUCK DRIVER](https://johnshand.com.au/truck-driver/) - Sydney Opera House Studio, June 17 7/10 Jonny Hawkins first blazed on to the Sydney stage in 2021, playing the finely drawn, elderly Kings Cross eccentric Maureen, in the self-penned Maureen: Harbinger of Death, for one-actor. Five years later, and Hawkins has a new character to inhabit: now he is Bev, an owner-driver long-haul truckie,
- [CHRIS BOTTI](https://johnshand.com.au/chris-botti-2/) - Concert Hall, June 15 8/10 Well, that answers that question. In the four years since the Concert Hall’s major acoustic revamp, I haven’t sat up in the seats that seem nearer the Lower North Shore than the CBD. In case you’re wondering, the sound is equally pristine. Every note had absolute clarity, from the tiniest
- [SHOOTING HEDDA GABLER](https://johnshand.com.au/shooting-hedda-gabler/) - Reginald Theatre, June 13 8/10 Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is a play that, like the painting of Edvard Munch and saxophone playing of Jan Garbarek, enshrined the rest of the world’s idea that Norwegians revel in desolation and despair. In 2023, British playwright Nina Segal crafted this work about shooting a film of Hedda. Like
- [MY BRILLIANT CAREER](https://johnshand.com.au/my-brilliant-career-2/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, March 25 8/10 How many novels spawn a film, play, musical and forthcoming TV series? The fascination with Miles Franklin’s 1901 story continues because protagonist Sybylla’s debunking of patriarchal ideas of marriage as fulfillment for a woman, instead following a nascent dream of being a writer, so radical in its day, still
- [Bette Davis and Joan Crawford: The feud that lasted over 40 years](https://johnshand.com.au/bette-davis-and-joan-crawford-the-feud-that-lasted-over-40-years/) - The feud between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford makes subsequent hostilities between Taylor Swift and Kanye West, or Cardi B and Nicki Minaj, look like playground skirmishes. The Hollywood stars’ fabled 40-year vendetta is investigated in a play by Anton Burge, Bette & Joan, at Ensemble Theatre, with Jeanette Cronin and Lucia Mastrantone in the
- [JULIUS CAESAR](https://johnshand.com.au/julius-caesar-3/) - Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, March 11 7.5/10 Julius Caesar was my childhood pathway into Shakespeare: a heady mix of history and gripping verse. I skated over the curious plotting: not so much that the titular character’s dead – if not quite gone – by half way, but that this vacuum’s filled by Antony (who’s barely
- [IZZARD: THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET](https://johnshand.com.au/izzard-the-tragedy-of-hamlet/) - Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, June 10 6.5/10 Eddie Izzard loves a challenge. Her 131 marathons since 2009, raising money for charity, began with completing 43 of them in 51 days, despite no previous distance running. That gives context to her 140-minute version of Hamlet, playing all roles. For most actors, just playing the Dane is
- [Chris Potter](https://johnshand.com.au/chris-potter-2/) - Alive with Ghosts Today (Edition) 8/10 This is Chris Potter’s magnum opus, to date. Until now, I’d thought the saxophonist’s most important artistic statements came when he was in the late Paul Motian’s band. Alive with Ghosts Today sees him ratchet up the ambition, creating a suite memorialising the 1860 attempt by John Brown and
- [PRIMA FACIE](https://johnshand.com.au/prima-facie/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, June 4 8.5/10 This conquering hero of a play returns almost to where it began, and we’re reminded why it has earned such accolades. We witness the consummate craft and searing honesty that won Suzie Miller an Olivier Award in London, after scooping Griffin and Awgie Awards in Australia; that resulted in
- [AS YOU LIKE IT](https://johnshand.com.au/as-you-like-it-2/) - Flight Path Theatre, March 5 6.5/10 A golden moment comes in the first scene of Act IV, when Jade Fuda’s Rosalind (disguised as the youth Ganymede), asks Pat Mandziy’s Orlando what he would say to her, were she his Rosalind. “I would kiss before I spoke,” he replies, and Fuda gives an uncontainable giggle that
- [GRACE JONES](https://johnshand.com.au/grace-jones/) - Sydney Opera House Forecourt, February 28 7.5/10 Grace Jones would still be startling were she 37 rather than 77. I’ve seen teens with less energy and less joie de vivre, and few people of any age can hold a candle to her charisma. The other improbability is that her voice is better now than it
- [THE ELOCUTION OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN](https://johnshand.com.au/the-elocution-of-benjamin-franklin/) - Belvoir Downstairs Theatre, February 26 8/10 At the risk of revealing I’m over 21, I saw Gordon Chater’s unforgettable 1976 performance as Robert O’Brien in this one-actor play’s premiere season, in those heady days that confirmed Australian plays, acting and production could be world-class. It toured Australia, had acclaimed West End and off-Broadway seasons, and
- [MARTIN HAYES](https://johnshand.com.au/martin-hayes/) - Chatswood Concourse Concert Hall, February 25 8.5/10 Martin Hayes excels at enunciating the exquisite sadness of being. Like the trumpet playing of Miles Davis or the singing of Billy Holiday and Jose Carreras, it’s ever present in the great Irish violinist’s sound and phrasing. Beyond the airs and laments in which you expect it, he
- [Simon Burke scales a fabled Oz theatrical mountain](https://johnshand.com.au/simon-burke-scales-a-fabled-oz-theatrical-mountain/) - A young Simon Burke saw the poster for Nimrod Theatre Company’s The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin, showing a young boy smoking a cigarette, and wondered why he hadn’t been cast in the role. After all, he’d recently done Nimrod’s Kookaburra with The Elocution’s director, Richard Wherrett, and had since been a Prince in the Tower
- [TOOTSIE](https://johnshand.com.au/tootsie/) - Teatro at the Italian forum, May 29 7/10 Just as Michael Dorsey becomes confused masquerading as Dorothy Michaels to play the Nurse in a fruitcake musical called Juliet’s Curse, Tootsie is confused about what sort of musical it is. Most of the time it’s a comedy, and often a very funny one, with music and
- [DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS](https://johnshand.com.au/dirty-rotten-scoundrels/) - Hayes Theatre, May 27 8/10 Soham Apte’s set is as cute as a cavoodle: a cross between the French Riviera strand and indoor hotel luxury. A semicircular balustraded landing revolves to reconfigure the stage in multiple ways in a jiffy, while a fountain ingeniously becomes a roulette wheel. The pastel shades, combined with James Wallis’s
- [AT HOME AT THE ZOO](https://johnshand.com.au/at-home-at-the-zoo/) - Flight Path Theatre, May 22 8.5/10 Imagine if Botticelli, a couple of decades after painting The Birth of Venus, had decided to give her a haircut. Edward Albee did something even more radical, albeit with not such a masterpiece. His first play, 1959’s The Zoo Story, was a one-act piece set in New York’s Central
- [THE BIRDS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-birds/) - Belvoir St Theatre, May 20 8.5/10 This is Paula Arundell’s defining role. A one-actor adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds (which Alfred Hitchcock ensured pecked at a shared, ancient paranoia in his 1963 film version), it taps into every aspect of Arundell’s acting powers, and she’s never found wanting. When the fortunes of her
- [Paula Arundell: The intoxicating power of commanding a stage alone](https://johnshand.com.au/paula-arundell-the-intoxicating-power-of-commanding-a-stage-alone/) - Has someone been kidnapping actors? You settle in your seat in a theatre where six or eight actors routinely fill the stage, and find… just one? And for the next 100 minutes? One-actor plays may be as old as theatre, itself, but their frequency has suddenly radically increased. The list of those on Sydney stages
- [ART](https://johnshand.com.au/art/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, February 19 8/10 Imagine if where you are reading this review was just white space. No words. What if, rather than missing words, the white space constituted a work of visual art? Nothingness would be just as valid as much else that passes for art, after all. But what if your best
- [THE NORMAL HEART](https://johnshand.com.au/the-normal-heart/) - Drama Theatre, February 12 8/10 “Whoever thought you’d die from having sex?” asks Felix late in this play. AIDS has killed about seven times more people than COVID, behind which statistic lie value judgements made by governments, pharmaceutical companies, religious organisations, the medical profession and perhaps the public at large. Larry Kramer’s 1985 play is
- [SONDER](https://johnshand.com.au/sonder/) - Old Fitz Theatre, May 16 5/10 Coined by writer John Koenig, “sonder” is the profound realisation that everyone you see is the protagonist in their own life story. As Romeo puts it in this experimental piece of musical theatre, “The story you live is the one you pass down – your very own legend.” Sonder
- [ROMEO & JULIE](https://johnshand.com.au/romeo-julie/) - KXT on Broadway, May 13 7.5/10 No, that’s not a typo in the title: this is Welsh playwright Gary Owen’s contemporary take on star-crossed lovers, now set in Cardiff rather than Verona. His Romeo – called Romy (rhymes with “foamy”) – and Julie also have problematic parents, but there’s no feud. What thwarts this pair’s
- [84 CHARING CROSS ROAD](https://johnshand.com.au/84-charing-cross-road/) - Ensemble Theatre, May 6 8/10 Given the depravity, cruelty, hatefulness, bullying, vulgarity and duplicity that fill our news cycle, how refreshing it is to encounter an affirmation of humanity’s better side. It turns out we’re not inherently such an appalling species: we just seem to default to behaving that way. Helene Hanff’s 1970 epistolary memoir,
- [PURPOSE](https://johnshand.com.au/purpose/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, February 6 8/10 Faith has been a fickle mistress for Solomon Jasper. She’s steeled his will in the fight for Civil Rights, but failed to assuage his disappointment in his sons, or prevent his leaving an illegitimate brood in his wake. So Solomon, a retired living treasure among African Americans, has turned
- [AMPLIFIED: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett](https://johnshand.com.au/amplified-the-exquisite-rock-and-rage-of-chrissy-amphlett/) - Belvoir St Theatre, January 30 9/10 Long after Chrissy Amphlett’s band, The Divinyls, ground to a halt, she imagined doing a one-woman a theatrical show about herself and her songs. Having spent her Divinyls career playing a fiery, racy, pouting, unpredictable schoolgirl, she wanted a character this time, too, reportedly settling on a crow. It
- [Dreams of Falling's The Stories So Far](https://johnshand.com.au/dreams-of-fallings-the-stories-so-far/) - Come on the most eclectic trip you’ve ever been on with Dreams of Falling’s new show, The Stories So Far. That’s Rebecca Daniel on her exquisite 1741 violin and vocals, Leigh Birkett on guitars and vocals, and me on drums and spoken word. We’ll take you from Delius to an acoustic cousin of heavy metal,
- [Sheridan Harbridge: Channelling the Chrissy Amphlett monster](https://johnshand.com.au/sheridan-harbridge-channelling-the-chrissy-amphlett-monster/) - As a teenager, Sheridan Harbridge heard ’80s Oz rock band The Divinyls’ Chrissy Amphlett singing the explicit I Touch Myself on ABC TV’s Rage. It was a revelation for the future actor and writer. “I grew up Christian Pentecostal,” she says via Zoom, “and we were banned from watching naughty things like Doctor Who and
- [Barbra](https://johnshand.com.au/barbra/) - Hayes Theatre, January 22 7/10 Now here’s a puzzle. The Hayes’ Theatre artistic directors, Richard Carroll and Victoria Falconer, wanted a show celebrating Barbra Streisand, and asked Brittanie Shipway to direct it as well as perform in a cast of four. The creative team Shipway assembled has resulted in a sumptuous stage design from Brendan
- [The Three Seas](https://johnshand.com.au/the-three-seas/) - Antahkarana 8/10 What a great title. Antahkarana, the latest instalment of The Three Seas’ 13-year voyage into a previously uncharted fusion of traditional Bengali music, jazz, dub, pop and more, is Sanskrit for “inner instrument”. This refers to the place inside us where memory, intuition, identity and soul converge. Add the hearts and intellects of
- [Jerome Sabbagh](https://johnshand.com.au/jerome-sabbagh/) - Stand Up! (Analogoue Tone Factory) 8/10 When I first played this, I did a double-take; checked no one had slyly replaced my amp and speakers. No. So then I just bathed in the analogue sound: analogue at every stage of the album’s creation, including meticulous mastering to high-quality vinyl. Released on New York’s Analogue Tone
- [MAMA DOES DERBY](https://johnshand.com.au/mama-does-derby/) - Sydney Town Hall, January 16 1.5/10 You enter to find people skating around an oval on the Town Hall’s floor. Different, you think. Last year, it was the wild west; this year a roller-skating rink. You sit and watch these helmeted women going around and around, forwards, and then, clearly aware of the need for
- [DEAR SON](https://johnshand.com.au/dear-son/) - Belvoir St Theatre, January 10 8/10 How do you dramatise a book composed of letters? Isaac Drandic and John Harvey had many solutions in adapting Thomas Mayo’s Dear Son, consisting of letters he asked fellow Aboriginal men to write to their sons or fathers, and more solutions were probably added by Drandic in his role
- [PUTTING IT TOGETHER](https://johnshand.com.au/putting-it-together/) - Foundry Theatre, January 8 8/10 This makes one’s brain fizz without resort to champagne. When the wit, elegance, craft, intelligence and passion of Stephen Sondheim’s songs are married to superlative performances, ingenious arrangements and stylish design, I can’t imagine a more charmingly sophisticated night out. The apotheosis comes when Caroline O’Connor sings The Ladies who
- [The kaleidoscopic mind of Lonnie Holley](https://johnshand.com.au/the-kaleidoscopic-mind-of-lonnie-holley/) - Interviewing Lonnie Holley is like looking into a verbal kaleidoscope. Beautiful thoughts and patterns mingle with more obtuse forms and abstractions – rather like his songs, which are entirely improvised: not just the music, but the words, too. His life story is as unique as his music. One of 27 children, he became separated from
- [Martin Hayes talks about the tradition that keeps on giving](https://johnshand.com.au/martin-hayes-talks-about-the-tradition-that-keeps-on-giving/) - I was once in the Irish town of Kilkenny on a Monday night, almost universally the quietest night of the week for live music. Yet, of the dozen pubs I chanced upon, only two didn’t have people playing, with the music always Irish traditional. The good burghers of Kilkenny obviously saw no point in staying
- [Here are the five best shows I saw in 2025](https://johnshand.com.au/here-are-the-five-best-shows-i-saw-in-2025/) - 1 Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Belvoir St Theatre A mere handful of the thousands of shows I’ve seen have burned themselves permanently into my brain. They include Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Roy Dotrice in Brief Lives, Steven Berkoff’s Salome and Neil Armfield’s Cloudstreet. This list seldom expands, but last year it
- [A CHINESE CHRISTMAS](https://johnshand.com.au/a-chinese-christmas/) - KXT on Broadway, December 13 6.5/10 There’s no flashback as delightfully disorienting as an unreliable one. Trent Foo uses the device repeatedly in his debut play. The spiral of realities is made all the giddier by Foo’s also playing the protagonist Heepa, so Foo’s character is arguing about the veracity of what Foo, the playwright,
- [PRETTY WOMAN: THE MUSICAL](https://johnshand.com.au/pretty-woman-the-musical/) - Theatre Royal, December 4 6/10 I wracked my remaining brains on the way home, wondering what other musical made the songs its dull parts. Usually, of course, they’re the main event. Not in Pretty Woman: The Musical. Here, the show’s humming along rather enjoyably, and then when they start to sing, it feels like you’ve
- [DIAL M FOR MURDER](https://johnshand.com.au/dial-m-for-murder/) - Ensemble Theatre, December 3 7/10 Without the sharp editing available to a film-maker, on-stage thrillers tend to gurgle down the drain of melodrama. The wonder of this production of Dial M for Murder is that avoids that grisly end. Just. Alfred Hitchcock took Frederick Knott’s original play, and turned it into one of his greatest
- [Nils Petter Molvaer](https://johnshand.com.au/nils-petter-molvaer/) - Khmer Live in Bergen (Edition) 7.5/10 The material revisited on this live album was a mini-tornado tearing through the music world in 1997. Who knew you could use loops, beats and samples and still make something called jazz? The influence of Khmer was and remains immense. Wander past the Opera Bar at Sydney Opera House
- [THE SEAGULL](https://johnshand.com.au/the-seagull-2/) - KXT on Broadway, November 26 8/10 This is Chekhov’s The Seagull not so much adapted as recooked. The characters remain recognisable despite some renaming, and the story’s intact despite being set in Bellingen during Covid. The big change of ingredient is the dialogue, but even that remains close to the original’s spirit. Despite ending with
- [CONGRATULATIONS, GET RICH!](https://johnshand.com.au/congratulations-get-rich/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, November 25 3/10 The appropriate venue for this play was the bottom drawer. About an hour into its 90 minutes, I sensed my partner’s tolerance hitting the red line, and whispered, “There’s not too much more.” But there was, because every minute was an eternity, while, across the road, three-and-a-half hours of
- [FREEDMAN JAZZ](https://johnshand.com.au/freedman-jazz/) - The Neilson, November 22 8/10 Twenty-four years ago pianist Andrea Keller won the inaugural Freedman Jazz Fellowship, and now she was one of a trio of judges announcing that saxophonist/composer Sam Gill had won this year’s $30,000 fellowship. Gill will pursue compositional studies, collaboration and recording in New York across the next two years. While
- [KING LEAR](https://johnshand.com.au/king-lear-3/) - Belvoir St Theatre, November 20 7/10 At the end, director Eamon Flack has the dead sitting watching the few poor sods who still live. It’s a telling moment, given this greatest of tragedies – greatest of plays! – is seldom well served upon the stage. The challenges are too vast for all the spokes of
- [WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?](https://johnshand.com.au/whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf-2/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, November 11 9/10 “I do not bray!” brays Martha, responding to George’s gibe that she does. What other play than Edward Albee’s 1962 masterpiece is so funny while being so savage? Precious few are blessed with a character as venomous as Martha who – miraculously – makes us like her. But then
- [THE LOVERS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-lovers-2/) - Theatre Royal, November 5 5/10 What a shame. Given that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was Shakespeare’s first masterwork, you’d think that even when bastardised into pop musical, it had half a chance of being better than this. At the very least you might expect it to improve upon Bell Shakespeare’s premiere production of The Lovers
- [SAMARA JOY](https://johnshand.com.au/samara-joy/) - Richard Bonynge Concert Hall, October 23 8/10 Samara Joy came out and told us that although she was recovering from a cold, she’d rather sing a few notes for us than none. Compromised she was, in range, volume and breath control. She avoided introducing songs or band members, and only performed for 45 minutes rather
- [BILL FRISELL TRIO](https://johnshand.com.au/bill-frisell-trio-2/) - City Recital Hall, October 22 9/10 There are nights in the Blue Mountains when you gaze at the night sky with all the wonder of a child’s eyes. Hearing the Bill Frisell Trio is like that. A deep sense of mystery pervades the music, with notes from Frisell’s guitar flaring, glittering and then fading, to
- [GREGORY PORTER](https://johnshand.com.au/gregory-porter-3/) - Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, October 20 8/10 Gregory Porter’s voice is like a log fire on a winter’s night. It doesn’t just radiate warmth, it has a comfort factor. It’s the voice of someone who’s worked out a thing or two about this very temporary exercise called life, and wants to ease the suffering
- [CALAMITY JANE](https://johnshand.com.au/calamity-jane/) - Studio, Sydney Opera House, October 19 9/10 Sometimes a show and a venue press each other’s buttons in a way that makes each perspire just a little, and bundles of joy are instantly born in the form of smiles on people’s faces. Calamity Jane and the Opera House’s Studio are such a coupling. The room
- [BACK TO THE FUTURE THE MUSICAL](https://johnshand.com.au/back-to-the-future-the-musical/) - Sydney Lyric, October 2 8/10 You knew in your bones that a musical hatched from a sci-fi film would have at least one eye-bulging, draw-dropping moment, and it didn’t disappoint. Forget Phantom’s chandelier or Miss Saigon’s helicopter: what the DeLorean does in Back to the Future is in a different stratosphere of wonderment. I won’t
- [MEOW MEOW’S THE RED SHOES](https://johnshand.com.au/meow-meows-the-red-shoes/) - Belvoir St Theatre, October 15 6/10 A fright wig and false eyelashes can only take you so far. From the time she clawed her way into our hearts nearly 25 years ago, Meow Meow backed up the ditsy exterior trappings in her cabaret shows with a striking singing voice and a zany, gloriously unpredictable stage
- [Bill Frisell: Staying in the moment, while open to the past](https://johnshand.com.au/bill-frisell-staying-in-the-moment-while-open-to-the-past/) - The song You Only Live Twice (from the James Bond film of the same name) would have more kitsch quotient than improvising potential to most ears. Not Bill Frisell. The one constant in the work of the jazz guitarist – a peer of John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny and John Scofield – has been eclecticism,
- [THE SHIRALEE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-shiralee/) - Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, October 10 6/10 A deep sense of mythology surrounds the reader in D’Arcy Niland’s 1955 novel, The Shiralee. It’s as if the very landscape of mid-20th-century Australia is misanthropic, while those inhabiting it can be as deadly as brown snakes. In adapting the novel, playwright Kate Mulvany and director Jessica
- [GARY DALEY](https://johnshand.com.au/gary-daley/) - The Church, September 26 8/10 In both his piano playing and his composing Gary Daley has a way of making aural images appear out of – and retreat back into – aural mists. Had this ensemble not included drums, there’d have been few hard outlines: just malleable, soft-focus harmony and melody, hinging on a keen
- [Believe album: Sounds to shake up your central nervous system](https://johnshand.com.au/believe-album-sounds-to-shake-up-your-central-nervous-system/) - Spirits of the Dead Are Watching 8.5/10 At its most interactive and imaginative, spontaneously created music can be as organic as the wind in the trees or the roar of the waves. But to reach beyond the common self-consciousness of humans making “art” requires letting go of self, of ego and of preconceptions. The player
- [TRUE WEST](https://johnshand.com.au/true-west-2/) - Ensemble Theatre September 12 9/10 Simon Maiden’s Lee creates a tension thick with latent violence; a black hole of negative energy. His blank eyes stare with hate and resentment. “You go ahead, like I wasn’t even here,” he tells his brother Austin (Darcy Kent), who’s trying to write a screenplay, but Austin may as well
- [BRIGHT STAR](https://johnshand.com.au/bright-star/) - Hayes Theatre, September 11 8/10 Don’t necessarily judge a musical by its soundtrack. The original Broadway cast recording of Bright Star suggested I was in for a long night. The music and lyrics, by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, are in a bluegrass/country vein, evoking the setting in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. The songs
- [ORLANDO](https://johnshand.com.au/orlando/) - Belvoir St Theatre, September 10 8/10 I dreamt I attended the theatre on a torrentially rainy night, and saw a play based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, her fantastical character who effortlessly swaps and blurs gender, while living from 1588 until modernity. But rather than attempting to replicate Orlando, the play was a theatrical fantasia drawing
- [THE BRIDGE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-bridge/) - KXT on Broadway, September 4 5/10 What enticing premises for a play: punk-rock, intergenerational conflict and internet-spawned copyright conundrums. Add an actor of Zoe Carides’ credentials, live music and exchanges between in-person and on-screen performers, and The Bridge was packed with potential. The great ideas, alas, translated into a modest play and disappointing production. I’d
- [NORTHERN RHAPSODY - Eishan Ensemble](https://johnshand.com.au/northern-rhapsody-eishan-ensemble/) - Lennox Theatre, August 31 9/10 On a day when mobs demonstrated against immigration, particularly the non-white variety, Hamed Sadeghi offered the perfect riposte. Not that this was his intention: he merely works towards refining his gentle art. But for a decade he’s enriched Australian music, bringing Iran’s ancient culture to our ears via his reflective
- [BIRDSONG OF TOMORROW](https://johnshand.com.au/birdsong-of-tomorrow/) - Old Fitz Theatre, August 24 7/10 Is it a bird? Is it a play? Is it a play about birds? No, Birdsong of Tomorrow is not really a play, however much you squint through your binoculars. But it does spread its wings in a theatre and have theatrical plumage, so let’s not become too entangled
- [THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY](https://johnshand.com.au/the-talented-mr-ripley/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, August 23 8/10 Having penned her acclaimed play Switzerland about novelist Patricia Highsmith, Joanna Murray-Smith has now waved her wand across Highsmith’s most famous book, and made it a cracking play. An expert at fizzing dialogue and character exploration, here Murray-Smith has to sustain Highsmith’s premium on plotting, surprise and suspense. There’s
- [FRED SMITH - Unforgotten: Songs of Australians at War](https://johnshand.com.au/fred-smith-unforgotten-songs-of-australians-at-war/) - Paddo RSL, August 15 8.5/10 August 15 marked not only the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, but also four years since the fall of Kabul. Fred Smith saw the potential in tying these two events together, and strengthening the knot with songs and stories from other conflicts to create an epic
- [Judy Bailey: Pioneering woman in Australian jazz](https://johnshand.com.au/judy-bailey-pioneering-woman-in-australian-jazz/) - As a teen, pianist Judy Bailey usually heard classical or pop music coming from the cream-coloured Bakelite radio that hunched on the Formica kitchen bench of her family’s home in Whangarei, New Zealand. But on this particular afternoon, her 13-year-old ears heard something new. She recognised the song, East of the Sun, yet after
- [ONCE ON THIS ISLAND](https://johnshand.com.au/once-on-this-island/) - Hayes Theatre, August 6 4/10 I don’t recall attending another show at the Hayes Theatre where the best part was strolling past the El Alamein Fountain. That Once on This Island won an Olivier Award (Best New Musical) and a Tony Award (Best Revival of a Musical) beggars belief. Even were those productions of a
- [MACBETH](https://johnshand.com.au/macbeth-3/) - The Lounge, Chatswood Concourse, August 5 6/10 Macbeth must gnaw at your vitals with ever-increasing ferocity, just as the titular character’s desperation to escape his predicament gnaws at his own. It should be impossible to sit there passively: you should feel the spell ensnaring you; feel the blackness swelling. This production touches that abyss: intermittently
- [MIKELANGELO AND THE BLACK SEA GENTLEMEN](https://johnshand.com.au/mikelangelo-and-the-black-sea-gentlemen/) - Lennox Theatre, August 3 8/10 These people, who crawl in here with the moral compass of a slug, are precisely why we must build a wall around Austraya. Have you listened to their lyrics? They’re swindlers, womanisers, gangsters and worse, masquerading as musicians, poets and comedians. But Christ, they are funny, and some of the
- [GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS](https://johnshand.com.au/grief-is-the-thing-with-feathers/) - Belvoir St Theatre, July 30 10/10 That grief-knot in your heart – the one that won’t let you sleep – is not necessarily a clot of black, congealed blood. It might be evidence of Crow, and don’t assume he’s malignant. Despite his stabbing, tearing beak, taste for roadkill and breath to match, he actually does
- [1984](https://johnshand.com.au/1984-3/) - Riverside Theatre, July 25 8.5/10 This is the one that’s worth watching – while Big Brother watches you. A 2017 version at Roslyn Packer Theatre and the 2014 iteration of this Shake & Stir Theatre Co production both did scant justice to George Orwell’s masterpiece. Now Shake & Stir’s director Michael Futcher has hit upon
- [FOR DAVID WILLIAMSON, SYDNEY'S GRASS DIDN'T STAY GREENER](https://johnshand.com.au/for-david-williamson-sydneys-grass-didnt-stay-greener/) - David Williamson’s first memory is of Sydney. At three-and-a-half, the Melbourne born-and-bred playwright was visiting an uncle with his family, and remembers “sitting in a backyard on a very bright, sunny day, surrounded by bougainvilleas and subtropical flowers,” he says via Zoom from Provence, where’s he’s holidaying. “The fact my first memory was in Sydney
- [HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH](https://johnshand.com.au/hedwig-and-the-angry-inch/) - Carriageworks, July 19 8/10 There’s no Hedwig and the Angry Inch without a star. No, not just a star: a supernova. iOTA first burst into our lives playing Hedwig, and 19 years later it’s Seann Miley Moore’s turn to dazzle us. Hedwig is role in which performers can unleash their all, from tempestuous rock songs
- [CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION](https://johnshand.com.au/circle-mirror-transformation/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, July 17 7/10 Annie Baker can make a play out of minimal words and minuscule gestures. The effect borders on shock because we’re so used to huge emotions with titanic consequences. You have to readjust; put your antennae on higher alert. Baker wrote two of this century’s best plays: The Aliens and,
- [LISA SIMONE](https://johnshand.com.au/lisa-simone/) - State Theatre, July 10 7.5/10 What a blessing and curse it is to be the progeny of legend. The primary place in music history of the likes of Tina Sinatra, Jason Bonham, Mercer Ellington and Julian Lennon has almost inevitably become being their famous parent’s offspring. Lisa Simone has faced the same blessing and curse.
- [Evans Robson Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/evans-robson-quartet/) - Zenith (Lamplight) 8/10 Some people hate pigeons, but in flight a flock can mesmerise with their abrupt turns, take-offs and landings, without ever banging wings. How clumsy we seem, by comparison. Well, not all. Saxophonists Sandy Evans and Andrew Robson, bassist Brett Hirst and drummer Hamish Stuart can curl and twist around each other in
- [MIKE NOCK QUARTET](https://johnshand.com.au/mike-nock-quartet/) - Foundry 616, June 27 8/10 So it’s goodnight to Foundry 616, the lovechild of a man whose passion has been presenting jazz in Sydney for over 40 years, Peter Rechniewski. People get Orders of Australia for doing much less. But this was a hell of a penultimate gig, featuring the pianist who played the venue’s
- [BEING ALIVE: THE MUSIC OF STEPHEN SONDHEIM](https://johnshand.com.au/being-alive-the-music-of-stephen-sondheim/) - Hayes Theatre, June 26 6,5/10 Stephen Sondheim’s songs are too rarely lifted from their shows to stand alone, whether on records or in cabarets. They’re variously perceived as being too context-specific, too cerebral or insufficiently melodic. Being Alive is another reminder of how nonsensical this is. Letting his songs bump into siblings from other shows
- [THE TAMING OF THE SHREW](https://johnshand.com.au/the-taming-of-the-shrew-2/) - Wharf 2 Theatre, September 27 4/10 No one has the nerve to let this play just be in a woke world. So a man treats a woman badly. Does this not happen? Should it not be depicted? Women also treat men badly – or, more to the point, people treat each other badly. But director
- [CORIOLANUS](https://johnshand.com.au/coriolanus/) - The Neilson Nutshell, June 25 8/10 The exercise of power is a grubby business. Favours are sought, envy is rife and rivalries brutal. Coriolanus wasn’t bred for politics. He was suckled at his vulpine mother’s breast for one purpose: war. He’s more than a match for any of Shakespeare’s great killing machines (Macbeth, Hotspur, Othello,
- [KOREABOO](https://johnshand.com.au/koreaboo/) - Belvoir Downstairs Theatre, June 19 6.5/10 Soon Hee never held her baby before she was taken away for adoption; just saw her tiny pink feet retreating in the nurse’s arms. She had fallen pregnant outside of wedlock, which, if discovered, would bring such shame on her family that people would shun the little Seoul shop
- [THE SPARE ROOM](https://johnshand.com.au/the-spare-room/) - Belvoir St Theatre, June 12 7.5/10 As improbable as this seems when we gaze out upon a broken world, or scrutinise our own chaotic lives, living is the easy part. Dying is the trick: not the last breath itself, but the lead-up, once mortality grips you, and asks whether you fight or accept. Helen Garner’s
- [Mohsen Sharifian’s HARBOUR TO HARBOUR 2](https://johnshand.com.au/mohsen-sharifians-harbour-to-harbour-2/) - Chatswood Concourse Concert Hall, June 9 7/10 I had a little glimpse of what it would be like to be a god. From my box in Chatswood’s Concert Hall, high above the front edge of the stage, I gazed down on a seething mass of humanity in what was effectively a mosh-pit, only with seating
- [The best Shakespeare in Sydney this century returns](https://johnshand.com.au/the-best-shakespeare-in-sydney-this-century-returns/) - Last year, one play rattled my bones like no other: Sport for Jove’s production of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. My five-star review enthused that it had “a truth, an energy and a ferocity to make the blood drain from your face”, and a “visceral, raw, compelling and moving” performance from Damien Ryan as Timon. Seldom
- [EUREKA DAY](https://johnshand.com.au/eureka-day/) - Reginald Theatre, May 31 7/10 Eureka Day is a satire to make you squirm more than laugh. Exaggeration is almost non-existent, the corollary being that naturalism is ratcheted up to the point where it can seem like spying on real people more than watching a play. Playwright Jonathan Spector takes his title from the private
- [MARY JANE](https://johnshand.com.au/mary-jane/) - Old Fitz Theatre, May 25 9/10 Although Alex never appears, Tenkei, a Buddhist nun, speaks for us when she tells Mary Jane, Alex’s mother, “I see him very clearly.” Alex, two-and-a-half years old, has been riddled with critical medical conditions since birth. Mary Jane has split with the father, and loses her job, but never
- [WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN](https://johnshand.com.au/women-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown/) - Hayes Theatre, May 14 7/10 When, during the first half, Pepa, the protagonist, accidentally set fire to her bed (as in Pedro Almodovar’s film on which this is based), the fire blazed up so dramatically that I glanced at the emergency exits. Pepa duly put it out, but I doubt what happened next was intentional.
- [ERIC GALES](https://johnshand.com.au/eric-gales/) - The Soda Factory, May 13 8/10 Imagine if those trying to sell Newcastle as a tourist destination had sent silverchair overseas, or those selling Sydney sent Midnight Oil, or those selling Melbourne used Hiatus Kaiyote right now. That would be much too radical when we have beaches, reefs, a rock and a bridge. We do
- [HAPPY DAYS](https://johnshand.com.au/happy-days-2/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, May 9 8/10 The greatest roles allow for endless revelations. The corollary is that no Winnie in Happy Days will ever be perfect, any more than any Hamlet will be. The role’s scope is too vast. Despite playwright Samuel Beckett’s best efforts to corral actors into playing her a certain way, every
- [THE LOVER & THE DUMB WAITER](https://johnshand.com.au/the-lover-the-dumb-waiter/) - Ensemble Theatre, May 7 7.5/10 You know when you walk in on an existing conversation, and automatically try to connect threads of what’s being said? These two one-act plays by Harold Pinter are similar to that. No playwright was more influenced by Samuel Beckett, yet where Beckett gave us glimpses of universality, Pinter honed in
- [Pamela Rabe becomes a buried treasure for Beckett](https://johnshand.com.au/pamela-rabe-becomes-a-buried-treasure-for-beckett/) - When the celebrated actor Pamela Rabe was first approached to play Winnie, the central character in Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days, she had to think about it. Winnie, you see, is not for the faint-hearted. Buried up to her waist in the first act and up to her neck in the second, and clinging to
- [IRL](https://johnshand.com.au/irl/) - KXT on Broadway, April 30 6/10 At a time when the madness and lies of electioneering bedevils us, IRL could almost seem sane. It’s not. I doubt that even a Trumpet of Patriots policy meeting could be crazier. If you can imagine As You Like It crossed with texting argot, computer games, Marvel comics, psychotropic
- [Tom Avgenicos](https://johnshand.com.au/tom-avgenicos/) - Ghosts between Streams (Earshift) 8.5/10 As the title might suggest, Tom Avgenicos’ Ghosts Between Streams suite is a dialogue. Most baldly, one side of that dialogue is an improvising quartet and the other a string quartet. More profoundly, one side constitutes a modern pastorale, evoking nature rather than rurality, and other its opposite. In a
- [Noel Balfour Can't stop chasing the dream](https://johnshand.com.au/noel-balfour-cant-stop-chasing-the-dream/) - Many recording artists release a second album, but few do it at 97. For Noel Balfour, his love of music keeps him going. Well, not just going: he looks 25 years younger than his age when we meet at Andy Busuttil’s Hazelbrook studio, Blue Mountains Sound, where Balfour has just finished his new album. He’s
- [BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY](https://johnshand.com.au/big-girls-dont-cry/) - Belvoir St Theatre, April 9 6.5/10 I’m sure Megan Wilding doesn’t mean to steal scenes, but her physical acting, timing and control of her vocal pitch are so complete that she’s a magnet for the eyes and ears. Even with very fine actors, you sometimes see the craft underpinning their art. With Wilding, you just
- [BLOOM](https://johnshand.com.au/bloom/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, April 2 6/10 Like some of the residents in the Pine Grove Aged Care Centre, Bloom can be a bit lame. Handed caricatures rather than characters, the actors sometimes grasp after laughs, rather than trusting material that’s punctuated with genuinely funny lines. I’ve seen this phenomenon in comedy before, but not usually
- [THE PRODUCERS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-producers/) - Hayes Theatre, April 1 9.5/10 Who’d have thought that laughing at Nazis would suddenly become so pertinent again? Mel Brooks’ original film was made in 1967, when you could have fought in World War II, and still be in your 40s. Fifty-eight years later, the same blister still needs pricking, and The Producers still does
- [THE PLAYER KINGS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-player-kings/) - York Theatre, Seymour Centre, March 29 8.5/10 The great wonder of history is that we continue to be surprised by it unfolding in our own lifetimes, as if it were something that only happened in the past. The corollary is that all that happened in the past is our tutor if we’ll listen – hence
- [Digging beneath the crown](https://johnshand.com.au/digging-beneath-the-crown/) - When director Damien Ryan approached actor Liam Gamble to play Richard III, Gamble was unfamiliar with both the historical figure and the Shakespearian character. After investigating him, he was taken by this “badass guy” and duly auditioned. “One of the reasons I cast Liam was the searing honesty of his audition,” says Ryan, who enjoyed
- [RUTHIE FOSTER](https://johnshand.com.au/ruthie-foster/) - The Lounge, Chatswood Concourse, March 21 8.5/10 Ruthie Foster wasn’t just born to sing, she was probably already singing in the womb. Music pours from her mouth like water from a tap, and when she turns the tap on full, she makes an astounding sound: a huge, church-bred cry that pierces your very soul. Okay,
- [Carl Dewhurst](https://johnshand.com.au/carl-dewhurst/) - Avicennia 7.5/10 Carl Dewhurst is among the great chameleons of Australian music. Were each of the manifold projects in which he’s been involved across the last 30 years to be played in adjacent rooms off a long corridor, every time you opened a new door you’d swear you heard a different guitarist. He has variously
- [Swift to Joyce & Beyond: Irish Genius in Word & Song](https://johnshand.com.au/swift-to-joyce-beyond-irish-genius-in-word-song/) - Dreams of Falling have not been idle since performing our Wilde About Oscar show in 2023-24. We've dived deeper into a very green pool and come up with Swift to Joyce & Beyond: Irish Genius in Word & Song. Others writers include Wilde, Yeats and Beckett, while the first half has some of work of
- [IPHIGENIA IN SPLOTT](https://johnshand.com.au/iphigenia-in-splott/) - Old Fitz Theatre, March 9 8/10 What curious creatures we theatre-goers are, accepting being emotionally scarred, in this case by a lone actor. And what a fine line it is along which a drama for one actor dances, requiring an inbuilt theatricality so it needs to be seen rather than read, sometimes using the audience
- [HENRY 5](https://johnshand.com.au/henry-5/) - The Playhouse, March 5 8.5/10 There are glimpses of greatness here. In making his professional stage debut, JK Kazzi does not just perform Shakespeare, he tackles this play’s epic title role. Plucky. While his performance is flawed, when he spears the part, he humanises Henry and lifts him far above the pompous warmonger he’s often
- [MARIZA](https://johnshand.com.au/mariza/) - Concert Hall, March 3 8/10 The lights go down, and Luis Guerreiro’s dazzling Portuguese guitar splinters the silence. Mariza first appears as a silhouette: only her platinum hair and sparkly gown catching the dim light. Then she unleashes the phenomenon that’s her contralto voice; a voice that may have darkened slightly in the 18 years
- [PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK](https://johnshand.com.au/picnic-at-hanging-rock/) - Drama Theatre, February 21 6.5/10 Joan Lindsay’s fantastical 1967 novel told of colonial Australians trying to tame a land they didn’t understand, and which therefore seemed hostile. Two schoolgirls – a charismatic and a swot – invaded Hanging Rock with a stitched-up teacher and were consumed: unknowing sacrifices to an insatiable god. When people disrupt
- [SONG OF FIRST DESIRE](https://johnshand.com.au/song-of-first-desire/) - Belvoir St Theatre, February 19 7/10 What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, by yourself or as part of a collective? Can you say it out loud? Does anyone else know? Do you resent them for knowing? Will you ever forget this thing you did? Can you ever forgive yourself? Should you ever forgive yourself?
- [THE NECKS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-necks-9/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, February 15 9/10 Thirty-eight years on, the wonder only increases that The Necks’ simple formula results in music without limits. It’s not just a formula for long-form improvisations with evolving cells of repeated information, it’s a formula of musical personalities, and pianist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton and drummer Tony Buck become
- [Richard Carroll and Jay Laga'aia shrewdly shrink the pirate population](https://johnshand.com.au/richard-carroll-and-jay-lagaaia-shrewdly-shrink-the-pirate-population/) - Jay Laga’aia had always wanted to play the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance; always wanted an excuse to say “Argghh!” on stage. Then the actor best known as Captain Typho in the Star Wars films learned that if he accepted the role in Richard Carroll’s new production, he must also take on
- [4000 MILES](https://johnshand.com.au/4000-miles-2/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, February 7 8/10 Vera hasn’t changed the name on the buzzer for her New York apartment in the 10 years since her husband died. It still reads “Joe Joseph”. Her grandson, Leo, meanwhile has just cycled 4,000 miles, from Seattle to New York via Kansas. Ostensibly he’s on the move, and
- [PETER AND THE STARCATCHER](https://johnshand.com.au/peter-and-the-starcatcher/) - Capitol Theatre, February 2 7.5/10 The trick is to see this through an eight-year-old’s eyes. Luckily, I mostly operate with a 10-year-old’s mentality, which is close enough, so can tell you that sitting through the duller parts is worth it, because the second half becomes seriously funny. The pity is that by then some of
- [JACKY](https://johnshand.com.au/jacky/) - Belvoir St Theatre, January 18 7/10 Most of us balance ambition with the fear of biting off more than we can chew. Jacky has begun to conquer his fear; to believe that he can find his place in the world both figuratively and literally; to carve out his own niche of lifestyle and adequate income
- [HAMLET CAMP](https://johnshand.com.au/hamlet-camp/) - Carriageworks, January 16 9/10 What to do when “H” is coursing through your veins, and you constantly crave more? Where to go? If the “H” stands for Hamlet rather than heroin, help is at hand. Ex-Hamlets can attend Hamlet Camp, a rehabilitation facility for those poor souls who’ve play-acted the Dane, and since that day
- [Brendan Cowell, Toby Schmitz and Ewen Leslie exhume their inner Dane](https://johnshand.com.au/brendan-cowell-toby-schmitz-and-ewen-leslie-exhume-their-inner-dane/) - Brendan Cowell, actor and writer, was enjoying a successful eight-year stint in London when he had a night out with an unnamed “fabulous British theatre actor”. At 2am the two ex-Hamlets were sharing a bottle, performing the Dane’s speeches on the curbside, and agreeing he never leaves those who play him. “It’s almost like there
- [DARK NOON](https://johnshand.com.au/dark-noon/) - Sydney Town Hall, January 9 7.5/10 Dark Noon unravels the American Dream thread by thread, until all that’s left is a grinning nightmare. Winning the West is stripped down to a tawdry tale of guns, gold, whores, booze, genocide, railroads and God. Intermingled with a tale of whites behaving badly in carving up North America
- [Hamilton](https://johnshand.com.au/hamilton-2/) - The SMH ran a list of the most significant albums of the first quarter of the new century. This was my contribution: Original Broadway Cast Recording (Warners) 9.5/10 Having launched his hip hop revolution of musical theatre with In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda dared to dream higher still. What better subject for a transformational musical
- [A MODEL MURDER](https://johnshand.com.au/a-model-murder/) - Darlinghurst Courthouse, January 7 7/10 Shirley Beiger escaped to obscurity of Melbourne while the going was good; before Sydney suddenly wondered if it and its judicial system been dazzled by her blond curls; dazzled into a “not guilty” verdict in her trial for murdering her lover, Arthur Griffith. Beiger, you see, was a glamorous model.
- [Tue Biering talks about the high stakes behind Dark Noon](https://johnshand.com.au/tue-biering-talks-about-the-high-stakes-behind-dark-noon/) - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly wasn’t just a good title for a film. As theatre director Tue Biering points out, it encapsulated exactly why westerns have been so universal in their appeal: having a moral compass that always points to either good or bad, they make a virtue of stereotypes. No grey hats,
- [ANTIGONE IN THE AMAZON](https://johnshand.com.au/antigone-in-the-amazon/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, January 4 7.5/10 This, I promise you, is like nothing you have seen. An ancient Greek tragedy is fused with an ongoing global calamity in Brazil to create Antigone in the Amazon. Mythology and reality, it tells us, are one and the same. The civil war that backgrounds Sophocles’ timeless play finds
- [INTO THE SHIMMERING WORLD](https://johnshand.com.au/into-the-shimmering-world/) - Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1 Theatre, April 6 9.5/10 Set in the bush, where survival is the main entertainment, Angus Cerini’s play will outlive us all. Yet one of the work’s many wonders is that it’s not about the harshness of life, it’s about the mystery of it. In Paige Rattray’s world premiere production, David
- [Vazesh](https://johnshand.com.au/vazesh-2/) - Tapestry 8.5/10 Whether it is fans banging heads on a Metallica stage or tears streaming down faces at a Shostakovich concert, no other art form shakes us up like music. It alone can cast a spell that takes control of your central nervous system. In the case of Vazesh, that spell is multifaceted. So intimate
- [Bach and the Bard: Genius meets genius in heaven](https://johnshand.com.au/bach-and-the-bard-genius-meets-genius-in-heaven/) - During the covid lockdowns, when cellist Rachel Scott was allowed only one visitor at a time, she streamed monthly duets she made with other instrumentalists. Seeking to maximise the variation between performances, she decided to incorporate spoken word, and approached actor Damien Ryan, artistic director of Sport for Jove theatre company, to deliver Shakespeare
- [MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING](https://johnshand.com.au/much-ado-about-nothing-2/) - Bella Vista Farm, December 21 7/10 Megan O’Connell’s Beatrice starts to win us from the moment she appears, when director Samantha Young has her kill a snake with a spade (the Sport for Jove production being set in 1890s Australia, cued by the gracious farmhouse adjoining the outdoor stage). O’Connell proceeds to fill almost to
- [HOT TUB](https://johnshand.com.au/hot-tub/) - Belvoir Downstairs Theatre, December 8 6/10 Playwright Lewis Treston wrote Hot Tub after dreaming of a helicopter lifting a hot tub on to the roof of a Surfers Paradise high-rise. The play, finally premiering after winning the 2016 Patrick White Playwright’s Award, unfolds more like a nightmare: not one of fear and loathing, but of
- [THE HEARTBREAK CHOIR](https://johnshand.com.au/the-heartbreak-choir/) - Ensemble Theatre, November 4 7/10 Barbara knows that one of the dumbest things governments have done is fail to champion music education. Making music improves our intellects, emotional acumen, general well-being and social cohesion. It’s also fun. That’s why Barbara formed a choir in rural Australia, and when that unravelled, formed another. Barbara (Valerie Bader)
- [HOLIDAY INN](https://johnshand.com.au/holiday-inn/) - Hayes Theatre, November 27 5.5/10 This is where the name for the hotels came from. All 1100 of them. Inspired by the 1942 movie starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, which was blessed with the music of Irving Berlin, the hotel chain arrived 10 years later. Six more decades would pass before the film, primarily
- [SWEAT](https://johnshand.com.au/sweat/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, November 15 8/10 It is no coincidence that Lyn Nottage’s Sweat arrived in 2015, the year Donald Trump erupted on to the US political landscape. Nottage’s story – the demise of Rust Belt manufacturing, with its consequent social and economic upheaval – is precisely what underpinned Trump’s MAGA movement. The playwright spent
- [AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY](https://johnshand.com.au/august-osage-county/) - Belvoir St Theatre, November 14, 8.5/10 The August heat in Oklahoma’s Osage Country kills pet tropical birds. It doesn’t do much for the people, either. They claw at each other like pterodactyls because a soft heart equals vulnerability., when what’s needed to survive in Osage County – in the Weston family, at least – is
- [THE END OF THE WHARF AS WE KNOW IT!!!](https://johnshand.com.au/the-end-of-the-wharf-as-we-know-it/) - Seymour Centre, November 12 8/10 Wanted: satirists to fill gaping holes in the political and theatrical landscapes. Must be able to write, act, sing, dance, direct, play musical instruments, cross-dress, mimic, and be funny for 25 years. Yes, that’s how long Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott have been creating and performing The Wharf
- [BOB COUSINS BRINGS OSAGE COUNTRY TO BELVOIR](https://johnshand.com.au/bob-cousins-brings-osage-country-to-belvoir/) - Set designer Bob Cousins had a problem. Eamon Flack, Belvoir St Theatre’s artistic director, wanted to do Tracy Lett’s great 2007 play, August: Osage County, and Letts specifies a set consisting with a three-storey house, including a three-room ground floor – hardly possible on Belvoir’s stage, so they simply abandoned Lett’s stage directions. He and
- [JAZZMEIA HORN](https://johnshand.com.au/jazzmeia-horn-2/) - St Stephen’s Church, November 1 9/10 Her voice sparked and flared even more than her blue-and-gold gown in the lights. One moment it was chomping and grinding in her contralto range, and then, like an inverse shooting star, it dashed up to pitches beyond the stratosphere. Quite simply, Jazzmeia Horn is jazz’s most virtuosic singer.
- [MCGUFFIN PARK](https://johnshand.com.au/mcguffin-park/) - Ensemble Theatre, October 24 7/10 Sam O’Sullivan’s new comedy only has to scratch at the veneer to lay bare the grubbiness of local government. But even as he satirises the inner workings of democracy, he’s championing a system threatened the world over by the politics of grievance, blame and hate. “Democracy is a contradiction,” one
- [Jazzmeia Horn: When singing is like breathing](https://johnshand.com.au/jazzmeia-horn-when-singing-is-like-breathing/) - Jazzmeia Horn’s grandmother knew that Jazzmeia’s mother was pregnant before the mother did herself. Her grandmother told her she would have a musical child, who should be christened Jazzmeia. Her mother’s response? “Hopefully it's a girl!” Despite the name, it was gospel and soul music that filled young Jazzmeia’s early life. She began singing in
- [YOGA PLAY](https://johnshand.com.au/yoga-play/) - Reginald Theatre, October 19 7/10 Don’t judge the play by its title, because what curious fare this is: like having a bagel or fries with your authentic Indian curry. The spicy part is the satire, and the carbs are the feel-good factor. In fact Indian-American playwright Dipika Guha may even have invented a new genre
- [DEAR EVAN HANSEN](https://johnshand.com.au/dear-evan-hansen/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, October 18 6/10 Hamilton rightfully won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2016. A year later, they lowered the bar to Dear Evan Hansen, reminding us of the Tonys’ wild inconsistencies. In 1958 The Music Man beat West Side Story, in 1972 Two Gentlemen of Verona beat Follies, in 1988 The
- [HERBIE HANCOCK](https://johnshand.com.au/herbie-hancock-2/) - Concert Hall, October 11 9/10 Herbie Hancock has never made music: he’s always shared it. This was already the case when, aged 23, the pianist joined arguably Miles Davis’s greatest band, and created harmonic atmospheres that suddenly made jazz weightless, while still under maximum propulsion. Simultaneously, he became a notable composer and band-leader, and by
- [ANDY SUMMERS](https://johnshand.com.au/andy-summers/) - City Recital Hall, September 26 6/10 He really should have had a band. Just bass and drums – like a certain previous trio that benefitted from Andy Summers’ guitar playing. If you’re going to use backing tracks on virtually every song, it seems lame and even cheap not do what the music is telling you,
- [Mosaic](https://johnshand.com.au/mosaic/) - Where We Are Now 7/10 Following in the giant footsteps of Ten Part Invention comes Mosaic, a new Sydney band with the same 10-piece instrumentation, and with the same shared emphases on improvisation and original compositions (from both inside and outside the band). Formed at the Sydney Conservatorium by trombonist Lee Orszaczky and saxophonist Chiara
- [Andy Summers: From loving jazz to the laws of pop](https://johnshand.com.au/andy-summers-from-loving-jazz-to-the-laws-of-pop/) - Mention The Police – the band, not the law enforcement agency – and we tend to firstly think of Sting: he of the boyish voice and blithely melodic songs. Drumming aficionados will certainly remember Stewart Copeland’s flamboyant, reggae-tinged playing, and only then do we come to Andy Summers, the trio’s virtuoso guitarist. Yet Summers did
- [Karen Hall: Sharing the laugh-lines with a cello](https://johnshand.com.au/karen-hall-sharing-the-laugh-lines-with-a-cello/) - When cellist Karen Hall began accompanying two clowns in their performances, she initially struggled to escape the relative stiffness of her classical training, and share the same playful zone. Then she started taking clown classes, herself. “They were life changing,” she says. “‘Clown’ is such a safe space: you get to be wrong!” Since then,
- [PLENTY OF FISH IN THE SEA](https://johnshand.com.au/plenty-of-fish-in-the-sea/) - New Theatre, September 19 8/10 Just when you’re ready to scream at the endless earnest, predictable, naturalistic plays that clutter our stages, along comes Plenty of Fish in the Sea. It’s a timely reminder that theatre need not be so desperate to fulfil its dull aspiration of merely ticking the box marked “relevance”: that there
- [THE QUEEN’S NANNY](https://johnshand.com.au/the-queens-nanny/) - Ensemble Theatre, September 10 6/10 The last five minutes pin your ears back, leaving you wondering why more of the play didn’t bristle with this intensity; this sense of lives being defined or wasted. Perhaps the curious detachment we feel for most of the 90 minutes may be attributed to mixed intentions on playwright Melanie
- [VOICES OF JOAN](https://johnshand.com.au/voices-of-joan/) - PACT Theatre, September 4 7/10 The title is metaphorical. It does not refer to the voices that Joan of Arc believed came to her from her god, but to the multifarious ways her bold stance against a cruel and morally bankrupt patriarchy rattled the bones of history. Although not the first feminist, she has as
- [wilde about oscar comes to django bar!](https://johnshand.com.au/wilde-about-oscar-comes-to-django-bar/) - “I have put my genius into my life and only my talent into my works,” Oscar Wilde fibbed, having liberally sprinkled that genius over the likes of Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest. WB Yeats called him “the greatest talker of all time”, and between his works, letters and conversation, one of history’s greatest
- [GASLIGHT](https://johnshand.com.au/gaslight/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, August 23 5.5/10 How much Gothic can an innocent young city like Sydney, so absorbed in trains and whales, bear? In less than six months we’ve had Frame Narrative, Dracula, The Woman in Black and now Gaslight. On this night’s evidence, that’s one too many. Gaslight, you see, is billed as a
- [THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME](https://johnshand.com.au/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/) - Belvoir St Theatre, August 22 8/10 Christopher doesn’t do non-verbal communication. Nor does he do metaphors or lying – so he’s deeply suspicious of plays and acting. And he hates being touched so much that he instinctively lashes out at the offender. What he does do is maths and physics. At a high level. At
- [MATTHEW OTTIGNON](https://johnshand.com.au/matthew-ottignon/) - Goethe-Institut, August 9 8/10 Flying is miraculous not because of altitude, speed, precision or aerodynamics, but because of earth and gravity. So in creating music to celebrate birds and flight, Matthew Ottignon ensured that airiness and velocity are only part of the equation: he also often grounds the music in grooves and weightier textures, so
- [Hamed Sadeghi](https://johnshand.com.au/hamed-sadeghi/) - Empty Voices 9/10 What a shrewd way to draw you in. Hamed Sadeghi begins Empty Voices with a musical supplication, simply entitled Please. Lasting only two-and-a-half minutes, it sets Sadeghi’s ringing tar (a steel-stringed Persian lute) against a simple drone, and yet the sense of entreaty is palpable – as if he’s appealing to you
- [Wilde About Oscar - Dreams of Falling](https://johnshand.com.au/wilde-about-oscar-dreams-of-falling/) - We have decided to resurrect Oscar Wilde one last time before gently sliding him back into his suitably ostentatious Parisian grave, and moving on to an ambitious new project. “I have put my genius into my life and only my talent into my works,” Oscar fibbed, having liberally sprinkled his genius over the likes of
- [THE CHERRY ORCHARD](https://johnshand.com.au/the-cherry-orchard-2/) - Old Fitz Theatre, August 7 8/10 Playwright Gary Owen takes Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, pulls it up by the roots, poaches the characters in the story’s juice, and relocates it to an apple orchard in 1982 Thatcherite Wales. Unlike the Ensemble’s concurrent Uncle Vanya, Owen’s play is more “inspired by” than “adapted from”. It's also
- [UNCLE VANYA](https://johnshand.com.au/uncle-vanya/) - Ensemble Theatre, July 31 9.5/10 Until now, an “adaptation” of a classic tended to be a synonym for a bastardization. Usually translated from another language, these classics come to us more in the image of the adaptor than the originator: high art rendered low by inferior intellect and artistry. Yet it can work. Commissioned by
- [The ghost in John Waters’ life](https://johnshand.com.au/the-ghost-in-john-waters-life/) - John Waters doesn’t believe in ghosts, yet he’s been seeing one most nights for the last four months. That’s because the veteran of Australian screens, theatres and concert stages is starring in the dramatisation of Susan Hill’s spooky novel, The Woman in Black, the titular character of which is a particularly tenacious ghost. Hill has
- [KARIM](https://johnshand.com.au/karim/) - Lennox Theatre, July 27 4/10 Ostensibly it’s Tahmoor – one of many close-to-Sydney towns through which the Hume Highway once crawled, before the expressway scorched across the landscape – that’s the prison for Karim and Beth. But really it’s family. Some iron combination of guilt, love and habit have been forged into bars that leave
- [IN THE HEIGHTS](https://johnshand.com.au/in-the-heights/) - Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, July 24 7/10 This was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s apprenticeship. He wrote the first draft of In the Heights at 19, nine years before it revolutionised musical theatre on Broadway in 2008. While rap had been used in musicals before, Miranda suddenly made it the most succinct way of characters communicating information
- [COST OF LIVING](https://johnshand.com.au/cost-of-living/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, July 19 9/10 Our lives are many-stranded, Martyna Majok’s play seems to tell us: so many lengths of rope, with infinite subtleties in our interdependence. Individual strands can snap or fray so easily when stressed, the wonder is that any of our relationships ever pass the test of time. Cost of Living
- [Massaging Chekhov into modernity, syllable by syllable](https://johnshand.com.au/massaging-chekhov-into-modernity-syllable-by-syllable/) - Joanna Murray-Smith is torn. On the one hand the acclaimed playwright is an in-demand adaptor of classic works not written in English. On the other hand she’s suspicious of the need for such adaptations (as opposed to existing translations) in the first place. It’s a demand stemming from the burning need for “relevance”, the current
- [Zakir Hussain and TRIVENI](https://johnshand.com.au/zakir-hussain-and-triveni/) - Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, July 7 9/10 Zakir Hussain’s hands don’t play the heads of his tabla, they dance upon them. The emergent rhythms, melodies and textures are as deep and mysterious as the music of the ancients, as sophisticated as the most complex composed music, and as innovative as tomorrow. No wonder he
- [DRACULA](https://johnshand.com.au/dracula/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, July 6 7.5/10 Sometimes the images are laid atop one another, like so many memories clamouring for focus in a brain. Sometimes the visual effect is wondrous, as when the characters of Holmwood, Morris and Van Helsing seem real rather than on a screen as they converse with the live John Seward,
- [PETER KNIGHT:  FINDING THE NEW IN THE ANCIENT](https://johnshand.com.au/peter-knight-finding-the-new-in-the-ancient/) - Peter Knight came to the trumpet early and to jazz late. Yet he’d only been playing the music for a decade before he began wondering if it were possible to put a more local – read Melbourne, Australia – slant on it. His first exploration, a long-lived band called Way Out West, answered that with
- [THE ODD COUPLE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-odd-couple/) - Theatre Royal, June 30 8/10 More than any other Neil Simon play, The Odd Couple has passed into folklore. Given that it clocked up nearly 1,000 performances in its initial mid-’60s Broadway run, spawned a hit film (with Walther Matthau and Jack Lemmon), a TV series in the 1970s, and has enjoyed endless revivals around
- [KING LEAR](https://johnshand.com.au/king-lear-2/) - The Neilson Nutshell, June 20 4/10 There is no greater play than King Lear. None is more disturbing, nor more moving, and no other Shakespeare work possesses so many characters of note. No role approaches the emotional breadth and height of Lear, nor his apocalyptic and hallucinogenic imagery. Even Othello is not as tormented as
- [CHICAGO](https://johnshand.com.au/chicago-2/) - Capitol Theatre, June 13 7/10 Chicago borrowed two of the most vacuous characters in theatrical history – Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart – and made them razzle-dazzle the world. Simultaneously its creators, John Kander, Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, launched a satirical rocket attack on the US justice system, which, alas, apparently failed to penetrate
- [STOLEN](https://johnshand.com.au/stolen/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, June 11 8/10 Little children suffer terror with minimal provocation. Dreams, sounds and shadows on the wall will do it, let alone hospitals, war and abduction. Alongside tidal waves of grief, families ripped asunder, all sense of home and belonging annulled and lives devastated beyond salvage, the saga of the Stolen Generations
- [NEVER CLOSER](https://johnshand.com.au/never-closer/) - Belvoir St Theatre, May 29 6.5/10 Do we let hate go, or cling to it, and let it define us? Wars breed resentments that last for decades. Those spawned by occupations last for generations, and are renewed by each fresh atrocity and its reciprocation, as we witness in Palestine/Israel. Most First Nations peoples arrive at
- [RIDE THE CYCLONE](https://johnshand.com.au/ride-the-cyclone/) - Hayes Theatre, May 28 9/10 Imagine watching a musical through a kaleidoscope, while the music splinters between genres. Imagine one that touches upon high art and popular culture like a butterfly flitting between flowers. (What other musical references both ABBA and Jean Genet?) Above all, imagine a musical that does black humour like Beckett. Yes,
- [David Murray Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/david-murray-quartet/) - Francesca (Intakt) 8/10 The sound is as lush as ever, spilling from the speakers to fill every corner of the room. In fact it’s odd that David Murray’s reputation was primarily as a tearaway in the heady 1970s, because he was already an unreformed romantic. You could hear that not just in his tenor saxophone
- [CICADA](https://johnshand.com.au/cicada/) - Wharf 2 Theatre, September 21 8.5/10 The magic lies in the mystery. No one – especially children – has to understand all that happens in a story to delight in it. The parts that leave you guessing can often be the best bits. So not only is your brain fully engaged by Cicada, but so
- [Australian Musical Theatre Festival echoes through Launceston](https://johnshand.com.au/australian-musical-theatre-festival-echoes-through-launceston/) - Audacious. That’s the word for this fifth edition of the Australian Musical Theatre Festival. The five-day celebration was capped by a full-blown show, basically thrown together during that time. Not only did the festival’s artistic director, Tyran Parke oversee this pressure-cooker operation, he also became its last-minute star, playing Guido Contini in Maury Yeston’s Nine
- [AUDRA MCDONALD](https://johnshand.com.au/audra-mcdonald-2/) - Concert Hall, May 11 9/10 Some talented kid could mimic Audra McDonald; could maybe catch the incandescence of her soprano range and the huskiness warming the edges of her chest voice. They might even replicate the translucence of her softest high notes, and the earthiness of her lowest ones. But the quality that would forever
- [SWITZERLAND](https://johnshand.com.au/switzerland/) - Ensemble Theatre, May 7 7.5/10 As Shakespeare did with his protagonist in Richard III, Joanna Murray-Smith plucked Patrica Highsmith from history, dropped her on a stage, and started pulling strings. Biographical drama is seldom compelling when it’s excessively reverential toward historical fact. The truth of what happens on stage counts for more. The play places
- [ISOLDE & TRISTAN](https://johnshand.com.au/isolde-tristan/) - Old Fitz Theatre, May 5 8/10 Can reparations be made for the sins of centuries? Can a love triangle be equilateral? Unsurprisingly, Argentine-German playwright Esther Vilar gives us a “no” to both questions. More remarkable is that she asks the first one at all in the context of the myth of Isolde and Tristan, which
- [Sun Ra](https://johnshand.com.au/sun-ra/) - At the Showcase Live in Chicago 1976-1977 (Jazz Detective) 8.5/10 It’s not only hats, umbrellas and litter that blow around the windy city of Chicago: the draughts mess with the music, too, obscuring sources and encouraging invention. Chicago nurtured the blues’ acoustic-to-electric 1950s upheaval, and then fostered a uniquely holistic take on jazz espoused by
- [Life and art are a repeating mirror for Martha Wainwright](https://johnshand.com.au/life-and-art-are-a-repeating-mirror-for-martha-wainwright/) - Martha Wainwright is the same animal whether spilling secrets on stage or spilling stew in the kitchen. The Canadian singer-songwriter is so comfortable in her own skin that she doesn’t even mind fans pestering her in restaurants, and her 2022 memoir, Stories I Might Regret Telling You, is as raw and honest as her lyrics
- [LOSE TO WIN](https://johnshand.com.au/lose-to-win/) - Belvoir St Theatre, April 27 7/10 Not a soul is born without a backstory, but few are as gripping as Mandela Mathia’s. Not many who haven’t also grown up in a war zone and sought safety elsewhere suffer such trials as infant, child, youth and adult – and then prosper despite racism taking the sheen
- [Seeing Kip Williams in the rear view mirror](https://johnshand.com.au/9244-2/) - Ambition has defined Kip Williams’ eight years as Sydney Theatre Company’s artistic director – and with enough of it realised for his tenure to have been a significant step up from that of his predecessor, Andrew Upton. Williams’ ambition will primarily live in many theatre-goers memories thanks to his “cine-theatre” productions, the apotheosis of which
- [ROCKY HORROR SHOW](https://johnshand.com.au/rocky-horror-show/) - Theatre Royal, April 3 7/10 Those of us who saw Reg Livermore play Frank N Furter in the 1974 Oz production of Rocky Horror Show will never forget the sudden jolt of the new; the thrill of witnessing a show like no other. Fifty years on, it’s still that. Where most musicals take themselves seriously,
- [GREASE THE MUSICAL](https://johnshand.com.au/grease-the-musical/) - Capitol Theatre, April 2 7/10 Given that it’s hard to take any of the characters in Grease too seriously, director Luke Joslin has a new solution: don’t try to disguise their cartoonishness; play it up! Make the whole show like a Roy Lichenstein painting that’s sprung to life, and, as well as sprouting cliches and
- [WEST SIDE STORY](https://johnshand.com.au/west-side-story-2/) - Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, March 22 8.5/104 The sheer jolt of most artistic revolutions fades with time, until, retrospectively, they come to seem more like evolutions. Not West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein packed his score with such shocks and risks – such complex rhythmic syncopations and sudden dissonances – as had never stunned the
- [Being the tail that wags the dog: Michael League of Snarky Puppy](https://johnshand.com.au/being-the-tail-that-wags-the-dog-michael-league-of-snarky-puppy/) - Michael League must have patience and efficiency to burn. His band, Snarky Puppy, varies between nine and 12 members, and the larger the group, the greater the demands on those qualities from its leader. That would apply even if the band just played clubs, but League, also the bassist and composer, has taken Snarky Puppy
- [Jeremy Rose & The Earshift Orchestra](https://johnshand.com.au/jeremy-rose-the-earshift-orchestra/) - Discordia (Earshift Music EAR082) 8.5/10 Along with the sounds, it was the litheness that first drew me to jazz. As a child I’d listened to music ranging from The Beatles to Handel, and then suddenly this more slippery music, brimming with life, burst onto my radar. Names like Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Wes Montgomery
- [HOLDING THE MAN](https://johnshand.com.au/holding-the-man/) - Belvoir St Theatre, March 13 6.5/10 It turns from light to dark as if a switch is flicked. Act Two is barely underway, with Tim (Tom Conroy) researching his proposed verbatim play about HIV/AIDS, when he interviews the desperately sick Richard (Guy Simon), whose answers are interrupted by coughing fits. Asked if he has a
- [FRAME NARRATIVE](https://johnshand.com.au/frame-narrative/) - Old Fitzroy Theatre, March 10 7/10 Emily Sheehan has painted herself into a corner. She’s crafted a gothic horror film within a play within her play, and these three layers collide and generate infinity mirror effects on the nature of the act of creation – from Genesis to Frankenstein, pregnancies, acting and writing – that
- [WIT](https://johnshand.com.au/wit/) - Lennox Theatre, March 8 9/10 Margaret Edson has only written one play. She sent it to 60 companies before it was accepted, yet it won her the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Seldom has a work been more deserving, and seldom has a Sydney stage been graced by a performance as moving and as
- [A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM](https://johnshand.com.au/a-midsummer-nights-dream-2/) - The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, March 6 7/10 The rude mechanicals’ play-within-play, Pyramus and Thisbe, can sometimes seem a lame coda to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not here. Peter Evans’ Bell Shakespeare production ensures it crowns all the comedy that’s gone before. Even Quince’s prologue, so often laboured, skips from the tongue of Imogen Sage
- [& JULIET](https://johnshand.com.au/juliet/) - Sydney Lyric Theatre, March 7 4/10 You know those restaurants that serve drinks matched to the food? Here, upon arrival, we received a complimentary drink perfectly matched to this musical: a frothy pink gin cocktail served in a plastic martini glass. Just as no self-respecting drinker would savour this, so no musical theatre connoisseur will
- [THE LEHMAN TRILOGY](https://johnshand.com.au/the-lehman-trilogy/) - Theatre Royal, March 1 9/10 The Lehman Trilogy is a 21st-century masterwork. This is true of Stefano Massini’s original novel and in some ways even more so of this play, adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes for the UK’s National Theatre. If Hamilton partly charted the birth of capitalism, The Lehman Trilogy
- [AGAPI & OTHER KINDS OF LOVE](https://johnshand.com.au/agapi-other-kinds-of-love/) - Lennox Theatre, February 29 8/10 Luka Lesson takes us From Plato’s Symposium in 416 BC to riots on the streets of Athens today. He leads us through the seven categories of platonic love, ending with Agapi, the universal, most selfless form, and Martin Luther King’s typically lyrical and sagacious take: that, in part, Agapi is
- [Brooklyn Rider: The four elements of a radical democracy](https://johnshand.com.au/brooklyn-rider-the-four-elements-of-a-radical-democracy/) - The name was a statement of intent. Eighteen years ago four young Brooklynites named their string quartet Brooklyn Rider, nodding to the eclecticism of Wassily Kandinsky’s pre-World War I Blue Rider artistic movement. Since then they’ve not only given exceptional performances from the 300-year-old quartet repertoire, but they’ve commissioned many new works and collaborated with
- [CARLOTTA THE PARTY’S OVER](https://johnshand.com.au/carlotta-the-partys-over/) - Hayes Theatre, February 28 7/10 Paul Anka bought the rights to the song that became My Way for $1, rewriting the lyrics for Frank Sinatra, whose signature it became. What a shame Anka was unaware of the person for whom the words were perfect: Carlotta. From starring in Kings Cross’ glamorous Les Girls drag show
- [AN EVENING WITH FRAN LEBOWITZ](https://johnshand.com.au/an-evening-with-fran-lebowitz/) - Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, February 13 8/10 Fran Lebowitz is a blocked writer who earns a living from talking. Writers’ festivals have made the talking writer a routine phenomenon, but generally you’d be better spending that time reading their books. Lebowitz is different. Her decades-long writer’s block has made speaking her de facto art
- [A FOOL IN LOVE](https://johnshand.com.au/a-fool-in-love/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, February 10 5.5/10 Back in the day, one could make frothy coffee without an espresso machine. It was basically a hot milkshake of nebulous coffee flavour. Van Badham’s new play is the theatrical equivalent: a comedy so frothy that one wades through hectares of lather to happen upon occasional kernels of humour.
- [ELVIS – A MUSICAL REVOLUTION](https://johnshand.com.au/elvis-a-musical-revolution/) - State Theatre, February 9 4.5/10 “It’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get…” No, not ready. Put the blue suede shoes back in the box. When an earlier incarnation of this Elvis Presley bio-musical played in Sydney last year, it wasn’t deemed ready for review by its creators. Now, after a
- [Sydney Festival Wrap](https://johnshand.com.au/sydney-festival-wrap/) - Olivia Ansell has proved a shrewd appointment as Sydney Festival’s artistic director. If arts festivals are intended to surprise us and present performances we’d otherwise be unlikely to see, then Ansell’s three events accumulatively outshine all since Fergus Linehan’s 2006-09 burst. But 2024 was not her best. It’s not just that nothing matched the mind-explosion
- [TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS](https://johnshand.com.au/tiny-beautiful-things/) - Belvoir St Theatre, February 3 9/10 It’s desperately sad, fierce, funny, intoxicating and confronting. In other words, Tiny Beautiful Things is desperately full of life. Cheryl Strayed’s book of this name was improbable fodder for a play, and remains so, despite Nia Vardalos’s expert adaptation, and director Lee Lewis having Queensland Theatre’s production humming. It’s
- [ALONE IT STANDS](https://johnshand.com.au/alone-it-stands/) - Ensemble Theatre, January 31 8.5/10 This is rare: a play that has a beating heart as big as a hug from your mum, and yet is not even slightly mawkish. Even rarer, it has that heart, and yet is about the skull-splintering game of rugby union. Rarer still, it’s the most physical play I’ve seen.
- [Rugby play continues to kick goals for its writer, John Breen](https://johnshand.com.au/rugby-play-continues-to-kick-goals-for-its-writer-john-breen/) - It’s 1978, and Ireland is on its back. War ravages the north, and the south suffers rabid inflation and crippling unemployment. U2 are yet to dominate the world, and it seems there’s little that’s Irish to raise spirits or spark pride. Then Munster, an amateur rugby union team from Limerick, does the unthinkable, and beats
- [Sydney Festival: THINGS HIDDEN SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD](https://johnshand.com.au/sydney-festival-things-hidden-since-the-foundation-of-the-world/) - Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, January 19 8/10 An audience address becomes a play without you noticing. But then Javaad Alipoor’s work questions the nature of a play, just as it questions the internet’s deception that everything can be known; questions how a refugee pop star becomes a murder victim; questions what it means to
- [Sydney Festival: ARE WE NOT DRAWN ONWARD TO NEW ERA](https://johnshand.com.au/sydney-festival-are-we-not-drawn-onward-to-new-era/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, January 16 8/10 Here was something to bend the brain and fire off the synapses like so many New Year’s Eve crackers. This was theatre as spectacle, magic, image, poetry, didacticism and even cinema. To ask what it’s about is both the right and the wrong question. It’s the wrong question because,
- [TIDDAS](https://johnshand.com.au/tiddas/) - Belvoir St Theatre, January 14 5/10 There was a play to be mined from Anita Heiss’s novel Tiddas, but this is not it. It’s Heiss’s first play, and in turning her 350-page book into a 90-minute play, she makes the novice’s mistake of failing to free herself from the original structure. Tiddas (“sisters”) tells
- [BIG NAME, NO BLANKETS](https://johnshand.com.au/big-name-no-blankets/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, January 11 7/10 Forty years later its seems obvious that an Aboriginal rock band would sing in a language other than English. Back then it was revolutionary. It stopped you dead with your beer midway to your mouth. Anyone who saw Warumpi Band live will remember the impact of their raw musical
- [Ben Hauptmann](https://johnshand.com.au/ben-hauptmann/) - The One with the Singing on It https://www.benhauptmann.com/ 8.5/10 I fell asleep and dreamed I was reviewing a record that was unlike any vinyl I’d reviewed before. No title, tracks or musicians were listed on either the swirling orange cover or the disc, and the music itself was shrouded in further mystery, arriving in a
- [ANOUSHKA SHANKAR](https://johnshand.com.au/anoushka-shankar/) - Concert Hall, January 12 9/10 Anoushka Shankar’s music is as mellifluous and luxuriant as her name, and she’d barely played two notes when I fell under her spell once more. As with her late father, Ravi, her virtuosity on the sitar goes far beyond mere dexterity. The sound she makes is like the glint of
- [A BUCKET OF BEETLES](https://johnshand.com.au/a-bucket-of-beetles/) - Everest Theatre, January 9 7/10 Like children’s books, the best children’s theatre and, in this case, puppetry, hooks the adults, too. So if you have any bored six-to-nine-year-olds digging you an early grave during the holidays, A Bucket of Beetles will unshackle their minds from the digital grasp for 45 minutes. Add in the round
- [I HATE PEOPLE; OR TIMON OF ATHENS](https://johnshand.com.au/i-hate-people-or-timon-of-athens/) - Leura Everglades, January 6 9.5/10 This explodes like a new star in the firmament of the best Shakespeare productions I’ve seen. It has a truth, an energy and a ferocity to make the blood drain from your face, and it also begs the question, why is Timon of Athens the most ignored of Shakespeare’s plays?
- [BANANALAND](https://johnshand.com.au/bananaland/) - Riverside Theatre, January 4 5.5/10 Bananaland can certainly be cute, but it can also be trashy. Were it bottled, it would be shocking pink or lime green, come with a high-sugar warning, and explode when you opened it. Instead it’s a crazily schizophrenic musical – a Banana Split, if you will. Part of that schizophrenia
- [Decadence, opulence, cocktails and dance – this must be Gatsby’s place](https://johnshand.com.au/decadence-opulence-cocktails-and-dance-this-must-be-gatsbys-place/) - F Scott Fitzgerald could never have imagined the avalanche of adaptations that would cling to the starched shirt-tails of his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. Plays, films, musicals, an opera and even a ballet have milked and re-milked the characters, the opulent setting and the tale of failed love. Now comes a Gatsby as you’ve
- [The Kransky Sisters: A CRACKER KRANSKY CHRISTMAS](https://johnshand.com.au/a-cracker-kransky-christmas/) - Riverside Theatre, December 16 7/10 If the burghers of the thriving metropolis of Esk, northwest of Ipswich, are bewildered to find their streets bereft of women with straight black hair and skirts, muted polka-dot blouses and sensible shoes, that would be because their celebrated neighbours, the Kransky Sisters, are on tour. Yes, they were lured
- [Phil Slater](https://johnshand.com.au/phil-slater-2/) - Immersion Lure https://philslater.bandcamp.com/ 9.5/10 The desiccating effects of age are not all bad. Phil Slater’s trumpet sound, for instance has steadily become more austere, less lush and romantic, across the years. Something similar has befallen his composing, too. While this slightly compresses the music’s emotional range, it makes the spikes in that range more telling.
- [THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-wind-in-the-willows/) - KXT on Broadway, December 13 7/10 Alan Bennett had not encountered Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows as a child, and was deeply suspicious of dramatizing it. Toad apart, he thought the characters muted, and besides, it incorporated horses, cars, trains and barges. He set about it, nonetheless, and came up with something rather
- [THE FACE OF JIZO](https://johnshand.com.au/the-face-of-jizo/) - Old Fitz Theatre, November 1 8/10 The play transforms itself in a moment, just as the lives of everyone in Hiroshima were either ended on transformed at 8:15 am on August 6, 1945. Until this moment, Hisashi Inoue’s gentle drama has a father and daughter discussing all that’s little or large in her life in
- [MIDNIGHT MURDER AT HAMLINGTON HALL](https://johnshand.com.au/midnight-murder-at-hamlington-hall/) - Ensemble Theatre, December 7 7.5/10 Even the shriek of nails on a blackboard is preferable to the mannered flourishes and dry-mouthed woodenness that passes for acting in the worst amateur theatricals. By contrast, we not only forgive bad drawing and painting, we stick the stuff to our fridges when our children do it. Weekend wonders
- [THE SEAGULL](https://johnshand.com.au/the-seagull/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, November 25 7/10 This is Chekhov on steroids. The Russian master delighted in poking fun not only at all his characters in The Seagull, but at himself as a writer, too. Andrew Upton’s new adaptation, directed by Imara Savage for Sydney Theatre Company, does so much fun-poking as to render the characters,
- [Mara! Big Band](https://johnshand.com.au/mara-big-band/) - Zashto? Mara! Music 9/10 Australians have long had a love/hate attitude to migrants. While we enjoy the cornucopia of foods, racism is a rash festering just below the skin, waiting to be inflamed by the dog-whistlers. Zashto? – “why?” in Bulgarian – is a song cycle that asks why the migrant experience has often been
- [THE MASTER & MARGARITA](https://johnshand.com.au/the-master-margarita/) - Belvoir St Theatre, November 15 9.5/10 Were adaptor/director Eamon Flack to fall under a tram tomorrow – as happens to poor Berlioz in the play – he can go knowing he’s made something to live in the annals of theatre. Cross my heart and hope to die, I promise this will surprise the hell
- [THE WHARF REVUE: PRIDE IN PREJUDICE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-wharf-revue-pride-in-prejudice/) - York Theatre, November 10 7/10 I wonder if pollies are afflicted with deprivation syndrome when they’re ignored by The Wharf Revue. Does Pauline Hanson hear she was surplus to requirements this year, and need a beer, a Bex and a good lie down? Did Tony Burke – again braving the riff-riff in the audience –
- [OIL](https://johnshand.com.au/oil/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, November 9 7/10 We get caught in spirals of desire. It happens with alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, shopping and even fossil fuels. We always want more. Perhaps greed is hardwired into us. Ella Hickson’s gravity-defying 2016 play is partly about how that lust for oil shaped 150 years of human history; partly
- [TWELFTH NIGHT](https://johnshand.com.au/twelfth-night-2/) - The Playhouse, October 26 8/10 At the end of Twelfth Night, the “most notoriously abused” Malvolio says to the rest, “I’ll be revenged on the pack of you.” Director Heather Fairbairn’s take on the character is so different to your run-of-the-mill Malvolios that you rather wish Shakespeare had written a sequel, and we could see
- [CECILE MCLORIN SALVANT](https://johnshand.com.au/cecile-mclorin-salvant/) - City Recital Hall, October 31 9/10 Cecile McLorin Salvant makes us wish we were great singers, too. Even as she transports us with vocal artistry of the highest calibre, the fun factor is contagious, deployed with all the guilelessness of playing in a sandpit. Yet intertwined with the playfulness is the ability to touch people
- [ROBYN ARCHER: AN AUSTRALIAN SONGBOOK](https://johnshand.com.au/robyn-archer-an-australian-songbook/) - Belvoir St Theatre, October 19 7/10 The title could have been A Bloody Australian Songbook, such is often the tone as Robyn Archer trawls the Oz annals. It makes no pretence at being an anthology of the best or most famous Australian songs, but rather is Archer taking us by the hand and pointing out
- [GIRLS IN BOYS’ CARS](https://johnshand.com.au/girls-in-boys-cars/) - Lennox Theatre, October 21 6/10 Felicity Castagna’s racy novel about two teenaged girls behaving badly certainly has the makings of a movie, and perhaps a play – but this was not quite it. In adapting the book for the stage, Priscilla Jackman has lost some of the fizz and lightness of tone, and as director
- [A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC](https://johnshand.com.au/a-little-night-music/) - Hayes Theatre, October 18 8.5/10 Is A Little Night Music the most timeless musical ever penned? Taking their cue from the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, about couples being naughty in 1900 Sweden, its creators, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, looked at hypocrisy with forgiving amusement; as an inevitability. Then they whipped
- [SuperBlue: Kurt Elling & Charlie Hunter](https://johnshand.com.au/superblue-kurt-elling-charlie-hunter/) - The Iridescent Spree 7/10 Wearing his virtuosity on his sleeve, the young Kurt Elling liked to prove what an innovative singer he was at almost every turn, using radical vocal textures and dramatic changes of pitch and dynamics when just delivering a song, let alone when improvising. The mature Elling, by contrast, has the innovation
- [All Rise](https://johnshand.com.au/all-rise/) - Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, August 31 9/10 Many have tried, but no one’s succeeded like Wynton Marsalis. Collaborations between jazz musicians and symphony orchestras tend to see the latter obliged to play drab accompaniments, and the jazz players’ rhythmic fluidity stymied. Add a 100-voice choir – putting about 200 performers on the stage –
- [VENUS & ADONIS](https://johnshand.com.au/venus-adonis-2/) - Reginald Theatre, October 4 9/10 Held in the wings while the plague passed, Damien Ryan’s Venus & Adonis became a feature film, instead. Twenty-one months later we finally have the play, and can luxuriate in its velvety prose, made all the plusher by incorporating several Shakespeare sonnets, lines from his plays and the epically erotic
- [Message In A Bottle: 3D pictures of the songs of Sting](https://johnshand.com.au/message-in-a-bottle-3d-pictures-of-the-songs-of-sting/) - When British choreographer Kate Prince hears music, she always sees matching movement. This is what happened when she listened to The Police’s Walking on the Moon, resulting in Message In A Bottle, a 2020 dance piece based on entirely Sting’s music. Performed by her acclaimed Sadlers’ Wells-based company ZooNation, it’s about the emotional rollercoaster of
- [Book review: Full Coverage: A History of Rock Journalism in Australia](https://johnshand.com.au/book-review-full-coverage-a-history-of-rock-journalism-in-australia/) - NON-FICTION By Samuel J Fell Monash University Publishing, $36.99 From the 1970s into the 1990s, Sydney’s inner-city corner pubs teemed with beer-pit audiences lapping up local bands. Live music was the default option for countless people on a night out, and some bands could happily pack out multiple residencies each week, eliminating the need for
- [LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL](https://johnshand.com.au/lady-day-at-emersons-bar-grill/) - Belvoir St Theatre, September 16 8.5/10 A 1950s jazz club: tables and chairs where Belvoir’s stage usually is, a dimly lit bandstand in the corner and a stool for Lady Day. Not that being a nightclub chanteuse perched on a stool is really her thing. But she does need somewhere to put her whisky. Lanie
- [THE VISITORS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-visitors/) - Drama Theatre, September 15 7.5/10 The birds are singing blithely and the scorching January sun glistens on what we now call Sydney Harbour. The heat apart, all would be well with the world, were the news from Kamay (Botany Bay) not so disconcerting. Nawi – boats – have arrived, again; huge, as tall as trees,
- [THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-25th-annual-putnam-county-spelling-bee/) - Hayes Theatre, September 13 6/10 It starts with such artless charm, and yet by the end is dragging its ergative verbs and uncountable nouns to the point where two hours seems interminable. Most of the fault lies with William Finn’s music, which not only fails to generate memorable songs, but as Act Two trundles along,
- [Summer of Harold](https://johnshand.com.au/summer-of-harold/) - Ensemble Theatre, September 12 7/10 Most of us are hoarders at heart. Even if we don’t cram the home with junk, we cling to some object – whether a car, vase, necklace or hat – like a dog with its favourite ball. It’s hardly a sin with a musical instrument or heirloom, but ultimately stuff
- [Zahra Newman: More than mere mimicry to playing Billie Holiday](https://johnshand.com.au/zahra-newman-more-than-mere-mimicry-to-playing-billie-holiday/) - When actor Zahra Newman saw Audra McDonald play Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill on Broadway in 2014, she immediately had two thoughts. “One, that I definitely wanted to try and do it,” she recalls, “and the second that I was terrified! I felt that I couldn’t possibly do it. Both
- [THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST](https://johnshand.com.au/the-importance-of-being-earnest-2/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, September 9 8.5/10 A good production of The Importance of Being Earnest confirms that civilisation still exists. The barbarians may have vandalised art in favour of what they call popular culture, but if Oscar Wilde can still adorn our stages, the war’s not lost, and a difference survives between wit and the
- [THE CHAIRS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-chairs/) - Old Fitz Theatre, September 8 9/10 They smear their make-up on before our eyes: smudged white and garish red, making faces that might have delighted in the guillotine during the French Revolution, hooting when another head plopped into the basket. Then they pull on the ragged clothes that constitute their finery, contrasting with the asylum-like
- [THE DISMISSAL](https://johnshand.com.au/the-dismissal/) - York Theatre, September 5 6.5/10 In other countries they’d be lobbing Molotov cocktails, flipping cars and looting shops. But in Australia a beloved comedian gate-crashed history and lowered the collective blood-pressure on the day when we entered unchartered constitutional waters. Even as deposed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was assuring us that nothing would save the
- [Wilde about Oscar](https://johnshand.com.au/wilde-about-oscar/) - “I have put my genius into my life and only my talent into my works,” Oscar Wilde fibbed, having liberally sprinkled his genius over the likes of Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest. Now Dreams of Falling celebrates the man, the myth and his work with a special show called Wilde about Oscar. Consisting
- [Taking a walk on the Wilde side](https://johnshand.com.au/taking-a-walk-on-the-wilde-side/) - “I have put my genius into my life and only my talent into my works,” Oscar Wilde fibbed, having liberally sprinkled his genius over the likes of Salome, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. More truthfully, he acknowledged his stories contained scant action, saying, “My people sit in chairs and
- [CONSTELLATIONS](https://johnshand.com.au/constellations-2/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, August 3 8/10 Your jaw drops before a word is said. Hanging from the flies is an otherworldly, golden, donut-shaped ceiling that could be made of sea sponge or brain matter. It looms low over the stage, with a pristine white dome in its centre and light traversing its perimeter in a
- [UNPRECEDENTED](https://johnshand.com.au/unprecedented/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, August 25 7/10 We’re slow learners. For decades our worst bushfires have been declared “unprecedented”, the unmistakable trend being that they’re worsening. Hence the title of Campion Decent’s new play (following his related 2008 work Embers). Since 1939, he tells us, there have been 57 official fire-related inquiries, reviews and royal commissions.
- [When elephants take off, they can fly quite high](https://johnshand.com.au/when-elephants-take-off-they-can-fly-quite-high/) - When a friend told Marco Lucchesi he was writing a musical about Rasputin, Lucchesi instantly replied, “Rasputin? I’ll do you one better: I’ll do the Elephant Man.” As he uttered those words, the melody and lyrics for a song popped into his head, and he sang, “Oh, you might not think it’s relevant, but he
- [MR BAILEY’S MINDER](https://johnshand.com.au/mr-baileys-minder/) - Ensemble Theatre, August 2 7/10 John Gaden makes his entry down the stairs of the dilapidated house owned by his character, the elderly Leo Bailey, oozing poison and malignancy from every pore. It’s now 20 years since playwright Debra Oswald created in Leo a character we like, despite all he says, does and has
- [Fade](https://johnshand.com.au/fade/) - Lennox Theatre, July 29 9/10 Camila Ponte Alvarez brings such vivacity to the role of Lucia as to make every line and spit and sizzle with humour, contempt, joy, angst and scheming calculation. Her eyes flash as her arms, hands and fingers continually trace acute angles in the air – just as her character is
- [Jeremy Rose](https://johnshand.com.au/jeremy-rose/) - Project Infinity: Live at Phoenix Central Park 9/10 Listen closely, and you can hear the sound of the room where this music was made. Even through the thickets of electronics and expert post-production, you can still sense the space that made the different sounds sing as one: Chippendale’s Phoenix Central Park, a venue with an
- [THE TURN OF THE SCREW](https://johnshand.com.au/the-turn-of-the-screw/) - Reginald Theatre, July 26 7/10 Fear turns to terror when our imaginations go to work upon the facts as Henry James understood so well. By not explaining the ghostly phenomena in The Turn of the Screw, he engaged his readers’ imaginations, and by keeping the ambiguities alive until the end, he made a little masterpiece
- [ON THE BEACH](https://johnshand.com.au/on-the-beach/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, July 22 6/10 Among the wonders of life is that most of us aren’t obsessed about death until we’re confronting it – and some not even then. Death constantly clouds Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach, infusing each character with acceptance or denial. Death is inevitable thanks to radiation sickness, humanity
- [Linda May Han Oh](https://johnshand.com.au/linda-may-han-oh/) - THE GLASS HOURS (Biophilia) 8/10 There’s always an element of risk when artists interrogate themselves as to why they do what they do, as analysis can jeopardise the purity of intuition. But for those brave enough to take the plunge, it can also lead to deeper areas of endeavour, as musicians from JS Bach to
- [Stephen Sondheim: A little light throat-slashing](https://johnshand.com.au/stephen-sondheim-a-little-light-throat-slashing/) - It’s official: Stephen Sondheim is the all-time greatest writer of musicals. Okay, this is from a straw poll of only two people, but the pair in question, performer/director Nancye Hayes and director Stuart Maunder, are musical theatre royalty. Dare to suggest that Sondheim was the only creator of musicals to hold a candle to such
- [JAILBABY](https://johnshand.com.au/jailbaby/) - SBW Stables Theatre, July 13 7/10 How many plays are preceded by a reminder that we can ring Lifeline if required? Yes, Jailbaby is that confronting. Suzie Miller’s ability to challenge audiences with impassioned writing about societal failures was well established, especially by Prima Facie, about sexual assault. Now she blasts the penal system and
- [Beverly Glenn-Copeland: Finding the strength within](https://johnshand.com.au/beverly-glenn-copeland-finding-the-strength-within/) - It was the owner of a tiny Japanese record shop who finally turned Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s career around. This was in 2015 when Ryota Masuka emailed to ask the transgendered singer/songwriter if he still had any copies of his 1986 cassette-only album Keyboard Fantasies. Glenn-Copeland – Glenn to his friends – was readily able to oblige.
- [Band rises from grave for Halloween](https://johnshand.com.au/band-rises-from-grave-for-halloween/) - “It’s not ideal,” agrees The Funk Klub’s Dr Funkenstein, responding to rumours that people have died of fright at the group’s gigs. “I guess that can happen when you have a band of ghosts,” he says. “But we come into our own at Halloween. Then the living seem to delight in having the pants scared
- [TRIO TAPESTRY](https://johnshand.com.au/trio-tapestry/) - OUR DAILY BREAD 9/10 A piano keyboard is laid out as formally as a Government House dining table. It’s up to the pianist to mess up the placement of cutlery and glassware, spill some wine and knock over a candle or two. For decades improviser Marilyn Crispell has displayed an exceptional grasp of how to
- [CITY OF ANGELS](https://johnshand.com.au/city-of-angels/) - Hayes Theatre, June 27 8/10 Gunshots ring out in a pitch-black theatre. We, the audience, might well be suspects rather than mere witnesses, so perverse is the reality of City of Angels, a 1989 musical about a writer adapting his detective novel into a screenplay, the resultant film being enacted side by side with events
- [ROMEO AND JULIET](https://johnshand.com.au/romeo-and-juliet-3/) - The Neilson Nutshell, June 28 7/10 In case we, the audience, are as thick as planks, the Prologue lumbers on and ensures we know that from the moment the star-cross’d lovers lay eyes upon each other, the die is cast: they will take their own lives. Both Romeo and Juliet have some inkling of this,
- [ORANGE WINTER JAZZ FESTIVAL](https://johnshand.com.au/orange-winter-jazz-festival/) - June 9-11 Jazz has a way of flaring up in unexpected places – even in Orange on the far-flung Central Tablelands of New South Wales. The Orange Winter Jazz Festival was born last year, and this year's event consisted of 40 concerts across three days in four venues. Most of the artists came from Sydney,
- [BOOK REVIEW: Vinyl Dreams: How the 1970s Changed Music](https://johnshand.com.au/book-reivew-vinyl-dreams-how-the-1970s-changed-music/) - By Tony Wellington Monash University Publishing, $36.99 The fabled 1960s conjure some combination of idealism, collectivism, a popular music explosion, Civil Rights, the pill, Vietnam, adventurousness in other arts and mind-altering drugs. The 1970 demise of The Beatles came just as the idealism began to wane, and selfishness and narcissism slithered back out from beneath
- [Nick Mason: Saucerful of Secrets winds back time](https://johnshand.com.au/nick-mason-saucerful-of-secrets-winds-back-time/) - Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason remembers his first visit to Sydney for all the wrong reasons. This was when the band performed at Randwick Racecourse on a bitter winter’s day in 1971. “It was probably the coldest gig I’ve ever played,” Mason recalls on the phone from one of his English homes. “I actually ended
- [BEAUTY AND THE BEAST](https://johnshand.com.au/beauty-and-the-beast/) - Capitol Theatre, June 22 8/10 So you think you’ve seen some coups de theatre in your time? Think again. Beauty and the Beast dusts the eyes with so much implausible visual magic and theatrical sleight-of-hand as to gently blind most people most of the time to the show’s imperfections. Even those dragged along by their
- [Hamid Drake](https://johnshand.com.au/hamid-drake/) - Devin Brahja Waldman/Hamid Drake: Mediumistic Methodology (Astral Spirits) 8/10 Ken Vandermark/Hamid Drake: Eternal River (Corbett vs. Dempsey) 8.5/10 It’s a secret few drummers unlock: the art of playing so melodically as to create relationships between their instrument (of indeterminate pitch) and other instruments (of determinate pitch) that imply a kind of harmony. Max Roach, Ed Blackwell, Paul
- [A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE](https://johnshand.com.au/a-streetcar-named-desire/) - Old Fitz Theatre, June 7 9.5/10 Sheridan Harbridge’s Blanche flutters around Stanley like a moth around a flame. Hers is not a fey, winsome Blanche, but one who’ll fight and hope and dream until she is consumed. Although Harbridge’s craft is not entirely invisible early on, any sense of a flaw is obliterated by the
- [CONSENT](https://johnshand.com.au/consent/) - Reginald Theatre, June 3 8/10 Nina Raine’s play doesn’t just ask us questions, it cross-examines us. Is morality innate? Are there degrees of rape? If you love someone, must you also love their flaws? Must you experience the same traumatic incident to truly empathise? Cross-examination, Tim tells us, is a very damaging form of communication,
- [THE NECKS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-necks-8/) - Drama Theatre, May 30 8.5/10 Yes, they can still surprise us 36 years on. That shows just how nimble The Necks’ original conception of slowly-evolving long-form improvisations was, also appealing to an infinitely wider audience than free improvisation would usually attract. Having played all six venues at the Opera House, here The Necks were back
- [DO NOT GO GENTLE](https://johnshand.com.au/do-not-go-gentle/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, May 27 7/10 How to die? With grace? Rare. With dignity? Rarer. And attempting it with courage or good humour may fall short of the intent – regret being more likely. Playwright Patricia Cornelius wonders aloud about how we all die in Do Not Go Gentle, taking her title from the famed
- [STEVE BARRY](https://johnshand.com.au/steve-barry/) - IN THE WAVES (Earshift) 8/10 From the first time I heard Steve Barry, it was clear he was not just a good player, but a musical forcefield. That was around 2009, and this album is the finest instalment to date of the pianist’s bristling musical intelligence, rhythmic mutability, melodic flair and compositional gifts. It helps
- [SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER](https://johnshand.com.au/suddenly-last-summer/) - Ensemble Theatre, May 19 8.5/10 Never did Tennessee Williams creep so close to the Gothic horror of Edgar Allan Poe as in 1957’s Suddenly Last Summer. Never was his imagery so confronting. White is the recurrent colour: not an innocent white, but a malevolent one. The Spanish sun, Catharine tells us, looked “as if a
- [TINA – THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL](https://johnshand.com.au/tina-the-tina-turner-musical/) - Theatre Royal, May 18 7/10 Damp dynamite can be slow to ignite, but still goes off with a bang in the end. This show spent most of its time meandering like a riverboat around the twists and turns of Tina Turner’s childhood (with a loveless mother), and her marriage to Ike Turner, punctuated by domestic
- [Dreams of Falling in Lithgow, Sunday September 10](https://johnshand.com.au/dreams-of-falling-in-lithgow-sunday-september-10/) - Dreams of Falling magically combines music with poetry and prose, mostly penned by Walkley Award-winning writer John Shand (best known as The Sydney Morning Herald’s long-term theatre and music critic). John (spoken word, percussion) is joined by Rebecca Daniel (1741 violin, viola, vocals) and Leigh Birkett (guitars). Their diaphanous music, ranging from Celtic folk to
- [The poetry of sex, insanity and dysfunction](https://johnshand.com.au/the-poetry-of-sex-insanity-and-dysfunction/) - Tennessee Williams was 33 before he had a hit play, whereupon he unleashed a deluge of them, including several at the very pinnacle of open-heart surgery and psychological insight. It’s easy enough to say such plays are timeless by definition, but with two, 1957’s Suddenly Last Summer and 1947’s A Streetcar Named Desire, both opening
- [CLYDE’S](https://johnshand.com.au/clydes/) - Ensemble Theatre, May 9 7.5/10 Only ex-cons work at Clyde’s. It’s a purgatory through which they must pass before re-entering the pearly gates of normal life. The theological metaphors don’t end there, because while the setting might be a truck-stop sandwich shop on a B-road in backwoods Pennsylvania, it has in Clyde a woman who’s
- [METROPOLIS](https://johnshand.com.au/metropolis/) - Hayes Theatre, April 26 7.5/10 Before a note is sung you’re seduced by Nick Fry’s set. The angular art deco shapes ornamenting upstage windows are echoed in downstage panels depicting skyscrapers. This elegance contrasts with the brutalist world between them: one of metallic walls and beefy rivets, of grills, switches and steel railings. This is
- [TICK, TICK… BOOM!](https://johnshand.com.au/tick-tick-boom/) - Sydney Lyric Theatre, April 21 8/10 Most people just see the stars, not the dark sky behind. They see the artists who become famous and wealthy beyond belief, feted and adored with sold-out tours, hit films and best-selling books, and think it must all be quite a lark. You get to sleep in, do what
- [UFO](https://johnshand.com.au/ufo/) - SBW Stables Theatre, April 20 4.5/10 It’s like an elaborate children’s game: one that not only incorporates the video madness of modernity, but that looks back fondly to a gentler world of dolls’ houses and their inhabitants. Meanwhile it’s also some weird theatrical cousin of B-grade movies, and a step-sibling of Thunderbirds, the 1960s British
- [Putting songs in the mouths of silent characters](https://johnshand.com.au/putting-songs-in-the-mouths-of-silent-characters/) - How do you possibly turn a silent film into a musical? That was the question puzzling composer Zara Stanton when writer/director Julia Robertson approached her about collaborating on an adaptation of Fritz Lang’s masterpiece, Metropolis. But Stanton describes Robertson as “one of those people who I would follow into battle. So I thought if she
- [JULIA](https://johnshand.com.au/julia/) - Drama Theatre, April 4 8.5/10 It builds like a storm. You see the cloud-front of abuse, disparagement and disrespect lining the horizon from the outset, gradually growing closer, darker and more intense, until the last 15 minutes of Joanna Murray- Smith’s play about Julia Gillard become an inevitability: the anti-misogyny speech the then-Prime Minister delivered
- [CHERRY SMOKE](https://johnshand.com.au/cherry-smoke/) - KXT on Broadway, March 31 6/10 Do you remember falling off your bike, and the little gritty bits of bitumen getting stuck in your grazed flesh? Cherry Smoke is as raw as those wounds, while also having an aura of magic realism. James McManus wrote the play nearly two decades ago, and on one level
- [FENCES](https://johnshand.com.au/fences/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, March 30 9/10 We build fences around our countries, our jails, our houses and our hearts. As Bono observes in August Wilson’s potent play set in the 1950s, “Some people build fences to keep people out, and other people build fences to keep people in.” Rose has her husband Troy erecting a
- [CHRISTOPHER HALE](https://johnshand.com.au/christopher-hale/) - RITUAL DIAMONDS 8/10 Imagine gazing out at a placid, turquoise-coloured lagoon, then diving in, only to discover it’s seething with sea-snakes. This music is a bit like that. The surface is all high-gloss melodies that often carry a certain beguiling tranquillity, and if you play it too softly or are perverse enough treat it as
- [INTO THE WOODS](https://johnshand.com.au/into-the-woods/) - Belvoir St Theatre, March 22 9/10 Once upon a time in a modest little theatre in an inner suburb of Sydney, an audience was taken by the hand into led into the woods – although there weren’t actually any trees. And on the smallish stage in the modest theatre (without any trees) all sorts of
- [COLLAPSIBLE](https://johnshand.com.au/collapsible/) - Old Fitz Theatre, March 11 7/10 “I think, therefore I am” was all very well for Rene Descartes, but what if your thinking is just a jumble of undigested infotainment scraps from the internet? Even if you manage an occasional clear thought, how can you possibly define your identity and make that identity tangible? These
- [THE GOAT OR, WHO IS SYLVIA?](https://johnshand.com.au/the-goat-or-who-is-sylvia/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, March 4 9.5/10 They do have cute eyes, goats. Whether they are exactly come-hither eyes, Edward Albee submits, is for the beholder to decide. If the beholder is Martin, 50, happily married and an extremely successful architect, apparently they are. Or, more specifically, those of one particular goat: Sylvia. We don’t get
- [MACBETH](https://johnshand.com.au/macbeth-2/) - Playhouse, March 1 7/10 The production is wandering along slightly aimlessly when Jessica Tovey’s Lady Macbeth receives her husband’s note relaying the witches’ prophecies. Reading it, she instantly grips us and draws us in, casting a spell infinitely stronger than the witches, themselves. No, it doesn’t last, but that’s the nature of this Macbeth: moments
- [Hazem Shammas: Leaving Macbeth’s body on the stage](https://johnshand.com.au/hazem-shammas-leaving-macbeths-body-on-the-stage/) - After a hard day boiling in Macbeth’s intensity and wading through all the blood he spills during the play, actor Hazem Shammas has an instant release from the mire, gloom, regret and phantasmagorical evil of Shakespeare’s most complex villain. It’s one that brings him back down to earth with a bump each time he goes
- [JO LAWRY](https://johnshand.com.au/jo-lawry-2/) - ACROBATS 8/10 What’s this? John Farnham’s You’re the Voice?! Now there’s a song I never thought could be teased into a freer, jazzy treatment. Nonetheless, here it is on Jo Lawry’s Acrobats album, the singer proving there few barriers to her daring. She and her collaborators strip it of all its anthemic bombast, making it
- [GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES](https://johnshand.com.au/gentlemen-prefer-blondes/) - Hayes Theatre, February 21 7/10 This is about as schizophrenic as musical theatre gets. On the one hand, the acting, singing, dancing, direction and design are routinely nothing short of stunning. On the other hand, the show itself, which premiered in 1949, is simply not as good as the movie of the same name
- [CHOIR BOY](https://johnshand.com.au/choir-boy/) - Lennox Theatre, February 18 8.5/10 Some plays round lives in the way that wind and rain round mountains into hills. They smooth the kinks and jutting edges into neat developments and neater endings, so we sit there thinking we’re watching life unfold, when what we’re watching is an abridgement, a travesty or even the opposite
- [CAMP](https://johnshand.com.au/camp/) - Reginald Theatre, February 17 6.5/10 We have short memories. That’s how we recover from trauma. One day Iranians may be free from tyranny, and the current protests and consequent crackdowns will recede into a dim past. Similarly, the widespread embrace of Sydney WorldPride could lead a young member of the queer community to think their
- [Dreams of a violin](https://johnshand.com.au/dreams-of-a-violin/) - She learned to read music before she could read words, was born a stone’s throw from London’s famed Abbey Road studios, and saw Mozart’s opera The Marriage of figaro at the age of four (her father being artistic director of Kent Opera). But if Rebecca Daniel’s future as a musician was almost inevitable, her career’s
- [HAIRSPRAY](https://johnshand.com.au/hairspray/) - Sydney Lyric Theatre, February 9 8.5/10 If you’re dragged to this with gritted teeth by someone you want to please, I promise you it will unclench those teeth. Yes, the stage is peopled with cartoon characters, but they have surprisingly big, three-dimensional hearts. And as the story (originally conceived by John Waters for his 1988
- [A BROADCAST COUP](https://johnshand.com.au/a-broadcast-coup/) - Ensemble Theatre, February 1 7/10 Melanie Tait is a fine playwright, but she’s just missed the bullseye on this one. As plays and films stretching from Macbeth all the way to Bernd Eichinger’s brilliant screenplay for Downfall (about Adolf Hitler’s final weeks) have shown, villainous protagonists are so much more compelling if we see some
- [SHOWS TO WATCH IN 2023](https://johnshand.com.au/shows-to-watch-in-2023/) - Despite Sylvia never setting a cloven hoof on stage, she dominates the other characters in Edward Albee’s bizarre and hilarious 2000 play, The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?. Sylvia is not just a goat, she’s one so sweetly alluring that the happily married Martin Gray can’t help falling in love with her. Now we all
- [A Sydney Festival of dreams and confrontations](https://johnshand.com.au/a-sydney-festival-of-dreams-and-confrontations/) - This was more like it: as well as smaller, quirkier shows, Sydney Festival was back to the extravaganzas only it could host. Frida Kahlo: The Life of an Icon, created by Barcelona’s Layers of Reality, was a cutting-edge audiovisual exploration of this revolutionary Mexican artist. Virtual-reality headsets let you plumb the hallucinatory world inside her
- [HUBRIS & HUMILIATION](https://johnshand.com.au/hubris-humiliation/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, January 25 6.5/10 It’s as frothy as a full-cream cappuccino and as bright as a pink balloon. Imagine Kath & Kim written by Jane Austen with queer protagonists, and you’re touching on Lewis Treston’s first play for Sydney Theatre Company. It lovingly borrows from and lampoons Austen’s slow-motion love stories, while simultaneously
- [HOLDING ACHILLES](https://johnshand.com.au/holding-achilles/) - Carriageworks, January 19 5/10 It was too good to last. The run of gold-standard shows had to end sometime, and it comes to a shuddering halt with Holding Achilles. The bear puppet is good, the ships are wondrous, and the aerial work – including the stylised fighting – certainly has its strengths. But this ambitious
- [PARADISE OR THE IMPERMANENCE OF ICE CREAM](https://johnshand.com.au/paradise-or-the-impermanence-of-ice-cream/) - Lennox Theatre, January 17 9/10 The eyes blazing at you with such malicious intent belong to the only vulture I’ve ever seen on a stage. Yet, despite its savage, flesh-ripping beak, bald pink neck and ragtag plumage, by the end of the 80 minutes you’ve grown rather fond of this vulture, and ponder the viability
- [THE WASP](https://johnshand.com.au/the-wasp/) - Kings Cross Theatre, December 7 7/10 There’s no grudge like a childhood grudge. For the young, injustice is uniquely their cross to bear, rather than being all but universal. When a history teacher caned the 16-year-old me after wrongly accusing me of smoking, I’d lie awake at night in tear-stained fury, plotting my revenge, which
- [CHRIS CODY](https://johnshand.com.au/chris-cody-2/) - THE OUTSIDER 8/10 Like traffic, music can be free-flowing, bustling, impatient or static. Pianist/composer Chris Cody begins his tribute to the great French writer Albert Camus with the frenetic Procession, inspired by an African funeral parade that Cody witnessed. The rhythm initially churns beneath the stabbing melody before skittering through a second section. The soloists
- [KAMASI WASHINGTON](https://johnshand.com.au/kamasi-washington-4/) - Concert Hall, December 4 8/10 This was almost a controlled scientific experiment. The first jazz to grace the revamped Concert Hall was being played by the same octet instrumentation Kamasi Washington brought to the room in 2018. On that occasion the density and volume overwhelmed the old Concert Hall’s capacity to cope. This time, with
- [Dreams of Falling back in the Upper Mountains](https://johnshand.com.au/dreams-of-falling-back-in-the-upper-mountains/) - It’s been a year since Dreams of Falling, perhaps the only violin/harp/drums trio on the planet, last played in the Mountains. Now Rebecca Daniel (1741 violin, vocals), Martyn Cook (electric Irish harp) and the Walkley Award-winning John Shand (words, percussion) are back, with plenty of new material as well as some old favourites. Sunday, December
- [JOHN POCHEE 1940-2022: The heart that shone through the music](https://johnshand.com.au/john-pochee-1940-2022-the-heart-that-shone-through-the-music/) - If you were lucky enough to know John Pochee, it merely confirmed the qualities palpable in his music-making behind the drums: the warmth of heart, the glint-in-the-eye wit, the raconteur's instinct, the congeniality and the deep affection for people and for jazz. His drumming had a vibrancy that picked the soloists up as if on
- [Why funk and Christmas are a natural fit](https://johnshand.com.au/why-funk-and-christmas-are-a-natural-fit/) - On Christmas Day, in the stable right next door to where you-know-who was born, Joe and Mary Funkenstein also had a baby, whom they called Doctor, in the hope that he would become one. Alas, the attempted nominative determinism failed, because before he could even crawl, Doctor was hammering away with his tiny fists on
- [Kamasi Washington: Standing where the right wind might blow](https://johnshand.com.au/kamasi-washington-standing-where-the-right-wind-might-blow/) - Kamasi Washington has the magic key – the one that unlocks the door to hosts of younger people attending jazz concerts. On his previous tours the saxophonist/composer packed out firstly the Metro Theatre and then the Concert Hall with audiences whose excitement level might more usually be reserved for Drake or Kendrick Lamar. Part of
- [THE TEMPEST](https://johnshand.com.au/the-tempest-2/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, November 19 8/10 Art to enchant, indeed. The Tempest is often better read than seen, but not this time. Director Kip Williams (for Sydney Theatre Company) has taken liberties with the text (inserting lines from other Shakespeare plays) that will drive the purists to distraction, while lending greater weight to the issue
- [THE WHARF REVUE: LOOKING FOR ALBANESE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-wharf-revue-looking-for-albanese/) - York Theatre, November 17 8/10 So here’s another idea for a voice to parliament: the Wharf Revue team performs weekly for a joint sitting. Not only would it distract members and senators from the daily slog of calculating the worth of their super by the time they’re 70, it would function like a mirror, and
- [STC fights financial blip with some fine productions](https://johnshand.com.au/stc-fights-financial-blip-with-some-fine-productions/) - Contrary winds have blown a disconnect between STC’s artistic achievements and its finances. This year has not just been Kip Williams’ strongest season at the helm, but STC’s strongest for years. After a particularly shaky 2019, Williams now shapes up as a finer artistic director than his immediate predecessors. Curating seasons with zero artistic and
- [THE JUNGLE AND THE SEA](https://johnshand.com.au/the-jungle-and-the-sea/) - Belvoir St Theatre, November 16 7.5/10 You see that fake-tanned liar announce he’s standing for US President again, and you fear for his country. Sri Lanka knows about civil war too well, especially the poor Tamils. All wars are horrific, but civil war compounds the horrors with neighbour slaughtering neighbour and even family betraying family.
- [TIM MINCHIN](https://johnshand.com.au/tim-minchin/) - Opera House Forecourt, November 12 8/10 It’s only partly that he’s funny, zany and musical. Tim Minchin’s other layer comes in his lyrics and elongated between-song patter, when, somehow, he makes us feel better about being ourselves. Who else does this? The introverted songwriters beat themselves up (and make us collateral damage), and the extroverted
- [HAMED SADEGHI IN EMPTY VOICES](https://johnshand.com.au/hamed-sadeghi-in-empty-voices/) - The Neilson, January 14 8.5/10 The sound cuts the air with the brightness of a sword: all ringing metal and attack. It comes from the tar, a Persian lute that Hamed Sadeghi has made a fixture of several Sydney Festivals, including his underscore for William Zappa’s unforgettable The Iliad Out Loud in 2019. This time
- [GIRLS & BOYS](https://johnshand.com.au/boys-girls/) - Everest Theatre, January 5 9/10 We tend to think of emotions as being fierce or wet, but often they are as fragile as dried flowers. British writer Dennis Kelly’s play is about what happens when the flower disintegrates. To tell the story may deny the piece its potential to make you leave the theatre a
- [ROOM](https://johnshand.com.au/room/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, January 11 8/10 You don’t ask, “Why?” (In fact, one of the cast repeatedly does this for you.) No, you just accept the surreal succession of images that materialise and dematerialise on the stage; accept the music flitting between operatic flights and some crazed dada cousin of jazz, or between elegant chamber
- [URINETOWN: THE MUSICAL](https://johnshand.com.au/urinetown-the-musical/) - Hayes Theatre, January 13 8/10 This production of Urinetown extends the current golden run of theatre in Sydney. The directing, choreography, music, design and lighting are all so sharp that someone could get hurt, and most of the performances grip you like crossed legs do a full bladder. We all know that a degree of
- [RBG: OF MANY, ONE](https://johnshand.com.au/rbg-of-many-one/) - Wharf One Theatre, November 3 10/10 If Heather Mitchell ever doubted the ultimate quality of her acting, she need worry no more. Here’s a performance to live among the greats; to join Roy Dotrice’s Brief Lives on the even more exclusive list of great one-handers. Playwright Suzie Miller has gifted Mitchell a role demanding superlative
- [THE LOVERS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-lovers/) - The Playhouse, October 28 6.5/10 The talented Laura Murphy may have backed the wrong horse – or perhaps ass. She’s taken A Midsummer Night’s Dream, reduced the multiple plots to that of the quartet of ill-matched Athenian lovers manipulated by Oberon and Puck, and created a pop musical. Who’s it for? My guess is 12-15-year-olds,
- [CINDERELLA](https://johnshand.com.au/cinderella/) - Sydney Lyric, October 27 6/10 A giant spatula would have been required to lay treacle on this thickly. I mean Cinderella’s story was never going to be mistaken for something penned by Hunter S Thompson, but it did have its light and its shade, and her glass slipper – which always seemed a peculiarly dodgy
- [Keith Jarrett & Dale Barlow Quintet with Bernie McGann](https://johnshand.com.au/keith-jarrett-dale-barlow-quintet-with-bernie-mcgann/) - Keith Jarrett: Bordeaux Concert 8/10 Dale Barlow Quintet with Bernie McGann: Memories of McGann 8/10 They’re like children, records, living on after the artist has retired or died – proof that he or she once breathed and sweated music. And, a bit like illegitimate or adopted offspring, new ones can suddenly spring to light long after
- [THE CARETAKER](https://johnshand.com.au/the-caretaker/) - Ensemble Theatre, October 19 9/10 Don’t miss this. The gaping holes of what is left unsaid make Harold Pinter’s dialogue so edgy as to demand a particular virtuosity from the actors. They must lift it into its own theatrical reality, or it can be trapped in the doldrums of stiltedness. Anthony Gooley, Henry Nixon and
- [FRIDA KAHLO: THE LIFE OF AN ICON](https://johnshand.com.au/frida-kahlo-the-life-of-an-icon/) - The Cutaway, Barangaroo, January 4 10/10 It hijacks your senses from the moment you walk in, but keeps its king-hit for the end. Having already become familiar with aspects of Frida Kahlo’s life and work, now you actually enter the late Mexican painter’s world, via headphones and virtual-reality headsets. This begins with the view from
- [Renowned German theatre director Gabriele Jakobi passes away](https://johnshand.com.au/renowned-german-theatre-director-gabriele-jakobi-passes-away/) - The Berlin, Germany and Washington DC theatre communities are saddened at the passing of director Gabriele Jakobi (1952 - 2023). She succumbed to respiratory distress and other complications resulting from a series of strokes she suffered in 2015. She was an accomplished and respected director, playwright and teacher whose impressive body of work spanned five
- [Stephen Schwartz and the evils of fearing failure](https://johnshand.com.au/stephen-schwartz-and-the-evils-of-fearing-failure/) - Many people would have given up, but not Stephen Schwartz. When, by the age of 24, the composer and lyricist had three hit musicals (including Godspell and Pippin) running in New York simultaneously, he never imagined a quarter-century drought would follow, before Wicked finally showered him with fresh Broadway success in 2003. “I didn’t really
- [The confronting candour of Frida Kahlo](https://johnshand.com.au/the-confronting-candour-of-frida-kahlo/) - She was as improbable as a hummingbird, a creature that beats its wings 80 times a second, while its tiny heart pounds 1,260 times every minute. They have short lives. The wonder with Mexican Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was not just her revolutionary art, or that she was dead at 47, but that she painted at
- [Al Di Meola: Across a Universe of Guitar](https://johnshand.com.au/al-di-meola-across-a-universe-of-guitar/) - Al Di Meola could have been just another among thousands of children whom the Beatles inspired to play guitar. Instead he also studied jazz, and turned himself into a virtuoso best known for genre-crossing between electric jazz and flamenco fusion. But the Beatles' music always remained close to his heart. Di Meola's most recent album,
- [AMADEUS](https://johnshand.com.au/amadeus/) - Concert Hall, December 30 8/10 Having played Mozart in London and New York in 1999, Michael Sheen now slides into the sleeves and trousers of Salieri so completely that he disappears. The Welsh actor famed for playing Tony Blair or Bill Masters is nowhere to be seen; just the poisonous stew of jealousy, hate and
- [Jeremy Rose & The Earshift Orchestra featuring Simon Barker & Chloe Kim](https://johnshand.com.au/jeremy-rose-the-earshift-orchestra-featuring-simon-barker-chloe-kim/) - Disruption! The Voice of the Drums (Earshift) 8/10 Everything about this project is unusual. Jeremy Rose's compositions, for instance, were reverse-engineered from ideas first espoused by Simon Barker and Chloe Kim on their respective albums of solo drums. These were so complete in themselves that Rose's challenge was to find how to contextualise the ideas
- [THE MOUSETRAP](https://johnshand.com.au/the-mousetrap/) - Theatre Royal, October 9 7/10 Nostalgia is more usually triggered by a smell, a song or a book than by a play. But, uniquely with The Mousetrap, a creeping sense of nostalgia is almost as important as the impact of the story, characters and performances – and that’s regardless of whether you’re among the millions
- [DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?](https://johnshand.com.au/do-you-hear-the-people-sing/) - Concert Hall, September 29 6.5/10 It was as clean as whipping a tablecloth out from underneath the cups and saucers. Bobby Fox didn't get a look-in until the 10th song, whereupon he promptly stole the show, singing The American Dream from Miss Saigon. Suddenly there was panache by the helicopter load, helped enormously by this
- [A brief sighting of sun in seventies](https://johnshand.com.au/a-brief-sighting-of-sun-in-seventies/) - A teenaged Renee Geyer had just recorded her first album in 1972 when the band with which she made it, Sun, fired her for not taking the music seriously enough. Her subsequent career soared to the forefront of Australian popular music, while Sun died within two years. But if that looks like Geyer, one, Sun,
- [A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM](https://johnshand.com.au/a-midsummer-nights-dream/) - Bella Vista Farm, December 17 7/10 Last year it was 30 degrees at Bella Vista for Sport for Jove’s As You Like It, with fruit bats winging the minor roles. This year, the 14th edition of the beacon Shakespeare company’s summer season, it was 12, minus windchill – and that was before it really started
- [THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN PLAY](https://johnshand.com.au/the-great-australian-play/) - Old Fitz Theatre, September 18 5/10 At one point the playwright appears on a screen admonishing the screenwriting characters to stay well away from the story they are attempting to pen. It would be easy to say they should have heeded this advice, but there's the slightest hint of the charm of Luigi Pirandello at
- [PHOTOGRAPH 51](https://johnshand.com.au/photograph-51/) - Ensemble Theatre, September 7 8/10 It's a tragedy spiralling in tandem with "what if?" questions. Anna Ziegler's 2008 play, here having its Australian premiere, provides a fictionalised account of the malfunctioning relationships that resulted in Rosalind Franklin, who died at 37 of ovarian cancer, not posthumously sharing in one of two Nobel Prizes that arguably
- [A RAISIN IN THE SUN](https://johnshand.com.au/a-raisin-in-the-sun/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, September 1 9/10 Walter has sufficient self-knowledge to describe himself as a volcano; one erupting with a lava of bitterness. He sees a future mapped out before him in which he continues to chauffeur a rich white man, while his young son, Travis, continues to sleep on a sofa. Walter also dares
- [TELL ME I'M HERE](https://johnshand.com.au/tell-me-im-here/) - Belvoir St Theatre, August 24 8/10 Suddenly it congeals. We are well into Act Two when Jonathan re-enters with a neck spasm, and that excruciating movement instantly conveys all the piteousness of his plight. Having sympathised with Jonathan from the start, now we empathise, and the emotional connection is real, raw and deeply affecting. If
- [THE COMEDY OF ERRORS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-comedy-of-errors-2/) - Playhouse, August 19 7/10 A particular joy of Janine Watson's lively production of The Comedy of Errors is the way Skyler Ellis and Julia Billington catch all the guilelessness of Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse. The charm of their rustic naivety when thrust into the shifty, cosmopolitan dealings of Ephesus is among the elements that
- [STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE](https://johnshand.com.au/strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, August 10 9.5/10 How to depict the splintering of a psyche, not just into two, but into endless multiples of two – into all the fractured souls that lie between Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde? That is the conundrum director Kip Williams sought to solve in his follow-up piece of "cine-theatre" after
- [ARCHIE ROACH 1956-2022](https://johnshand.com.au/archie-roach-1956-2022/) - The day that came to define him occurred when he was only four. This was in 1960, when government agencies forcibly took Archie Roach and his siblings away from their parents. In his autobiography, Tell Me Why, Roach recounts a memory that came back to him many years later of his screaming father being restrained
- [THE WOMAN AND THE CAR](https://johnshand.com.au/the-woman-and-the-car/) - 107 Redfern, December 11 6/10 Fame has become as debased a currency as the Venezuelan bolivar. Those seeking celebrity can belch inanities on social media and achieve it with zero accomplishments. Whereas Dorothy Levitt, a British pioneer in the earliest (1903-1909) days of motor racing, power-boat racing and flying (routinely outclassing men in what was
- [ALBION](https://johnshand.com.au/albion/) - Reginald Theatre, July 29 9.5/10 This is the real deal: the magic that makes us keep returning to the theatre. Here's so much truth, beauty, humanity, comedy, drama and even tragedy that it fills stage and overflows into the hearts of the audience. Here are unabashedly big ideas and bigger characters, moulded by a master
- [THE ONE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-one/) - Ensemble Theatre, July 28 4.5/10 You know those real estate ads that say "harbour views", and then it turns out that you need to climb on someone's shoulders and peer through a pair of binoculars to catch a flickering glimpse of the puddle in question? Vanessa Bates' The One is a bit like that. Buried
- [QUEENIE VAN DE ZANDT IN BLUE: THE SONGS OF JONI MITCHELL](https://johnshand.com.au/queenie-van-de-zandt-in-blue-the-songs-of-joni-mitchell/) - Hayes Theatre, July 23 9/10 Like the stage itself, the opening rendition of Blue seemed candlelit, Queenie van de Zandt's voice gently lamenting over Andrew Worboys' piano. It immediately suggested we might be in for something special, and in fact it's hard to imagine a better celebration of Joni Mitchell's timeless artistry. Perhaps that's because
- [ATTEMPTS ON HER LIFE](https://johnshand.com.au/attempts-on-her-life/) - Kings Cross Theatre, July 20 7/10 Attempts on Her Life is the final show at Kings Cross Theatre. After seven years of serving up some of Sydney's most adventurous drama, the host company, Bakehouse, is moving to new premises on Broadway. But what a way to kiss goodbye. Martin Crimp's 1997 play, subtitled 17 Scenarios
- [BURN WITCH BURN](https://johnshand.com.au/burn-witch-burn/) - Old Fitz Theatre, July 9 5.5/10 I don't mind being bewildered (which is handy, given it's my natural state), but here was a play that seemed somewhat bewildered about its own intent. Burn Witch Burn is not so much an adaptation of the 1962 horror film of that name (better known by its original British
- [The Wharf Revue](https://johnshand.com.au/the-wharf-revue-2/) - Riverside Theatre, September 7 7.5/10 It might reasonably seem that a political universe peopled with such buffoons and grotesques as Trump, Kim, Putin, Duterte, Hanson, Roberts, Bernardi and Abbott, plus such featherweight blowhards as Turnbull, Bishop, Cash, Pyne, Shorten and Boris Johnson, leaves the poor satirist with nowhere to go. Save your sympathy. Jonathan Biggins,
- [LILAC](https://johnshand.com.au/lilac/) - Kings Cross Theatre, June 29 6/10 They meet in the women's toilet at a funeral. He's snorting coke, and she's surprised; he spins a yarn, and she's intrigued. So begins the off-and-on, topsy-turvy and ultimately destructive relationship between George and Diana, the subject of this play by Jackson Used, here having its world premiere. Lilac
- [TOP COAT](https://johnshand.com.au/top-coat/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, June 30 7.5/10 Ultimately it's a fairy tale, being replete with magic and a moral. But Michelle Law's new play also mashes together genres like some people mash songs. Besides that fairy-tale element, it is variously a satire, a sitcom, a melodrama and a teen-style over-the-top comedy. James Lew's scenic design is
- [THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL](https://johnshand.com.au/the-tenant-of-wildfell-hall/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, June 25 6/10 It was epically ambitious. Not only has playwright Emme Hoy condensed Anne Bronte's 500-page novel down to less than three hours of drama, she had to resolve how to adapt Bronte's quirky structure, whereby the book's middle half is an elongated flashback in the form of a journal, with
- [BONNIE & CLYDE](https://johnshand.com.au/bonnie-clyde/) - Hayes Theatre, June 21 7.5/10 Were Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow alive today they'd just be two more narcissists taking selfies. Even Clyde's obsession with high-powered firearms wouldn't delineate him, especially in his home state of Texas. The conundrum that faced the creators of this 2009 musical (as it did the makers of the famed
- [A DOLL'S HOUSE](https://johnshand.com.au/a-dolls-house/) - Ensemble Theatre, June 15 7/10 Edvard Munch's most famous painting, The Scream, could be a depiction of Nora. She never actually emits that scream in fellow Norwegian Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (dating from 1879, 14 years earlier), but she's screaming inside for most of its duration, and finally gives vent to eight years of
- [TRIO GRANDE](https://johnshand.com.au/trio-grande/) - Verbrugghen Hall, June 5 8/10 It's a quicksilver quality, like light playing on water, or water dashing between rocks: the sound of motion and constant flux. Where most music and even most jazz settles into moods or patterns, this defied predictability because the drummer kept reinventing his statement of the rhythms, bar by bar. That
- [THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT](https://johnshand.com.au/the-lifespan-of-a-fact/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, September 24 7/10 If I merely told you facts – that the play has three actors and lasts for 75 minutes, for instance – you wouldn't be much wiser. The Lifespan of a Fact is about exactly that: how facts, by themselves, are insufficient to cut to the heart of a story.
- [MOULIN ROUGE!](https://johnshand.com.au/moulin-rouge/) - Capitol Theatre, June 4 8.5/10 You don't just go to see Moulin Rouge!, you enter its world. Within kiss-blowing distance of the stage, the Capitol Theatre is festooned with red swags, silver chandeliers, golden lights, an elephant and the windmill after which the famed Parisian cabaret was named. Even the PA system (which boasts a
- [Eric Harland: Reaching for the music of the soul](https://johnshand.com.au/eric-harland-reaching-for-the-music-of-the-soul/) - Of all the reasons for dropping out of music school, Eric Harland's has to be among the weirdest. There he was at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music on a full scholarship, his career as a jazz drummer taking off like a rocket-ship, and the notoriously hard-to-please singing great Betty Carter among those to hire
- [MARY POPPINS](https://johnshand.com.au/mary-poppins/) - Sydney Lyric, May 26 8/10 Mary Poppins just clicks her fingers and another theatrical coup explodes upon the stage. You sit there smiling away as flats open into a house like a giant pop-up book, statues come to acrobatic life, Mary pulls improbably large items from her neat carpet bag, or she flies through the
- [BEFORE THE MEETING](https://johnshand.com.au/before-the-meeting/) - Reginald Theatre, May 25 9/10 The grip is immediate, and it only tightens as the play goes on. Yet the wonder is that this grip is not so much driven by a story as by a single emotion; the one the Lodge's previous inhabitant found so elusive: compassion. In other hands a play with multiple
- [CITY OF GOLD](https://johnshand.com.au/city-of-gold/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, May 12 7.5/10 It comes like a punch in the guts, knocking the stuffing out of you, and as you sit there winded, Meyne Wyatt delivers the rest of his five-page monologue on the day-to-day realities of racism. Like Wyatt, his character, Breythe is an actor. "I just want to be seen
- [SON OF BYBLOS](https://johnshand.com.au/son-of-byblos/) - Belvoir Downstairs Theatre, May 6 6/10 Silent action can be worth a thousand words. The most complete piece of theatre in this new play comes when Claire, a lesbian intent on marrying a stray man, removes her street clothes and, with the aid of Carol, her aunt, dons a stunning ivory bridal gown. Both women
- [LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE](https://johnshand.com.au/light-shining-in-buckinghamshire/) - Belvoir St Theatre, April 14 8/10 Caryl Churchill's 1976 play heaves with the energy of optimism and the anger of dashed dreams. It tells of the revolution that England almost had when its second civil war had resulted in execution of King Charles, and the proto-communism of the Levellers and Diggers was wedded to a
- [WAYSIDE BRIDE](https://johnshand.com.au/wayside-bride/) - Belvoir St Theatre, April 13 7/10 It's rather like a family photo album: even when the snapshots are fuzzy, the warmth and love are unmistakable. It engenders as strong a sense of community as you'll see on a stage: not just the community of characters depicted, but a vibrant sense of community among the actors,
- [BREAKING THE CASTLE](https://johnshand.com.au/breaking-the-castle/) - Lennox Theatre, April 7 8/10 Peter Cook is a brave actor and a braver writer. In essence, his one-man play is about his pathway to being in that play; one strewn with the road-spikes and riddled with the potholes of addiction. The main character, Dave, is an actor whose career was derailed by the need
- [Emma Pask dives into her bucket-list](https://johnshand.com.au/emma-pask-dives-into-her-bucket-list/) - A year ago Emma Pask lost a close friend and fellow singer to breast cancer. Pask was with this person when she drew her last breath, and the experience had a profound effect. Grief was tangled with guilt that she could keep singing, herself, and then came a hunger to tick things off on her
- [Fluro vests find favour with funk band](https://johnshand.com.au/fluro-vests-find-favour-with-funk-band/) - A Blue Mountains expert on ornithology and funk has commented that the election season "looks more like the mating season, given the number of grey men in grey suits who are suddenly wearing brightly coloured vests and making wild promises". "It's as though they wear their vested interests on the outside," Dr Funkenstein said. The
- [GEORGE BENSON](https://johnshand.com.au/george-benson/) - State Theatre, April 11 7/10 There's a particular warmth in the room. One that exceeds affection for the songs or for George's singing and guitar-playing. Might it be that many of the couples in the packed State Theatre first kissed, danced or had sex to George's music? Because this is what sets the 79-years-young Benson
- [STAY WOKE](https://johnshand.com.au/stay-woke/) - Eternity Playhouse, March 30 7/10 Stay Woke doesn't just tackle the issue of racism, it bites the head off it, and then throws a spot of gender fluidity into the bloodbath. Playwright Aran Thangaratnam uses the handy narrative ploy of squashing his characters together in unfamiliar surroundings (the Victorian ski slopes), where he sets up
- [SKETCHES OF SPAIN – AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA](https://johnshand.com.au/sketches-of-spain-australian-chamber-orchestra/) - City Recital Hall, April 6 8.5/10 The trick, of course, was not to copy, but to reinvent. So arrangers Matt McMahon and Bernard Rofe, the ACO and trumpeter Phil Slater made Solea their own. The work is the pinnacle of a masterpiece of 20th-century music: Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain – the 1960 album for
- [THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS & MAHAGONNY SONGSPIEL](https://johnshand.com.au/the-seven-deadly-sins-mahagonny-songspiel/) - Old Fitz Theatre, April 3 8/10 "Ooh, let's lift this scab and see what's underneath," Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht seem to say. The oddity was not their infatuation with humanity's darker side, but the jaunty way in which they investigated it. Perhaps they didn't expect us to rise much higher, anyway, sin being a
- [Dream of Falling at Flute Tree](https://johnshand.com.au/dream-of-falling-at-flute-tree/) - Dreams of Falling, perhaps the only violin/harp/drums trio on the planet, is making a rare Sydney appearance (we usually lurk in the Blue Mountains) on Sunday July 31 at Flute Tree Studio, 1/111 Moore Street, Leichardt at 3pm sharp. Dreams of Falling consists of Rebecca Daniel (18th-century violin), Martyn Cook (self-made electric Irish harp) and
- [BAD MACHINE](https://johnshand.com.au/bad-machine/) - Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, March 18 8/10 Americans who covet guns do so partly in case their government goes rogue on them. That's not an excuse; just an observation. The government did go rogue in Australia, and what happened? Blessedly, no one was shot. Instead, we had an Ombudsman investigation, two Senate inquiries and multiple
- [HEROES OF THE FOURTH TURNING](https://johnshand.com.au/7825-2/) - Reginald Theatre, April 2 9/10 It's gone from being rare to optional, fashionable and almost compulsory: the idea that art should reveal the artist. Many playwrights also feel obliged to reveal their convictions, thereby often degrading art to doctrine. US playwright Will Arbery is braver and more ambitious. He bombards us with his opinions no
- [BLITHE SPIRIT](https://johnshand.com.au/blithe-spirit/) - Drama Theatre, March 25 7/10 The perfect encapsulation of this production – starring Courtney Act – came when Bessie Holland (playing Ruth Condomine) started to giggle. She and Brigid Zengeni (Madame Arcati) were facing each other on the sofa, and the hilarity was suddenly too much for Holland. Of course once she began to titter,
- [LOVE LETTERS](https://johnshand.com.au/love-letters/) - Ensemble Theatre, March 21 8/10 It could so easily drown in a sea of sentimentality, and were it made into a movie, it would sink without a trace. But playwright AR Gurney deftly buoyed his 1988 play so the sentimentality is always peripheral rather than the focus. The two-hander has attracted such stars as Elizabeth
- [Free jazz takes on radical new meaning](https://johnshand.com.au/free-jazz-takes-on-radical-new-meaning/) - Imagine Sydney's best ever jazz festival at an obscure venue that's so hip you can't even buy a ticket. That's exactly what's happening when the four-night STRATA festival descends into the nest-like cavity of Phoenix Central Park, surely the most beautiful music venue Sydney's ever had. Phoenix was the brainchild of Judith Nielson, the noted arts
- [NORTH BY NORTHWEST](https://johnshand.com.au/north-by-northwest/) - Sydney Lyric, March 16 7/10 Of course I didn't duck, but the big head in front of me did – not an unreasonable reaction when a cropper-duster aircraft is flying straight at you. Yes, all the action scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's timeless film are here in some guise, mainly thanks to projections and, in the
- [NEARER THE GODS](https://johnshand.com.au/nearer-the-gods/) - Ensemble Theatre, March 9 7/10 The curse of genius is having to rub up against more mediocre minds. That's why genius and irascibility are twisted together in the character of Isaac Newton, to form the hook on which David Williamson hangs his 2018 play. Williamson has seldom strayed far from either Australia or the present
- [OPENING NIGHT](https://johnshand.com.au/opening-night/) - Belvoir St Theatre, March 2 6/10 You know how you can line up two mirrors, so the image in each repeats and repeats towards infinity? This play is like that. Director/adaptor Carissa Licciardello's raw material was the screenplay for John Cassavetes' masterful 1977 film, Opening Night, depicting events behind the scenes and onstage as a
- [HAND TO GOD](https://johnshand.com.au/hand-to-god/) - Old Fitz Theatre, February 27 8/10 Everyone seems to anthropomorphise something: if not a pet, then a god or a car. So why not a puppet? This devilishly black 2011 comedy by US playwright Robert Askins has us giggling and grimacing, even as it poses questions about morality, faith, scapegoatism and the crevices that constantly
- [GUARDS AT THE TAJ](https://johnshand.com.au/guards-at-the-taj/) - Lennox Theatre, February 26 9/10 We never see it, but it explodes in our imaginations: a glistening white vision unveiled at dawn on the day the play begins. It is 1648, and the Taj Mahal, supposedly the world's most beautiful edifice, is finally to be revealed after 16 years of secretive construction. Our protagonists –
- [9 TO 5 THE MUSICAL](https://johnshand.com.au/9-to-5-the-musical/) - Capitol Theatre, February 24 7/10 Who'd have thought that 9 to 5 the Musical could double the fun of the film? Some will sniff that that's no great achievement, the film needing to be sharper, funnier and less silly. But the musical not only shrinks those flaws, it amplifies (more than sitting in a cinema
- [3 PIANOS](https://johnshand.com.au/3-pianos/) - Phoenix Central Park, February 17 8/10 At one point it ceased to be three pianos, and sounded more like a mighty choir or a vast orchestra of harps. If you closed your eyes the galaxies of notes seemed infinite, generating a formidable density of sound, while still being shot through with light and air. Perhaps
- [Barney McAll: Swimming from the shallows into deep water](https://johnshand.com.au/barney-mcall-swimming-from-the-shallows-into-deep-water/) - Barney McAll doesn't set out to surprise the socks off people, it's just the way the music comes out. His new album, Precious Energy, is a bigger surprise than most, partly because the world in which he made it was turned upside down, partly because the pianist/composer has added lyric-writing to his skills, and partly
- [BREAKING THE CODE](https://johnshand.com.au/breaking-the-code/) - New Theatre, February 13 8/10 At first it seems unnecessary; an irritant even. Just because Hugh Whitemore's 1986 play is skilfully structured to jump between eras in protagonist Alan Turing's life, do we really need three actors playing Turing and two playing his mother? Does director Anthony Skuse not believe his audience can grasp various
- [KILLING KATIE: CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK CLUB](https://johnshand.com.au/killing-katie-confessions-of-a-book-club/) - Ensemble Theatre, January 18 8/10 Playwright Tracey Trinder died while Killing Katie – her first play – was in development. She knew the production was happening and had met the cast, but missed the joy this world premiere would surely have afforded. While her first play, it was far from her first script: she was
- [SLOW BURN](https://johnshand.com.au/slow-burn/) - The Joan, January 15 7/10 Stories, we are often told, must have a beginning, a middle and an end. The hard part is often knowing where and how to end, especially when the raw material is biographical or, worse, autobiographical. Deborah Pollard's self-devised, one-woman show was shaping up as the pick of this year's Sydney
- [WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?](https://johnshand.com.au/whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf/) - Drama Theatre, January 14 7/10 "It gets pretty bouncy around here sometimes," George tells Nick early in Act Two. "Bouncy" epitomises George's love of understatement, a weapon in his eternal war with his predatory wife, Martha. Part of the timeless genius of Edward Albee's 1962 play lies in its being set up as if only
- [COIL](https://johnshand.com.au/coil/) - PACT Theatre, February 10 6.5/10 If you're younger than two, you won't remember that, once upon a time, enough plans actually came to fruition to encourage one to keep making more. Now most plans sink without a trace, but there can be a plus-side. At the exact moment that COVID kyboshed another intended review, an
- [MATT OTTIGNON QUARTET](https://johnshand.com.au/matt-ottignon-quartet/) - Foundry 616, February 3 8/10 Here we were, stepping into the TARDIS and whooshing back three decades to a time when Australia's most incendiary musician recorded his only album (aided by three brilliant colleagues), appropriately called Fire. Saxophonist Mark Simmonds died in 2020, the pandemic preventing any musical celebration of his life. Now fellow saxophonist
- [Theatre: The Sydney Festival Wrap](https://johnshand.com.au/theatre-the-sydney-festival-wrap/) - What was going on? A near empty Drama Theatre for the opening of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Here was a play that, like Death of a Salesman and Waiting for Godot, sent a shock-wave through 20th-century theatre, yet was the only show I saw in January that was not nudging full capacity. With only
- [LADY GREY (IN EVER LOWER LIGHT)](https://johnshand.com.au/lady-grey-in-ever-lower-light/) - Kings Cross Theatre, January 28 5/10 It could seem a stream-of-consciousness ramble, but it's not. It's a finely calibrated monologue about one's sense of self. Lady Grey talks about primary school "show-and-tell sessions", and in a way Will Eno's 40-minutte play is show-and-tell made into a piece of theatre – or perhaps all theatre is
- [A CHORUS LINE](https://johnshand.com.au/a-chorus-line/) - Riverside Theatre, January 13 7/10 "I haven't worked in two years," Cassie tells Zach, and she could be speaking for actors, dancers, singers, musicians, creatives and crew everywhere. Amy Campbell's Darlinghurst Theatre production of A Chorus Line was originally slated for March 2020. It previewed but didn't open. She assembled a new cast for August,
- [GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY](https://johnshand.com.au/girl-from-the-north-country/) - Theatre Royal, January 8 7.5/10 Bob Dylan's songs come lurching out of Conor McPherson's play obliquely, like the clues to a cryptic crossword. In most musicals you feel the text swelling towards an inevitable gush of song, but not here. The characters sing at McPherson's whim, the lyrics to the 22 Dylan songs he uses
- [Musical axe-murderer gets Oz-Gothic treatment](https://johnshand.com.au/musical-axe-murderer-gets-oz-gothic-treatment/) - Musicals used to about as violent as grazing cows. West Side Story changed that, before first Sweeney Todd and then American Psycho really opened the blood-gates. Now Lizzie comes to town. Where Todd neatly slit his victims' throats with a razor, the real Lizzie Borden used an axe to polish off her father and stepmother
- [VENUS & ADONIS](https://johnshand.com.au/venus-adonis/) - 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. This loss of communal cultural
- [Joseph Tawadros](https://johnshand.com.au/joseph-tawadros-5/) - HOPE IN AN EMPTY CITY (www.josephtawadros.com) 8.5/10 Joseph Tawadros is not one to settle for regurgitating pat artistic successes. He keeps reaching for what lies beyond, and when he grasps it, truly elevated music results. You hear it here when Layth Sidiq's violin, Scott Colley's bass and Dan Weiss's cymbals start swirling like leaves around
- [AS YOU LIKE IT](https://johnshand.com.au/as-you-like-it/) - Bella Vista Farm, December 18 7.5/10 Shakespeare didn't specify fruit bats in his stage directions, and, while director Damien Ryan can do many things, I suspect he draws the line at bat wrangling, so presumably they invited themselves to add a layer of sylvan authenticity to the Forest of Arden. In fact it was already
- [Plague raised temperatures in more ways than one](https://johnshand.com.au/plague-raised-temperatures-in-more-ways-than-one/) - 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 it with events in Shakespeare's
- [Freak Out: How a Musical Revolution Rocked the World in the Sixties](https://johnshand.com.au/freak-out-how-a-musical-revolution-rocked-the-world-in-the-sixties/) - 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 himself, as well as an
- [WAVETELLER/AVGENICOS BROTHERS](https://johnshand.com.au/waveteller-avgenicos-brothers/) - Lazy Bones Lounge, December 14 7/10 The opening Creeper was so delicate that you listened with the same nervousness you watch a child juggle a porcelain plate. Penned, like all Waveteller's material, by bassist Michael Mear, Creeper exemplified the project's fondness for exploiting space and dynamics. The often intricate interaction between Mear, keyboards player Casey
- [The Blues Preachers: Real hops and hold the glitter](https://johnshand.com.au/the-blues-preachers-real-hops-and-hold-the-glitter/) - If pop music is akin to mass-produced lager, showered in sonic glitter like the latter is in additives, then The Blues Preachers' music is more your craft beer. The duo doesn't aim for a mass market, but a loyal following that appreciates quality and can sniff out affectation; that appreciates the authenticity of records on
- [DEATH OF A SALESMAN](https://johnshand.com.au/death-of-a-salesman/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, December 8 Until December 22 8/10 Arthur Miller toyed with calling his great play The Inside of His Head, and, where some productions reduce the work's suppurating theatricality to base naturalism, Paige Rattray's Sydney Theatre Company version forces us to soil our hands in the contents of Willie Loman's cranium. The title
- [William Parker](https://johnshand.com.au/william-parker/) - MAYAN SPACE STATION (AUM) 8/10 Perhaps William Parker was Poseidon in a past life, given his uncanny capacity to calm or ruffle the music's surface, or churn it up deep beneath, turning choppiness into great swells of sound. He lends his double bass an almost primordial vastness, not by being artificially prominent in the mix,
- [Love letter tucked in COVID silver lining](https://johnshand.com.au/love-letter-tucked-in-covid-silver-lining/) - Amy Campbell is still laughing, despite COVID kicking her in the teeth no less than four times. The first blow came in March last year, when Campbell, a choreographer, was preparing her first show as director, the musical A Chorus Line. In terms of scale, this was to be the most ambitious show ever mounted
- [THE BOOMKAK PANTO](https://johnshand.com.au/the-boomkak-panto/) - Belvoir St Theatre, November 24 6/10 Imagine an Australia where the Aboriginal people are fully respected, the refugees are welcomed and integrated, neither gender nor sexuality is pigeonholed or judged, and the community collectively fights off rapaciousness. No, fair enough. Neither can I. Well, how about a bit of Australia. Maybe one town. Let's call
- [STAY A WHILE WITH WEILL](https://johnshand.com.au/stay-a-while-with-weill/) - The Baroque Room, November 21 7/10 The shapeshifting composer Kurt Weill went from jobbing pianist to become, in partnership with Berthold Brecht, the toast of the Weimar Republic. Having fled the horrors of Nazism, he slotted firstly into Paris, and then into American popular song via musicals and film, influenced by it and influencing it
- [Sting](https://johnshand.com.au/sting/) - THE BRIDGE (Universal) 6.5/10 Sting's boyish voice was, like the catchy tunes, reggae beats, restrained guitar and effusive drumming, a hallmark of The Police, and that youthfulness has never quite deserted him. Now 70 – an age when most voices deepen, darken, grow huskier, become wobblier or all four – Sting still sounds like he's
- [JULIUS CAESAR](https://johnshand.com.au/julius-caesar-2/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, November 19 5.5/10 Julius Caesar, the man, is said to have suffered 23 stab wounds. Julius Caesar, the play, has suffered thousands more. Like Coriolanus and The Tempest, it's favoured by those keen to stamp an ideology on Shakespeare, spurred on by the politics of dictatorship versus democracy and self-interest versus the
- [NORM AND AHMED](https://johnshand.com.au/norm-and-ahmed/) - Lennox Theatre, November 16 7/10 This revival has Norm wearing a tee-shirt that looks just like Scott Morrison's mask, although Norm's tee-shirt has "Australia" written on it, in case someone's a bit slow with flags. Maybe Morrison's mask has "Australia" on it, too – tucked under his chin, like a sender's address on the back
- [Busting algorithms to reach the nirvana of new music](https://johnshand.com.au/busting-algorithms-to-reach-the-nirvana-of-new-music/) - Your phone battery is dead and your car radio goes on the blink, only picking up two stations. One exclusively plays lollipops by Kylie Minogue and Taylor Swift, while the other sticks stolidly to the sonic experiments of Karlheinz Stockhausen and the dense free jazz improvisations of Cecil Taylor. And you can't turn the radio
- [JACQUI DARK SINGS BREL](https://johnshand.com.au/jacqui-dark-sings-brel/) - City Recital Hall, November 5 7/10 We were well into the concert when Jacqui Dark barely breathed "Ne me quitte pas." Suddenly, after five months, you remembered why live music beats recorded music: you were no longer just another lost soul in a room, but part of a community of hundreds of throats gulping the
- [Diana Ross](https://johnshand.com.au/diana-ross/) - THANK YOU (Universal) 6/10 Few figures tower over popular music like Diana Ross, who can go for 15 years without releasing an album – longer without one containing original material – and yet still seem enshrined in our collective consciousness. Now she finally returns to recording with Thank You, the mood of which is both
- [THE MUSEUM OF MODERN LOVE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-museum-of-modern-love/) - York Theatre, January 25. 8.5/10 Heather's Rose's 2016 novel, The Museum of Modern Love, being vast in scope, elaborate in structure and intensely internalised, seemed to defy transposition to the stage. But playwright Tom Holloway has succeeded by smoothing out the structural twists and snaking subplots, making the pervasive sadness about as in-your-face as your
- [MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG](https://johnshand.com.au/merrily-we-roll-along/) - Hayes Theatre, October 26 8/10 This was a gutsy move. A more timid theatre may have shied from reopening with Stephen Sondheim's biggest Broadway flop. But Merrily won't flop this time, and singing It's a Hit won't be the excruciating experience it must have been for the cast in 1981. The causes of the Broadway
- [Revisiting A Love Supreme](https://johnshand.com.au/revisiting-a-love-supreme/) - Not many artists can be certain they've created a masterpiece. John Coltrane, who placed little credence in his own genius, had an inkling of something special when he'd finished composing A Love Supreme. Perhaps that was why he rarely played it in concert. How do you improve on perfection? For decades it was assumed he
- [Dahveed Behroozi](https://johnshand.com.au/dahveed-behroozi/) - ECHOS (Sunnyside) 9/10 The mystery continues. It's a thread of music in which each note is laden with subtext, so every listening reveals something new: a quality inherent in the work of the likes of Miles Davis, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Now US pianist Dahveed Behroozi espouses comparable mysteries of his own. The nine
- [Fluctuations can't stop Currency's rise](https://johnshand.com.au/fluctuations-cant-stop-currencys-rise/) - Nick Parsons remembers the mounting piles of books on the kitchen table. They were new-minted Australian plays published by Currency Press, the new-minted company of his parents, Katharine Brisbane and Philip Parsons. Setting up a business selling local plays might sound like one of those jokes about how to turn a large fortune into a
- [Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga](https://johnshand.com.au/tony-bennett-lady-gaga/) - LOVE FOR SALE (Universal) 7/10 Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga would make good poker players. By waiting seven years to record their second album together, they also waited until Bennett was 94 (he's since turned 95). Think about that for a moment. The credulity-defying achievement of still having a voice that can pitch and hold
- [Songs in which to Wallow: 12 gloom tunes to make you feel better about being blue](https://johnshand.com.au/songs-in-which-to-wallow-12-gloom-tunes-to-make-you-feel-better-about-being-blue/) - The best way out of the lockdown blues is not to try (and fail) to perk yourself up, it's to wallow in the sorrow. Dig deeper into the gloom until, in some white blast of catharsis, you rise phoenix-like and emotionally purged. Well, for a while… Idioms such as Italian opera, Irish laments, blues, fado
- [BAZ AND BEN](https://johnshand.com.au/baz-and-ben/) - Johnston St Jazz, September 23 7.5/10 This was a cunning solution. With most streamed concerts during lockdowns seeming to amplify the absence of an audience, Ben Hauptmann and Aaron "Baz" Flower headed outdoors. Central Coast residents, they picked locations around Pearl Beach and Macmasters Beach that they thought would be both scenic and suitable, and
- [James Brandon Lewis](https://johnshand.com.au/james-brandon-lewis/) - JESUP WAGON (TAO Forms) 9.5/10 The inspiration is moving enough, and that's before we reach the music, itself. Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis has penned a suite in tribute to US visionary, scientist, inventor, educator and artist George Washington Carver. In 1906 Carver hit upon the idea of the Jesup Agricultural Wagon, a kind of mobile
- [Zane Carney Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/zane-carney-quartet/) - ALTER EGO (Orenda) 7/10 Don't you love being lulled into a false sense of sonic security? Here it's silvery guitar arpeggios and quivering flute doing the lulling, before the reverie is brutally gate-crashed by a descending ensemble figure and then one of those intriguingly ambiguous grooves that flirts with swing and funk simultaneously. Guitarist Zane
- [Jon Rose](https://johnshand.com.au/jon-rose/) - STATE OF PLAY (ReR) 9/10 Some improvisers paint themselves into sonic corners, where they naively regurgitate their prior much-masticated exploits. Then there's Jon Rose. Forty years on and Rose still surprises the hell out of me with his sheer audacity; still dumfounds me as if I'm encountering beauty in music for the first time; still
- [Evan Parker Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/evan-parker-quartet/) - ALL KNAVERY AND COLLUSION (Cadillac) 9/10 Who knows why and how the UK came to spawn so many significant saxophonists in the last 50 years. It might be luck, the weather or the beer. But among a list that includes John Surman, Trevor Watts and Mike Osbourne, Evan Parker occupies a special place for so
- [KANGAROO](https://johnshand.com.au/kangaroo/) - August 23 8/10 Let's face it, Darlinghurst Theatre's Thom Paine (Based on Nothing) in June of last year apart, streamed theatre seldom cuts it without TV-scale budgets. But what if you don't try to provide vision? What if you just provide the sound? Suddenly a level of radio-play professionalism springs within reach if a play
- [Daniel Rojas](https://johnshand.com.au/daniel-rojas/) - BLISS OF HEAVEN, MUSIC OF THE WORLD (Da Vinci) 7.5/10 SalTango sets the tone: a sweeping luxuriance, not just from the strings, but from the piano, itself. Part of Daniel Rojas's magic as composer, arranger and pianist is that as well as giving his instrument its rightful place in the foreground (including with dashing improvised
- ["Book whisperer" spears her own readers](https://johnshand.com.au/book-whisperer-spears-her-own-readers/) - There's a pattern. Initially, for instance, author Carol Major suggests this story be about her publisher, Spineless Wonders, rather than herself. Then she proposes it be about her and her sister (Canadian poet Alice Major), who is releasing a new book simultaneously. More of the pattern is found in the fact that for many years
- [BRIAN HENDERSON, 1931-2021](https://johnshand.com.au/brian-henderson-1931-2021/) - Brian Henderson will be remembered for the velvet voice and easy charm with which he delivered Channel Nine's nightly news and hosted the music show Bandstand – a charm that defined him equally off screen as on. But there was also a quiet determination in his make-up. When Bandstand's ratings halved from the 1960s into
- [Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas Sound Prints](https://johnshand.com.au/joe-lovano-dave-douglas-sound-prints/) - OTHER WORLDS (Greenleaf) 8/10 Having dodged the hideous cover, a couple of oddly lacklustre tracks and finally a slightly weird mix, you start to reap the rewards. The mix, which compromises the music's visceral edge by pushing the drums (especially the ride cymbal) too far behind the horns and piano, can't disguise the collective brilliance
- [Adrian Younge](https://johnshand.com.au/adrian-younge/) - THE AMERICAN NEGRO (Jazz is Dead/Planet) 8.5/10 Is this the most confronting cover image in recording history? It depicts a lynched African American with composer Adrian Younge's face: an image that cuts to the core of the treatment of people of colour in the US. Sonically the album traces the black experience via both spoken
- [Jeff Coffin/Helen Gillet](https://johnshand.com.au/jeff-coffin-helen-gillet/) - LET IT SHINE (Ear Up) 7.5/10 Jeff Coffin and Helen Gillet can fill in the holes with multi-tracking, or they can let their lines twist about each other like two vines. The Sun Never Says has Coffin's soprano saxophone and Gillet's cello pursuing contrapuntal lines akin to twin prayers, while Lazy Drag Jig starts out
- [Ephemera Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/ephemera-quartet/) - BLACKHOLES AND MODULATIONS (www.ephemeraensemble.com) 8/10 Ephemera, always outward-reaching conceptually, has now expanded in size from a trio to a quartet with the addition of violist Carl St Jacques, and the sonic options have grown exponentially. As on the band's first album, composer Keyna Wilkins takes her inspiration from the wonders and enigmas of the astronomical
- [CATHERINE & FRIENDS](https://johnshand.com.au/catherine-friends/) - Concourse Theatre, July 16 7/10 We now know what Jason Arrow does when he's not playing Alexander Hamilton – not that he has much choice at the moment. The shame was that he only sang one song in this 75-minute show: Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman's They Just Keep Moving the Line (from the Smash
- [MIKE NOCK NOCTET](https://johnshand.com.au/mike-nock-noctet/) - Foundry 616, January 4 8/10 This concert was a testament to stoicism, bravery, willpower, indefatigability, and the fact that, if music is in your blood, it will somehow find its way into the world. On July 2 Mike Nock was run over on a pedestrian crossing by a hefty four-wheel drive vehicle. The injuries were
- [ELYSIAN FIELDS](https://johnshand.com.au/elysian-fields-2/) - Concourse Theatre, July 15 8/10 A year on, and who'd have thought we'd be back reviewing live streams rather than flesh-and-blood concerts? The row of empty seats just visible in the foreground at Chatswood Concourse carried something of the gloom of a hat on a coffin. Were there any silver lining, it was that in
- [Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra](https://johnshand.com.au/floating-points-pharoah-sanders-the-london-symphony-orchestra/) - PROMISES (Luaka Bop/Inertia) 9/10 It's one thing to have a 60-year career; quite another to be a force for that time. But here is Pharoah Sanders in 2021, still searching for truth, reaching for beauty and questioning the limits of his art. Electronics maestro and composer Sam Shepherd (aka Floating Points) induced Sanders back into
- [Reinventing the possible in musicals gives theatre a shot in the arm](https://johnshand.com.au/reinventing-the-possible-in-musicals-gives-theatre-a-shot-in-the-arm/) - That musical theatre had become a basket-case late last century was hardly a surprise. Not only had it overdosed on Andrew Lloyd Webber's sugar-coated soporifics, it kept banging its head against the twin brick walls of rock-based music and jukebox inanities. No, the surprise was that it ever regained its health – and it's done
- [Microfiche](https://johnshand.com.au/microfiche/) - EVERYTHING AND OTHER INFINITIES (Creative Sources) 8/10 If a spider made a sound while spinning a web (beyond the odd arachnid expletive) it may resemble May as Well Be Infinity, a Sam Gill piece in which skittering improvising unwinds to a wispy dialogue between his own alto and Phillippa Murphy-Haste's clarinet. One readily hears Microfiche's
- [John Scurry's Reverse Swing](https://johnshand.com.au/john-scurrys-reverse-swing/) - EARLY RISERS (Lionsharecords) 7/10 Occasionally you visit someone's place for the first time and feel instantly at home. Whether it's the colours and shapes or the books and lights, you are at ease and pleased to be there. This music is like that. It arrives with a geniality that makes you settle deeper in your
- [CHRIS CODY COALITION](https://johnshand.com.au/chris-cody-coalition/) - Mary's Underground, June 19 8.5/10 The more ambitious the project, the more Chris Cody rises in stature. Following hard on the heels of his Astrolabe suite (a musical account of the navigator La Perouse), Cody has now viewed the last 18 months through a prism of how we respond to adversity, and the pandemic's effects
- [ED KUEPPER WITH JIM WHITE](https://johnshand.com.au/ed-kuepper-with-jim-white/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, June 13 6/10 This was a curious aesthetic choice. Where Ed Kuepper has often disguised his voice's relatively narrow range by colouring it in different instrumental ways, here the default context was loud. As in LOUD. The extreme volume from his distortion-tortured electric guitar smothered his singing and could even overwhelm the
- [John Sangster and Alan Lee](https://johnshand.com.au/john-sangster-and-alan-lee/) - DOUBLE VIBES/HOBBIT (Origin) 8/10 Three years after releasing his Hobbit Suite in 1974, John Sangster revisited the material, this time with very different instrumentation. He was joined by fellow vibraphone player Alan Lee, and the double-vibes line-up (plus pianist Tony Gould, bassist George Thompson and drummer Len Barnard) is at least as effective at realising
- [THE WOMAN IN BLACK](https://johnshand.com.au/the-woman-in-black/) - Ensemble Theatre, June 16 6/10 Now listen closely, because I'm only going to say this once. A man called Kipps is played by an anonymous professional actor who, in turn, is played by Garth Holcombe, and a character called Actor is played by the real Kipps (who's not an actor), who's played by Jamie Oxenbould
- [HAPPY DAYS](https://johnshand.com.au/happy-days/) - Old Fitz Theatre, June 13 9/10 One perfect moment. Perhaps that's as much as we can ever expect, but it's enough. It comes when Winnie speaks of a time when she was not buried up to her waist: "when I had… the use of my legs". Suddenly her smile and her despair fight for the
- [Roxana Amed](https://johnshand.com.au/roxana-amed/) - ONTOLOGY (Sony) 9/10 I had goose-bumps before she had even started singing, so disturbing were the guitar chords. The bass, brushes and piano then compound the unease, and the wonder is that when Roxana Amed's voice and Mark Small's tenor saxophone join, they deepen the mystery further. Amed, a US-based Argentinean, writes or co-writes most
- [COME FROM AWAY](https://johnshand.com.au/come-from-away/) - Capitol Theatre, June 10 8/10 When Gander International Airport's boss, Reg Wright, heard that Irene Sankoff and David Hein were creating Come from Away, he said, "You're writing a show about giving people sandwiches? Good luck with that!" Someone else might have wished them luck writing a musical with no protagonist, or one in which
- [The Dave Brubeck Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/the-dave-brubeck-quartet/) - TIME OUTTAKES (Brubeck Edition) 8/10 If you want to kick-start a debate among jazz-lovers, bring up the Dave Brubeck Quartet. If you want to spice it further, raise Take Five, which became a surprise hit two years after appearing on 1959's Time Out. Despite – or because of – its huge success, many dismissed it
- [THE CHERRY ORCHARD](https://johnshand.com.au/the-cherry-orchard/) - Belvoir St Theatre, June 2 4.5/10 Although someone who'd never seen nor read The Cherry Orchard would be only marginally more familiar with the work after attending this production, it is true to Anton Chekhov's intent that the play be a comedy. But intent, alone, does not a comedy make, and indeed the mortally-ill Chekhov
- [LINDA MAY HAN OH QUARTET/THIS WORLD](https://johnshand.com.au/linda-may-han-oh-quartet-this-world/) - Verbrugghen Hall, May 30 7/10 You have to squint pretty hard to see any sort of silver lining for live music amidst the pandemic, but here was one. COVID drove the New York-based Linda May Han Oh (bassist of choice for guitarist Pat Metheny, trumpeter Dave Douglas and guitarist Joe Lovano) and her husband, pianist
- [JEKYLL & HYDE](https://johnshand.com.au/jekyll-hyde/) - Q Theatre, May 28 7/10 Ever wanted the floor to swallow you rather than be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of audience participation? Having been warned of this show's extreme level of audience involvement, we wore masks, studiously avoided eye-contact and survived. Many were not so lucky. But here's the thing: this eccentric New
- [Elsen Price](https://johnshand.com.au/elsen-price-2/) - THE LIFE LONG DAY DREAMER (Rippa) 8/10 The commitment to the moment must be absolute, but once there the process can be like taking dictation. The improviser just has to get out of the way, not break the spell, and listen to the music. Solo bass improvisations have been a favoured format of Elsen Price
- [THE 7 STAGES OF GRIEVING](https://johnshand.com.au/the-7-stages-of-grieving/) - Wharf 1 Theatre, May 25 7.5/10 It could easily have been hammered together as a soapbox, but instead Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman built a play. They wrote a series of stories adding up to the big one that won't go away: the original inhabitants of this continent woke up one day to find thieves
- [VISIONS OF NAR](https://johnshand.com.au/visions-of-nar/) - Camelot Lounge, May 23 7.5/10 The first hint of where this band could go came five minutes into the opening Birth Song. Jeremy Rose felicitously landed upon a fluttering soprano saxophone phrase that was echoed by Hilary Geddes' guitar, and suddenly you felt the band, with pianist Zela Margossian and tabla player Bobby Singh, cohere
- [Yulugi](https://johnshand.com.au/yulugi/) - CHASING STARS TO THE MOTHER TREE (www.yulugi.com) 7/10 The opening Running on the Red Sand erupts from the speakers with air-raid siren urgency. The piece is a dialogue between Gumaroy Newman's yidaki and clapsticks and Keyna Wilkins' flute, and the hurtling rhythmic momentum draws you in as swiftly as a gripping chase sequence at the
- [ULSTER AMERICAN](https://johnshand.com.au/ulster-american/) - Reginald Theatre, May 15 7.5/10 Remember when humour and bad taste were allowed to share spittle in the same mouth? David Ireland does. The Belfast playwright has his characters spewing countless lines that leave you unsure whether laughing isn't a little naughty. Yet not laughing is impossible, because what they're saying is so damned funny
- [Jon Armstrong Sextet](https://johnshand.com.au/jon-armstrong-sextet/) - REABSORB (Orenda) 8/10 There are no preliminaries: the blow to the solar plexus is immediate, and once the music has you on the canvas it keeps pummeling you – appropriately enough for a piece called Hit It as Loudly as Possible. It's not just Jon Armstrong's blistering tenor saxophone, it's the punctuation marks from Dan
- [Charles Mingus](https://johnshand.com.au/charles-mingus/) - @BREMEN 1964 & 1975 (Sunnyside/Birdland) 9.5/10 In 1964 the fieriest band Charles Mingus ever assembled lobbed in Germany for the first time – and promptly started playing 45 minutes late. The concert (most of which is present on this four-album set) swiftly made up for that, however, being crammed with all the humour, swagger, invention
- [FUN HOME](https://johnshand.com.au/fun-home/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, May 1 8.5/10 The last decade has seen musical theatre not just reinventing itself, but shredding its own rulebook, and two of the most revolutionary shows are playing in Sydney simultaneously. Hamilton, the greatest revolution of all, is now joined by Fun Home, which, storming Broadway a year earlier, represents at least
- [Australian Art Orchestra](https://johnshand.com.au/australian-art-orchestra/) - SOMETIMES HOME CAN GROW STRANGER THAN SPACE (AAO) 8/10 Originally premiered in 2018 for the centenary of the end of the Great War, Sometimes Home Can Grow Stranger than Space contains highly personalised perspectives by three composers: Peter Knight evokes the irreparable grief of the parents of the dead, Tilman Robinson the motivation for a
- [GOOD WITH MAPS](https://johnshand.com.au/good-with-maps/) - Lennox Theatre, April 30 8/10 Tiny tinfoil boats snake their way down stage to make a glittering Amazon River in Kate Gaul's Siren Theatre Co production of Noelle Janaczewska's Good with Maps. First aired five years ago, this 50-minute one-hander references the soft understatement and pith helmets of Victorian-era gripping yarns, and is almost such
- [Tani Tabbal Trio](https://johnshand.com.au/tani-tabbal-trio/) - NOW THEN (Tao Forms) 9/10 Raindrops on a window move with glacial slowness until two or three converge, whereupon they race as one with extraordinary velocity. This trio is like that. When the music converges, all sense of self is lost in the exhilarating rush of collective music-making: a spiral of prodding, colouring and answering
- [ANTELODIC](https://johnshand.com.au/antelodic/) - Kindlehill Performance Amphitheatre, April 23 8/10 Sometimes the harmonies reminded you of a Welsh choir, or perhaps a solemn brass band, and then a groove flirted with going bossa nova, but decided to stay chaste. While subtly evading expectations, Robbie Melville loads his music with a restrained melancholy conveying innocence rather than knowingness, the upshot
- [SEVEN METHODS OF KILLING KYLIE JENNER](https://johnshand.com.au/seven-methods-of-killing-kylie-jenner/) - Preface: I attended Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner as a reviewer on April 21. I read the script in advance, drove 100 kilometres to attend the show, drove 100 kilometres home, wrote the review, filed it the next morning, and then learned that the producers did not want me reviewing their production because I was
- [Berardi/Foran/ Karlen](https://johnshand.com.au/berardi-foran-karlen/) - HAVEN (Earshift) 7/10 They found the ideal title in Haven. The opening lament, No Shepherds Live Here, has, like most of the pieces, such a profound stillness at its centre that it's as if, just by pressing play, you step out of the world for its duration and into a place of sanctuary. Singer Kristin
- [ALLY/MIRKO GOLUB QUARTET](https://johnshand.com.au/ally-mirko-golub-quartet/) - Pratten Park Bowling Club, April 10 7/10 Here's an initiative to make one believe we can still operate as a community, rather than so many adversarial economic units. Pratten Park Bowling Club has commendably tossed out the pokies in favour of activities that, rather than tearing people apart, actually help bring them together. Each fortnight
- [The Heads](https://johnshand.com.au/the-heads/) - THE PUSSYCAT TAPES VOL 1 (davemacrae.bandcamp.com) 9/10 What's hits you between the eyes is the sheer energy! Four 24-year-olds playing their take on bebop at full-throttle and with no seatbelts. You feel it in your nerve-endings and racing heart, as if becoming a participant in the spiralling excitement. The Heads were future Oz jazz royalty:
- [Simon Barker](https://johnshand.com.au/simon-barker-2/) - ON RUNNING 2 (Kimnara) 8/10 You don't listen to this music, so much as fall into it. And keep falling. The underpinning cross-rhythm lacework, created by Carl Dewhust (bells) and Simon Barker (bass, cymbals), makes for a sonic version of peripheral vision, while in the foreground Phil Slater's trumpet improvises emotionally enigmatic lines, variously speaking
- [ARCHIE ROACH](https://johnshand.com.au/archie-roach-2/) - State Theatre, March 30 9/10 When he began singing A Child Was Born Here, you wondered if Archie Roach was up to completing the show, so much frailer was he than a year ago that he now needed oxygen on stage. Then Took the Children Away, his great anthem that is even more about healing
- [FOUND HEADS](https://johnshand.com.au/found-heads/) - Mary's Underground, April 8 9/10 At first people tried dancing to it. In the second set they were shell-shocked into listening. By then the music was often hollowed-out; stripped of the swirling psychedelia of earlier on, so now Perrin Moss's drums and Aykho Akhrif's congas dominated the foreground, cushioned by Barney McAll's keyboards and Paul
- [HAMILTON  ](https://johnshand.com.au/hamilton/) - Sydney Lyric, March 27 10/10 Yes, it really is that good. How better to depict the American Revolution than with a hip hop musical theatre revolution? The words fly at you like grapeshot from a canon, but from the moment you adjust to their velocity the history becomes the hip hop present, so you ride
- [HALF TIME](https://johnshand.com.au/half-time/) - Hayes Theatre, April 7 7/10 Don't you hate it when you can see exactly how you're being emotionally manipulated, yet it still works? The plot turning-points arrive as punctually as Japanese trains, and yet rather than just dispassionately watching them go by, you're still sucked in for the ride. I only have to tell you
- [Tim Garland](https://johnshand.com.au/tim-garland/) - REFOCUS (Edition/Planet) 8/10 Tim Garland was the late Chick Corea's orchestrator of choice, the pianist admiring Garland's capacity for imbuing his scores with both groove and a sense of dialogue with the improvisers. ReFocus highlights this, alongside Garland's brilliance as a tenor saxophonist. The album takes Stan Getz's Focus (made in 1961, with string arrangements
- [STOP GIRL](https://johnshand.com.au/stop-girl/) - Belvoir St Theatre, March 24 9/10 Excellence costs. A nine-year-old piano virtuoso might never know the joy of childhood friendships, and many a family has been neglected by a brilliant parent. What of the brilliant foreign correspondent? What might be the cost there? Sally Sara has routinely been that person for the ABC, including spending
- [EXIT THE KING](https://johnshand.com.au/exit-the-king/) - Old Fitz Theatre, March 21 5.5/10 Finally returning to the Old Fitz held a particular joy, as if this tight little crucible is the canary in the Sydney theatre coalmine, and all's well when it's on the wing. This feeling was compounded when, upon entering the theatre proper, we seemed to fall through a crack
- [APPROPRIATE](https://johnshand.com.au/appropriate/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, March 20 8.5/10 Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' ferocious play ends with decay. The "romantic" plantation mansion in Arkansas we have shared with nine characters for nearly three hours begins to disintegrate in a string of fleeting scenes, rather like stop-frame photography. It's as if the house, itself, is diseased, and on one level Appropriate
- [The two-gig, one-album band that's now turning 30](https://johnshand.com.au/the-two-gig-one-album-band-thats-now-turning-30/) - In 1991 Lloyd Swanton was quite content. He had a stimulating career as a freelance bassist, and was one third of The Necks, who were already making waves, if yet to achieve their international acclaim. Then he decided there was another box to tick: the one marked "solo project". It was to be just two
- [Avgenicos Brothers](https://johnshand.com.au/avgenicos-brothers/) - TREADING WATER (Earshift) 7/10 You relax into this music like it's going to being a sonic hammock, and then out of nowhere, it smacks you on the jaw. The Avegicos brothers – trumpeter Tom and saxophonist Michael – have become pervasive in Sydney jazz circles over the last few years, and here they break cover
- [LOLO LOVINA](https://johnshand.com.au/lolo-lovina/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, March 12 7/10 When it does catch fire, it blazes up in a sudden inferno. The two saxophones coil and snake around each other in a mad scramble of melody over tearaway rhythms punctuated by bucking syncopations and juddering stop-times. And then out the front there's Sarah Bedak, with her eyes also
- [LAMB](https://johnshand.com.au/lamb/) - The Joan, March 13, 7.5/10 Lamb is dotted with songs the way dry dams dot a drought-struck sheep farm. Penned by Hunters and Collectors' Mark Seymour, they frame the play's sepia tone of love and life and gone wrong, and the slow pace at which this happens. As Kathleen, the mentally ill but wisest family
- [ONE MAN IN HIS TIME](https://johnshand.com.au/one-man-in-his-time/) - Playhouse, March 11 7/10 If John Bell is anything to go by, basking in the words of William Shakespeare for 65 years is good for the soul. Exuding a calm generosity of spirit, he spent an hour conveying his singular love for this greatest of writers, artists and perhaps minds. Bell was blessed with school
- [Tangents](https://johnshand.com.au/tangents/) - TIMESLIPS (www.tangentsmusic.com) 7.5/10 Picture a narrow passage with six doors. The first is marked Exaptation, and as you remember the meaning – something acquiring functions for which it was not intended – the door springs open, and you're sucked inside a sound world where organic and robotic elements cohabit with improbable collegiality. Lurking behind the
- [Adam Simmons/Jean Poole](https://johnshand.com.au/adam-simmons-jean-poole/) - ZATOCZKA (Fat Rain/Trailblazer) 9/10 There's a particular melancholy that can hang in the air like mist; that you feel entering through your pores more than your ears; a soft, communal sadness that speaks of the ages. You hear it when contralto Deborah Kayser sings Keep Safe and Warm (from Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby) accompanied by
- [Matt Keegan](https://johnshand.com.au/matt-keegan-2/) - Mary's Underground, February 28 8/10 In another bid to reach beyond the musical horizon, Matt Keegan composed Vienna Dreaming as a tribute to his great grandfather, Heini Portnoj, an Austrian Jew forced to abandon his musical career in Vienna to escape the rising tide of Nazism. Three years after releasing a recording of the suite,
- [PLAYING BEATIE BOW](https://johnshand.com.au/playing-beatie-bow/) - The Wharf, February 26 8/10 It has to permeate the words, the voices and the very air. If it does, the magic will permeate us, too. More than the lovable characters, gripping story-telling and the sense of place so profound that you can smell it, Ruth Park's 1980 novel for mature teens, Playing Beatie Bow,
- [Funk Klub Puts Bounce into Bouncing back from COVID](https://johnshand.com.au/funk-klub-puts-bounce-into-bouncing-back-from-covid/) - A little-known side-effect of the COVID pestilence was a lethal organism called Anti-Funk. This attacked red blood cells so savagely that musicians found themselves only able to play hymns, God-bothering country tunes and songs by Mariah Carey or Justin Bieber. Many burned their instruments in disgust, and became florists or chartered accountants. Dancers, meanwhile, found
- [Sandeep Das & the HUM Ensemble](https://johnshand.com.au/sandeep-das-the-hum-ensemble/) - DELHI TO DAMASCUS (In a Circle) 9/10 Cellist Yo-Yo Ma calls tabla virtuoso Sandeep Das "a creator myths", and this album offers eight more such myths. Das's guru told him that to become a great tabla player he firstly had to make his hands like swords, then like streams and finally like flowers. Now deep
- [YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN](https://johnshand.com.au/young-frankenstein/) - Hayes Theatre, February 24 7/10 Young Frankenstein is like a rickety slatted bridge, with hilarity the destination and the bottomless abyss of inanity always lurking beneath. Time and time again, a slat breaks, we plunge into silliness, and claw for a grip on the bridge of laughs. Anyone who enjoyed Mel Brooks' 1976 film of
- [Analog Players Society](https://johnshand.com.au/analog-players-society/) - TILTED (Ropeadope) 9/10 Step through a distorting mirror into a universe where nothing is quite as it seems. Is that really Antonio Carlos Jobim's One Note Samba? Yes, but now denuded of all its Brazilian lilt in favour of a groove from bassist Dezron Douglas and drummer Eric McPherson that could bulldoze a road to
- [Impermanence](https://johnshand.com.au/impermanence/) - WITH // WITHOUT (www.impermanencemusic.com) 8/10 I've never been in a float tank, but suspect this music may sometimes be an aural equivalent. Impermanence is a Melbourne trio whose music has a way of disengaging itself from gravity – without sending you to sleep. Their methods of keeping you absorbed include maintaining a vague sensation of
- [NOVAK MANOJLOVIC'S PLACES, PEOPLE](https://johnshand.com.au/novak-manojlovics-places-people/) - Venue 505, February 12 7.5/10 This was music into which you could sink as if it were a soft leather armchair, while the musical diary conjured images before your eyes. Pianist/composer Novak Manojlovic was enshrining in sound nine memories of places and people, and in the process taking us deep into the weave of his
- [DRUMMER QUEENS](https://johnshand.com.au/drummer-queens/) - Sydney Lyric, February 10 3.5/10 Two drum-centric shows in four weeks, and they could not have been more different. The first, Disruption! The Voice of the Drums, focused on the instrument's capacity (in the hands of the exceptional Simon Barker and Chloe Kim) for rhythmic complexity, melodic song and improvised interaction; for music. Drummer Queens,
- [PAUL CUTLAN STRING PROJECT](https://johnshand.com.au/paul-cutlan-string-project-2/) - Lennox Theatre, February 7 8/10 Musicians may congregate in metropolises and vie for scant playing opportunities, but they also form communities that cohere like families – largely minus the sibling rivalry. The musicians and composers involved in the latest instalment of the Paul Cutlan String Project underscore this feeling of community, just as the music
- [TRUE WEST](https://johnshand.com.au/true-west/) - Flight Path Theatre, February 4 7.5/10 Had Sam Shepard been a boxer, he may well have fvoured removing the gloves. His writing has a rawness seldom matched in drama, so words become weapons that open wounds old and new, while his characters are bruised and scarred by each other and by the bleak business of
- [Mark Helias](https://johnshand.com.au/mark-helias/) - ROOF RIGHTS (www.markhelias.bandcamp.com) 9/10 This was a golden collaboration such as only festivals can foster. US bassist Mark Helias was already bringing his exceptional Open Loose trio (with tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby and drummer Gerald Cleaver) to the 2000 Wangaratta Festival, and suggested adding three local horn players for an extra sextet concert. He penned
- [FANGIRLS](https://johnshand.com.au/fangirls/) - York Theatre, February 3 7.5/10 Disclaimer one: I didn't see Fangirls at Belvoir in 2019. More fool me. Disclaimer two: I was never a 14-year-old girl, and after seeing this, perhaps I missed out there, too. Then again, the fangirl phenomenon is pretty universal: from the crackpots at the last-gasp Trump rallies, to countless others
- [Four plays to look out for in coming months](https://johnshand.com.au/four-plays-to-look-out-for-in-coming-months/) - Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has made himself one of the world's leading playwrights inside a decade. Outhouse Theatre gave us his Gloria in 2019 and Kings Cross Theatre his Everybody last year, and now STC picks up an earlier play, Appropriate, directed by Wesley Enoch (Roslyn Packer March 15-April 10). This joins the great pantheon of US
- [Ryan Cohan](https://johnshand.com.au/ryan-cohan/) - ORIGINATIONS (Origin) 7/10 This one instantly passes the hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck test – that slightly creepy chill, not unlike the first waft of cool night air following a hot day in the desert. After a Jewish upbringing Chicago-based pianist/composer Ryan Cohan only reconnected with his estranged Arab father and the paternal side of his family as an
- [Catching the light of music and the sea in words](https://johnshand.com.au/catching-the-light-of-music-and-the-sea-in-words/) - JOHN CLARE 1940-2020 Journalist John Clare mostly listened to music with his eyes closed. If it reared up toward exceptionalism his expression was rapturous, and when it finished his eyes sprang open, and he grinned or even laughed ecstatically. This intensity of pleasure was the same when he was snorkelling, staring at a painting or
- [THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-beautiful-things/) - York Theatre, January 20 8/10 On a vast stage a lone soul sits at a grand piano, his back to most of us. This detachment between audience and player could have been a metaphor for the times, but the moment the music began, that detachment dissolved, and this was like being invited into Stu Hunter's
- [PHILIP QUAST – IS THIS ALL THEN?](https://johnshand.com.au/philip-quast-is-this-all-then/) - York Theatre, January 17 8.5/10 Even more than any gift, skill, hard work or experience, the common denominator among the greatest performers is heart. It's their willingness to dare to be vulnerable enough to give up their inner selves for public consumption, and thereby touch us. When you combine that with affableness, and no doubt
- [Reijseger/Fraanje/ Sylla](https://johnshand.com.au/reijseger-fraanje-sylla/) - WE WERE THREE (Just Listen) 9.5/10 You remember the wonder when you opened a pop-up picture book as a child? The sheer magic of each double-page spread springing to life? This album is like that, as first one mystery unfolds, then another. Boulmamine has a gauzy weaves of piano, cello and m'bira, before Mola Sylla's
- [RAPTURE!](https://johnshand.com.au/rapture/) - The Headland, January 16 6/10 With Paul Capsis and iOTA singing, and a subtitle like "A song cycle of desire and ecstasy, murder and mayhem", it seemed worth risking an outdoor show in the fickle La Nina summer. Then you learn that the 14 songs constituting Rapture are from a forthcoming musical conceived by four
- [MAUREEN: HARBINGER OF DEATH](https://johnshand.com.au/maureen-harbinger-of-death/) - Reginald Theatre, January 15 9/10 Not only is the character a natural raconteur, but so is the playwright who created her (who's also the actor playing her), and so you find yourself caught like a fly in a web of story-telling that grows stickier and denser as the play unfolds. And if that's not enough
- [Finding beauty in a crack in time](https://johnshand.com.au/finding-beauty-in-a-crack-in-time/) - When the pandemic obliterated his work and obliged him to home-school his two children, Stu Hunter could have simply put his musical career on hold. Instead he established a daily regimen of rising at 5:30, and spending three uninterrupted hours in his studio before the demands of his day began. "What became apparent to me
- [DISRUPTION! THE VOICE OF THE DRUMS](https://johnshand.com.au/disruption-the-voice-of-the-drums/) - York Theatre, January 13 8.5/10 Disruption! The title – already sounding like an explosive triplet – refers to the fire, plague, despots, social upheaval and climate change buffeting 2020, but it could also refer to the drums' disruptive power, musically. What other instrument boasts such dynamic range and rhythmic impetus, or can tear such rents
- [A trip to Oz that unlocked Korea's music](https://johnshand.com.au/a-trip-to-oz-that-unlocked-koreas-music/) - When she'd heard the high drama of Korea's traditional drumming as a child, Chloe Kim was busy learning classical piano and violin, and found this other music more a curiosity than a fascination. Even when at 12 she began teaching herself to play drum-kit, the connection to traditional drumming seemed oblique at best. It took
- [QUEEN FATIMA](https://johnshand.com.au/queen-fatima/) - Lennox Theatre, January 9 6.5/10 James Elazzi is torn. He's keen to share the merry absurdities he finds in Australian-Lebanese culture, and equally keen that we care about his characters and their challenges. The two are far from irreconcilable, of course, but he is still acquiring the expertise required to flick the right switches at
- [JULIAN LEE 1923-2020](https://johnshand.com.au/julian-lee-1923-2020/) - A young Julian Lee was hired by the Auckland bandleader Bert Paterson, who, to stir up his edgy players, gleefully told them that Lee only played piano, accordion, alto and tenor saxophones, trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, bass and drums. "He makes up for this," he added, "by singing the vocals." So obvious was the musical gift
- [RENT](https://johnshand.com.au/rent/) - Drama Theatre, January 2 6/10 When Jonathon Larson's musical Rent opened on Broadway 25 years ago it was exactly 100 years after the opera on which it was loosely based, Pucinni's La Boheme, had opened in Paris. Alas Larson never got to see that opening as he suddenly died of a brain aneurism on the
- [YEAR IN REVIEW: JAZZ/WORLD/FOLK/ CABARET](https://johnshand.com.au/year-in-review-jazz-world-folk-cabaret/) - Speaking after a live-stream concert at the end of May, the super-versatile percussionist Jess Ciampa guessed that in the year prior to the lockdown he'd only had one day off. Then, for the next seven weeks, he had zero interaction with other musicians. Some players went for over nine months without, and countless albums were
- [2020 YEAR IN REVIEW: THEATRE](https://johnshand.com.au/2020-year-in-review-theatre/) - Empty theatres due to pestilence – routine in Shakespeare's time – created financial black holes sucking the lifeblood from companies, venues and individuals. Our governments, meanwhile were bewilderingly slow to understand that COVID was at least catastrophic for the arts as for the travel and hospitality industries. Streaming, embraced by many musicians, was less attractive
- [James Ryan](https://johnshand.com.au/james-ryan/) - LIVE IN MUMBAI (Rippa) 8/10 You've heard of megaphone diplomacy and even gunboat diplomacy, but what about napalm diplomacy? That would seem to be what was involved when DFAT sent James Ryan and his band to an unsuspecting India in 2009, from which tour this live album has just come to light. The tenor saxophonist
- [Barbara Shand 1924-2021](https://johnshand.com.au/barbara-shand-1924-2021/) - Barbara – an Evocation My mother was the most curious person I've ever known – and her sense of humour would have enjoyed the ambiguity inherent in that statement. Hers was a curiosity that was infectious, but too uniquely her own to be entirely contagious. Her idea of conversation was to ask questions: not just
- [BREKKY BOY](https://johnshand.com.au/brekky-boy/) - Foundry 616, December 17 8/10 One moment the wave-like, arpeggiated piano melodies are the stuff of dreams – or ambient minimalism, for the more pragmatic. The next moment the rhythm-section gate-crashes the reverie so violently that what's being played seems not just a different piece, but a different idiom. As with much current music of
- [MY BRILLIANT CAREER](https://johnshand.com.au/my-brilliant-career/) - Belvoir St Theatre, December 10 6/10 Like Miles Franklin's novel, Kendall Feaver's play begins with Sybylla Melvyn delighting in telling us that the story we are about to hear is all about herself. Fascinated by trying to figure out her place in the grand scheme, and cursed with a restless desire for more than life
- [MONSIEUR CAMEMBERT'S LEONARD COHEN SHOW](https://johnshand.com.au/monsieur-camemberts-leonard-cohen-show-2/) - They dance through verse after verse, putting flesh on the despairing bones of his songs. Nancy, Suzanne and the rest could form an Old Testament litany of Leonard Cohen's loves. But they were never notches on a gun, rock'n'roll style. Each was adored for who she was; the warmth and light she brought to his
- [Tim Stevens Trio](https://johnshand.com.au/tim-stevens-trio/) - THERE'LL BE SOME CHANGES PLAYED (www.timstevens.com.au) 7/10 The ease with which a famed Schumann fragment (the first movement of his Kinderszenen) slots in among pianist/composer Tim Stevens' own nine pieces tells us much. Stevens' playing has an elegant formality that can sometimes conjure up the ghost of John Lewis (of the Modern Jazz Quartet), and
- [MOLLY SWEENEY](https://johnshand.com.au/molly-sweeney/) - Flight Path Theatre, December 9 8.5/10 She didn't want it. She did it for her husband Frank, who thought the greatest gift that Molly could receive was the sight she'd lost when 10 months old. That was 30 years ago, so she is self-sufficient and content in her tactile, olfactory world, working as a masseuse
- [BACKLSLIDERS](https://johnshand.com.au/backlsliders/) - Camelot Lounge, December 5 7/10 Ninety years ago the anguished voice and stinging slide guitar of rural blues were like aural shock treatment. In the 21st century you restore that raw primality by unleashing the brutal power of Midnight Oil's Rob Hirst behind the drums. Whether in the Oils or Backsliders he fires up the
- [PIPPIN](https://johnshand.com.au/pippin/) - Sydney Lyric Theatre, December 3 7/10 Glebe used to boast a shop that sold carrot cake like this, where the real deal was not the cake, but the icing. Pippin has the thickest, richest, most luscious icing you can imagine, capped with some good, old-fashioned coups de theatre like the walking legs with no body
- [Miles helps hatch Chick's innocence and experience](https://johnshand.com.au/miles-helps-hatch-chicks-innocence-and-experience/) - The epiphany came in his late teens. He was supposed to be studying McNeill's History of Western Civilisation, but when he opened the cover, rather than any words, her saw a vision of Miles Davis. He checked the New York gig guide. Miles and his quintet were playing at Birdland that night. Decision made. Sitting
- [THE WHARF REVUE: GOOD NIGHT & GOOD LUCK](https://johnshand.com.au/the-wharf-revue-good-night-good-luck/) - Riverside Theatre, November 26 6.5/10 Having always assumed it was Drew Forsythe impersonating Pauline Hanson, this year one shuddered at the possibility that it was actually Pauline doing Drew. Forsythe has long hung the comedy on Hanson's most prominent hooks: flaming hair, mangled turns of phrase and poisonous inanities. Her voice was always in that
- [THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY](https://johnshand.com.au/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, November 28 9.5/10 Sometimes a night in the theatre can, like a drug, rearrange the chemistry of one's brain. This was such a night. STC artistic director Kip Williams' use of live video projections has had its ups and downs, but as a solution to adapting Oscar Wilde's novel it was ingenious.
- [Andrea Keller Curates](https://johnshand.com.au/andrea-keller-curates/) - THE COMPOSERS' CIRCLE VOL. 1 (www.andreakellerpiano.com) 7.5/10 While the pandemic may have necessitated Andrea Keller keeping to her Melbourne home, the prolific composer/pianist certainly can't be kept in a stylistic box. During 2020 she's released four albums, with this live one coming from a residency at Brunswick's Jazzlab, where she presented assorted projects, including the
- [Three blokes cast off in their own boat](https://johnshand.com.au/three-blokes-cast-off-in-their-own-boat/) - The Wharf Revue, the satirical institution that for two decades has been the prelude to mistletoe and Mr Claus, has not so much been hibernating during the pandemic, as incubating. Now Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phil Scott have clambered back to their feet, peered behind them, and discovered that they have not only hatched
- [MICHAEL SIMIC](https://johnshand.com.au/michael-simic/) - Baroque Room, November 22 7/10 Just as cigarettes carry health alerts, some acting contracts should warn that typecasting can be bad for your career. Similarly in music, record companies have vetoed releases they deemed too much of a shock to a given fan-base. Now here was Michael Simic renouncing his own typecasting. Michael who? If
- [The man who became a saxophone](https://johnshand.com.au/the-man-who-became-a-saxophone/) - Overnight he plunged from being as bright a star as any in the 1959 jazz firmament to not playing in public. When health issues intertwined with a crippling dissatisfaction with his own art, Sonny Rollins, then the most lauded tenor saxophonist alive, stopped to take stock and absorb the revolution espoused by the free-jazz radicals.
- [George Washingmachine](https://johnshand.com.au/george-washingmachine/) - BLUES RINSE (www.georgewashingmachine.com) 7/10 George Washingmachine is best known for mainstreaming his crooning voice and cruising violin into the plump vein of jazz. Long before establishing that career, however, he used to love going bananas on an electric guitar, and it's to this he returns on Blues Rinse, while hollering out the vocals. In fact
- [Norway's migratory bird wheels over ancient music](https://johnshand.com.au/norways-migratory-bird-wheels-over-ancient-music/) - Had I died in my sleep? The clock radio clicks on Classic FM one summer morning in 1994, and what awakens me sounds like the song of angels. Then, in that rapid-fade moment when sleep recedes and the music comes fully into focus, I recognise the saxophonist: Norway's idiosyncratic Jan Garbarek. Four male voices, including
- [WICKED SISTERS](https://johnshand.com.au/wicked-sisters/) - Reginald Theatre, November 12 7/10 The deceased Alec Hobbes, scientist extraordinaire, looms over this play like the shadow of some giant bird of prey. During his life he stole the ideas of his brightest student, Hester, rewarded his wife Meridee's loyalty with a loveless marriage, had a fling with her friend Lydia and enjoyed a
- [EVANS/ELPHICK/ ODAMURA](https://johnshand.com.au/evans-elphick-odamura/) - Old 505 Theatre, November 9 8/10 We adjust to the new normality, then learn that this was Sandy Evans's first gig in nine months, and are rocked back on our heels afresh. When I first heard the saxophonist nearly four decades ago she was, as now, in a band with bassist Steve Elphick. Their rapport
- [Jim White and Marisa Anderson](https://johnshand.com.au/jim-white-and-marisa-anderson/) - THE QUICKENING (Thrill Jockey) 8/10 Jim White's name has become the musical equivalent of those Heart Foundation food endorsements: if you see it on a record, you know the music will warm your ears. From Dirty Three to Marianne Faithfull toXylouris White, the drummer's range of sonic adventuring has been wide, and this project with
- [Grace under fire was the ducal way](https://johnshand.com.au/grace-under-fire-was-the-ducal-way/) - Charles Mingus didn't want to do it. This was '62, and he had a major project of his own on the boil; didn't have the time. Of course he loved Duke Ellington: the man, his composing and his piano playing. Who didn't? But it was Duke who'd fired him nine years before, and for what?
- [Rules for Living](https://johnshand.com.au/6820-2/) - Drama theatre, November 6 5/10 Boxing Day should probably be called "sorry day", so routinely do people vent feelings the day before that they wish they could retract. Boiling one's blood in the furnace of an Australian summer while gorging on pigs, poultry and booze could almost seem an excuse, except that the same behaviour
- [Dave Douglas](https://johnshand.com.au/dave-douglas-2/) - DIZZY ATMOSPHERE (Greenleaf) 7.5/10 Tribute albums and jazz mix about as well as oil and water. Jazz demands being oneself and, at the highest level, selflessness. Tribute albums imply the assumption of another's characteristics. Trumpeter Dave Douglas now has considerable experience solving that conundrum, so his Dizzy Atmosphere is not so much an homage to
- [Marshall Allen: Still searching the depths of space and time at 96](https://johnshand.com.au/marshall-allen-still-searching-the-depths-of-space-and-time-at-96/) - Hearing of a possible gig with a hot new band, Marshall Allen looked in on a rehearsal, expecting the leader to say, "Let's hear you play". Instead he was welcomed with recited poems and lectures about space travel, ancient Egypt and philosophy. Bewildered, he nonetheless stuck around, listening to music the like of which he'd
- [Elysian Fields](https://johnshand.com.au/elysian-fields/) - FIKA (Move) 8/10 The integration deepens. Electric viola da gamba player Jenny Eriksson's Elysian Fields project gave six players of diverse backgrounds a chance to excavate a unique collective sound, and the artistic success always partly depended on how successfully its disparate elements – classical, folk, jazz and early music – could fuse, rather than
- [Zela Margossian's rocky road to the land of hope](https://johnshand.com.au/zela-margossians-rocky-road-to-the-land-of-hope/) - When she composed Ceasefire, Zela Margossian didn't have to imagine what it was like when the bombs stopped falling in a warzone. It was a vivid childhood memory from Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. The piece reflects the sheer joy of being able to leave the bunker to play soccer in the streets. "Mum
- [Mary Lou Williams: A mirror showing what happened next](https://johnshand.com.au/mary-lou-williams-a-mirror-showing-what-happened-next/) - She was the youngest member of a black family in a white part of Pittsburgh, whose neighbours showed their displeasure by lobbing bricks through the windows. By the age of three Mary Elfrieda Scruggs had taught herself to play spirituals and ragtime on the household organ, and by six she had worked out that if
- [The Modern Congress](https://johnshand.com.au/the-modern-congress/) - UNTIL TOMORROW (www.timrollinson.com) 3.5 Just as we eat comfort food, we listen to comfort music – usually sounds we know and love. Remarkably enough, composer, guitarist and producer Tim Rollinson can make music that fulfils this function straight out of the box. His Modern Congress project's third album should theoretically be the exact opposite of
- [Dewey the tortoise wipes floor with saxophone hares](https://johnshand.com.au/dewey-the-tortoise-wipes-floor-with-saxophone-hares/) - Perhaps he was out of synch with the world. Perhaps it moved too fast for him. When Dewey Redman first came here 40 years ago with the magical Old and New Dreams he was only 50, yet already had the slo-mo shuffle of an old man. When I interviewed him the next time, in 1986,
- [AN ENCHANTED EVENING](https://johnshand.com.au/an-enchanted-evening/) - Riverside Theatre, October 17 7/10 Singing in public can still be scary, even for those whose nerves are steeled by countless shows. So imagine going for months without performing, and then walking back out on to that stage. Beyond hitting the notes and remembering the arrangements, there's something akin to match-fitness that's been missing. So
- [THE BIG BLUE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-big-blue/) - The Joan, October 15 5/10 When The Big Blue was hatched in July, Q Theatre's young Originate team didn't even know if and where they'd be able to perform it. Given this leap into the unknown, perhaps it was apt that the show took its cues from space and deep-sea exploration, opting for a theatre
- [Loretta Palmeiro & Mark Isaacs](https://johnshand.com.au/loretta-palmeiro-mark-isaacs/) - ALL WHO TRAVEL WITH US (Some of Two Parts) 9/10 Even more than with verbal conversation, the art of improvised musical dialogue is fundamentally one of listening. An instrument like the piano can potentially fill every corner of the sonic canvas, and here you hear Mark Isaacs creating space to beckon soprano saxophonist Loretta Palmeiro
- [Betty Carter's slow-motion singing made every syllable count](https://johnshand.com.au/betty-carters-slow-motion-singing-made-every-syllable-count/) - She was the most adventurous of all the jazz singers, and yet to hear her on record was to catch only two-thirds of the deal. The rest lay in the spell she cast in person. Her innate strength of presence was amplified by the visuals: a billowing motion that was part dance, part conducting, part
- [Damian Wright](https://johnshand.com.au/damian-wright/) - SHIFTING SANDS (ABC) 8/10 The music's flamenco core never wavers. Damian Wright's glorious guitar playing is the spine, if you will, while his compositions allow other instruments to sing their own songs, like willowy limbs able to dance independently because of the spine's solidity. Wright's compositions could have been presented as solo flamenco guitar pieces,
- [Coaxed from plain white stage to silvery screen](https://johnshand.com.au/coaxed-from-plain-white-stage-to-silvery-screen/) - I was 15 and as impressionable as a piece of dough when Peter Brook's RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream burned itself into my memory. The play's magic came to miraculous life on Brook's famous "white box" stage, with trapezes, spinning plates, stilts and a giant ostrich feather contextualising the exquisite verse. There's no
- [All the music, all the magic and the other Mr Bowie](https://johnshand.com.au/all-the-music-all-the-magic-and-the-other-mr-bowie/) - As a young trumpeter he used to practice near an open window, just in case Louis Armstrong was wandering past and heard him. Not that Armstrong lived in St Louis, but Lester was an optimist. He'd always trot off and audition when Ray Charles came to town, again without luck. His trumpeter father had taught
- [SUPERHEROES](https://johnshand.com.au/superheroes/) - Reginald Theatre, October 1 7/10 The dim ones, seeing art as a luxury, fail to recognise that among its myriad benefits is a capacity to enhance intelligence, not only by firing our imaginations like so many pots in a kiln, but by obliging us to connect dots. You feel this latter process sizzling in your
- [Rob Burke/Ben Monder/Tom Rainey](https://johnshand.com.au/rob-burke-ben-monder-tom-rainey/) - SLIP SLIDING (FMR) 8/10 You can keep distilling your art to an essence, or you can expand it towards the vanishing point of infinity. High-calibre, late-career work may result either way. Rob Burke is the latter camp, and his recent output is both more gripping and more satisfying than his records of two decades ago.
- [Wayne Shorter: When less is more on the road to being human](https://johnshand.com.au/wayne-shorter-when-less-is-more-on-the-road-to-being-human/) - He wrote his first piece when a boy, by way of trying to woo a girl. That he failed in his quest didn't cause Wayne Shorter too much angst, however, because he already saw art as a doorway to adventures of a more internal sort. Chasing girls was put on hold while he conquered clarinet,
- [One song to cap Tony Bennett's long career](https://johnshand.com.au/one-song-to-cap-tony-bennetts-long-career/) - He was 75 when he finally did it. That's an age at which most singers' breath-control is declining, their range diminishing and their tone becoming clouded with rasps and wheezes. No one told Tony Bennett. He walked into a New York studio in 2001, four weeks after 9/11, and delivered the definitive jazz vocal of
- [John Martyn springs from the page to be larger than life](https://johnshand.com.au/john-martyn-springs-from-the-page-to-be-larger-than-life/) - Graeme Thompson SMALL HOURS – THE LONG NIGHT OF JOHN MARTYN (Omnibus) 8.5/10 Samuel Taylor Coleridge described the performances of great early-19th-century actor Edmund Kean as "like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning". Something similar could be said of listening to John Martyn's most compelling music, with his lyrics carrying disturbing illuminations of the human
- [Long-buried Monk bops out of box](https://johnshand.com.au/long-buried-monk-bops-out-of-box/) - You're 16 years old and a wannabe concert promoter. Amid extreme racial tensions in 1968, the year both Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, you've booked the Thelonious Monk Quartet to play at your very white Californian high school, with two local black support acts. But tickets haven't sold, because no one
- [WONNANGATTA](https://johnshand.com.au/wonnangatta/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, September 25 8/10 The pops and trills of native birds that greet us as we enter lull us into a false sense of wellbeing amid the Victorian Alpine bush. Angus Cerini's new play may ostensibly be a two hander, with Hugo Weaving as Harry and Wayne Blair as Riggall, but this bush
- [Paul Williamson Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/paul-williamson-quartet/) - DARK ENERGY (FMR) 8/10 To an astrophysicist it's our universe's little-understood but dominant energy form, to a fantasist it's black magic, and to others it might mean a maniac in the White House. Regardless of which sense of "dark energy" trumpeter Paul Williamson intended, his title track certainly pulses with extreme agitation, so even the
- [FELICITY WILCOX & LLOYD SWANTON](https://johnshand.com.au/felicity-wilcox-lloyd-swanton/) - Music Hunter at Avalon, September 20 6.5/10 Having observed that the intimacy of this venue made it feel like someone's living room, Felicity Wilcox also cheekily suggested that there just might be a plus-side to socially-distanced audiences in terms of quality rather than quantity. I suspect she's on to something. This was the sixth performance
- [A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN](https://johnshand.com.au/a-room-of-ones-own/) - Belvoir St Theatre, September 16 9/10 Virginia Woolf got one thing wrong. Near the end of A Room of One's Own, her incandescent 1929 polemic on women's place in the corporeal and literary patriarchies, she writes, "Much of what I have said will seem out of date." On the contrary, among the many wonders of
- [Waveteller](https://johnshand.com.au/waveteller/) - WAVETELLER (www.waveteller.bandcamp.com) 7/10 Imagine if we walked on our heads, and tripwires kept snagging our ears. This music is like that. Gifted bassist Michael Mear left Sydney for Paris when he was 19, and while away developed a fondness for rhythmic intricacy: for spiking his grooves with unexpected jolts. Yet rather than making the music
- [Charles Lloyd: Sharing a gift with a Greek goddess](https://johnshand.com.au/charles-lloyd-sharing-a-gift-with-a-greek-goddess/) - As a child growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, Charles Lloyd used to put his radio under his pillow so Billie Holiday could sing him to sleep. Always a dreamer, he determined that he would find this beautiful woman, and take her away from all the misery and heartache that filled her songs. As an acclaimed
- [Sam Gill's Scattered](https://johnshand.com.au/sam-gills-scattered/) - PERSPECTIVAL (www.samgillmusic.com) 8/10 Alto saxophonist Sam Gill may have just invented chronological schizophrenia. Gill's conception for his Scattered quintet slices through time and space to combine the freedom and complexity of now with an almost urbane salon aesthetic that could be a century old. It's rather like slightly unruly music intermittently doning a white tuxedo.
- [NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH](https://johnshand.com.au/neighbourhood-watch-2/) - New Theatre, September 9 6/10 Ana jumped in front of the speeding train called life, and was buffeted down the tracks for the next 80 years. Her stoicism, humour, resilience and courage light up Neighbourhood Watch more than her grudges and stubbornness cloud it, so she emerges as something of a beacon for surviving tough
- [Abdullah Ibrahim: Drawing from the well at the source](https://johnshand.com.au/abdullah-ibrahim-drawing-from-the-well-at-the-source/) - Abdullah Ibrahim was an adult before he learned his father had been murdered when he, Abdullah, was only four. He'd grown up believing his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his sister. Perhaps that's why his life has always seemed a search for truth; why his greatest album is called The Journey. The
- [Alister Spence](https://johnshand.com.au/alister-spence/) - WHIRLPOOL (Alister Spence Music) 8/10 One note, and then the options are limitless. When the music's working, the improviser's mind is ablaze with possibilities, making microsecond decisions about which of these to pursue, usually to sustain the thread of what is already being heard in the head – or sometimes to subvert it and pick
- [Judy Bailey: The six-month stay that became 60 years](https://johnshand.com.au/the-six-month-stay-that-became-60-years/) - She was used to hearing classical or pop music humming from the cream-coloured Bakelite radio that hunched on the Whangarei kitchen's Formica bench. But on this particular afternoon her 13-year-old ears heard something new. She recognised the song, East of the Sun, yet after the melody the band seemed to be making the music up
- [VAZESH](https://johnshand.com.au/vazesh/) - Downstairs at Avalon, August 29 8/10 That the band's name means to blow softly already says much. The Persian culture, ravaged by the 1979 Iranian revolution, was one of poetry not only in words, but in music. Since moving to Australia Hamed Sadeghi has given us glimpses of this culture through his band, Eishan Ensemble,
- [Bill Laswell](https://johnshand.com.au/bill-laswell/) - AGAINST EMPIRE (MOD Reloaded/Redeye Worldwide) 8.5/10 Can music itself be wise, or just the people who create it? Can it perhaps impart wisdom? Certainly some profundity is layered into this album's compositions, choice of players, improvising and production, so that, while being breathtakingly innovative, it also feels mysteriously ancient. Ever questing, composer/bassist Bill Laswell has
- [Charlie Parker: Jazz's incandescent phoenix](https://johnshand.com.au/charlie-parker-jazzs-incandescent-phoenix/) - The presiding doctor at his death assumed he was between 50 and 60. Four possible causes of death were given: perforated ulcer, advanced cirrhosis, pneumonia and heart-attack. In fact Charlie Parker was only 34. In his brief career he'd burned brighter than any comet in the jazz firmament, and this not only took its own
- [NO CABARET FOR OLD MEN](https://johnshand.com.au/no-cabaret-for-old-men/) - The Joan, August 21 8/10 Why are Phil Scott and Jonathan Biggins getting two bites of the review apple only 54 days apart? Has a palm been greased with something more than hand-sanitizer? No, it's because two months ago they were little people in a live stream on a screen, and here they were offering
- [Jon Hatamiya](https://johnshand.com.au/jon-hatamiya/) - MORE THAN ANYTHING (Orenda) 8/10 You hear the intensity of the initial impetus: these nine compositions all relate to the love, loss and grief felt by the trombonist and composer Jon Hatamiya across nine years while supporting his mother as cancer sapped away her life. Even the unusual instrumentation plays its part, specifically having two
- [The thoughts of Chairman Wyatt](https://johnshand.com.au/the-thoughts-of-chairman-wyatt/) - Robert was rubbish at school. Rubbish at the trumpet too, for which he swapped his violin, vexing his father, who declared there were no great concertos for trumpet. Robert ventured to suggest Miles Davis with Gil Evans, but his father scoffed. When his trumpet teacher lost patience with him, too, he attempted suicide. Figuring he'd
- [UNDERWARDS](https://johnshand.com.au/underwards/) - Jazz: NOW Wired, August 15 8.5/10 Ellen Kirkwood gets it. She understands that this composing lark isn't really about just stringing notes and harmonies together; that, at its heart, music is a narrative art, and therefore the three simplest rules of story-telling apply: establish expectations, fulfil them and subvert them. Here she did exactly that
- [John Ellis & Andy Bragen](https://johnshand.com.au/john-ellis-andy-bragen/) - THE ICE SIREN (Parade Light) 9/10 "Red roses turn to black. It's strange how fast they die," sings Miles Griffith as the protagonist in this modern-day variant on Orpheus and Euridice, the sheer audacity of which is as exhilarating as the music is often chilling. For five years the man has been visiting the crypt
- [Ben Webster: The fluffy edges of the man they called "The Brute"](https://johnshand.com.au/ben-webster-the-fluffy-edges-of-the-man-they-called-the-brute/) - So effective was he with his fists that they called him "The Brute". Then you heard him play, and his opulent, breathy tenor saxophone sang of tenderness, loneliness and romance. In the yawning chasm between these extremes lies that fact that big, mean drunks can also be gentle giants. And, eventually, music, age and, yes,
- [Paco Lara](https://johnshand.com.au/paco-lara/) - THE ANDALUSIAN GUITAR (pacolaraflamenco.com) 8/10 The clap of a pair of hands is all it takes for a flamenco guitar to switch from fieriness to supreme elegance. Paco Lara, a distinguished Spanish guitarist who has recently moved to Australia and who plays with impressive articulation, tends to favour the music's elegance over its furnace. On
- [Marilyn Crispell: Finding a path through the labyrinth](https://johnshand.com.au/marilyn-crispell-finding-a-path-through-the-labyrinth/) - With her flatmate off playing a gig, she had the apartment to herself for the night. She'd spent her childhood studying classical piano, culminating in four years at the New England Conservatory, before she married and disengaged from music entirely for six years. Now here she was in 1975, with time on her hands, and
- [MATT OTTIGNON'S TREAD LIGHTLY](https://johnshand.com.au/matt-ottignons-tread-lightly/) - Johnston St Jazz, July 30 9/10 It all comes down to sound. Even when streamed rather than live, you hear a life-force fermenting in Matt Ottignon's tenor saxophone that can rear up like a tsunami or melt like chocolate. Not merely a matter of commanding the keys and mouthpiece, the sound's grip results from the
- [Kim Myhr & Australian Art Orchestra](https://johnshand.com.au/kim-myhr-australian-art-orchestra/) - VESPER (Hubro) 8/10 Sometimes we listen too fast, so the music seems in slow motion. But music can only unfold at its own speed, and it's we who must unwind enough to hear it; to be led into a world where chronological times stands still. In this collaboration with the Australian Art Orchestra, each instant
- [Charles Mingus: The agony and the empathy](https://johnshand.com.au/charles-mingus-the-agony-and-the-empathy/) - Perhaps he instinctively empathised because he, too, had been treated like dirt. That's why he called his autobiography Beneath the Underdog. He, too, had had his music – some would say his genius – belittled. So when others shrugged their shoulders at the hopelessness, or openly mocked the man with the sad, empty eyes whose
- [THE CREDAUX CANVAS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-credaux-canvas/) - El Rocco Theatre, July 24 7/10 Someone had to go first and, four months after the lights went off, live theatre returned to Sydney. The sense of anticipation before this show was a bit like the crackling electricity of going to the theatre as a child: here were real, in-the-flesh actors, after all, rather those
- [Hains & Young](https://johnshand.com.au/hains-young/) - THE WAY OF THE CROW (Newmarket) 8/10 Music doesn't come much darker than this. It's like being drawn deeper and deeper into a black forest, until the sky is completely blotted out and even the birds seem malevolent. The compositions were jointly penned by Brendan Hains (guitar, mellotron) and Christopher Young (reeds), and the music
- [There's no taking the Mississippi out of Ms Wilson](https://johnshand.com.au/theres-no-taking-the-mississippi-out-of-ms-wilson/) - Besotted with the Monkees' '60s TV show, the young Cassandra Wilson was proud to call their LP containing Last Train to Clarksville her first. Three decades later she derailed that song's frothy pop, stripping it back to some re-imagined version of the rural blues that was spawned in her Mississippi home state a century ago.
- [Chris Cody](https://johnshand.com.au/chris-cody/) - ASTROLABE (www.chriscody.com) 8/10 It's as if new instruments are being devised by the minute, such are the improbable combinations Chris Cody contrives among his eccentric octet. Not mere whimsy, this eccentricity stems from the composer's crafting a musical account of the voyages of French explorer La Perouse (the Astrolabe being one of his ships). In
- [Mike Nock: Repeating the poem of forgotten love](https://johnshand.com.au/repeating-the-poem-of-forgotten-love/) - The second morning was an early start by musician standards: 9am. The first day in the studio had gone well enough. Good takes, energy to burn – but it was not quite what producer Manfred Eicher had in mind. As much as he loved Mike Nock's most recent record, In Out and Around, he didn't
- [LAUREN WHITE BAND](https://johnshand.com.au/lauren-white-band/) - Johnston St Jazz, July 9 6/10 Some artists may rejoice to hear that critics suffer nightmares, courtesy of events like a rained-out jazz festival one was to review, or an Emmanuel Brothers concert where the power failed early on. All was not lost that time, however, because the two guitarists continued entirely acoustically, and, with
- [Shuffle Demons](https://johnshand.com.au/shuffle-demons/) - CRAZY TIME (Stubby) 7/10 The title, which dates from before the current imbroglio, certainly suits the manic edge that is one side of this Canadian R&B band's character. You hear that edge in Richard Underhill's urgent alto solos, in the three-part horn lines that could cut you off at the knees if you came too
- [Django: breathing life into jazz outside America](https://johnshand.com.au/django-breathing-life-into-jazz-outside-america/) - He didn't know his wife, Bella, had spent the day making celluloid flowers to sell to mourners at the cemetery the next day. They filled the caravan, so when he arrived home from a gig at 1am and could find nothing in the dark, he lit a candle stub that disintegrated in his hands, and
- [DELAY 45](https://johnshand.com.au/delay-45-2/) - Jazz: NOW Wired, June 4, 8/10 Just as you can still an argument with a kiss, so musical agitation can be softened by a single note. A defining quality of Delay 45 is the astuteness in when to build tension and when, metaphorically, to kiss and make up. Not that the tension ever tipped into
- [Dan Rosenboom](https://johnshand.com.au/dan-rosenboom/) - ABSURD IN THE ANTHROPOCENE (Gearbox) 8/10 The monumentalism at work here seems to predate our current little lives. Often trumpeter Dan Rosenboom thinks in mass and density as much as linear ideas; in towers and crenellated walls of granite sound. So even when the music's lithe and boppish, it still arrives with a heft and
- [The overflowing humanity of Dexter Gordon](https://johnshand.com.au/the-overflowing-humanity-of-dexter-gordon/) - For a portrait of the artist as a child who never grew up, look at Dexter Gordon's smile: the gummy grin of a six-year-old, even when he was ravaged by ill health. Dexter compensated by growing up vertically, standing 196 centimetres in his socks, his massive hands making a tenor saxophone shrink to the size
- [TOM PAINE (BASED ON NOTHING)](https://johnshand.com.au/tom-paine-based-on-nothing/) - Old Fitz Theatre, June 29 9/10 Thom Paine is a paradox wrapped in an accident that may happen again while we're watching. That's the wonder of US playwright Will Eno's hour-long one-hander: it stays dangerous even when you know the play; never sheds its unpredictability. You can test that theory, because actor Toby Schmitz performs
- [Tineke Postma](https://johnshand.com.au/tineke-postma/) - FREYA (Edition/Planet) 8/10 Initially the rhythm stumbles with the broken motion of a leg in a splint, while the alto skates blithely by, before drummer Dan Weiss starts treating the thrumming insistence of Matthew Brewer's bass as something to be tamed rather than healed. Trumpeter Ralph Alessi has already cauterised the groove his own way
- [PHIL SCOTT & FRIENDS](https://johnshand.com.au/phil-scott-friends/) - The Reservoir Room, June 27 7/10 If The Wharf Revue goes ahead this October, it will be the finale of the show that, since 2000, has had politicians wondering why they bother to fund the arts. The poor sods donate great wads of our money, and in return are rendered in a form that's only
- [Lakecia Benjamin: Reflecting the light across space and time](https://johnshand.com.au/reflecting-the-light-across-space-and-time/) - When John Coltrane visited Nagasaki on a Japanese tour in 1966, 21 years after the atomic obliteration, he was not with his band members when they left the train. The panicked promoter found him still on board, absorbed in playing his flute. Asked what he was doing, Coltrane replied, "I'm searching for the sound of
- [Jim Snidero](https://johnshand.com.au/jim-snidero/) - PROJECT-K (Savant) 8/10 At first you think there's a guitar in the ensemble, and then you hear more clearly the teardrop-shaped notes of Do Yeon Kim's gayageum, the ancient Korean cousin of the koto. Jazz being a language rather than an idiom, the instrument readily slots into this music's neon vibrancy. Jim Snidero is a
- [Julien Wilson](https://johnshand.com.au/julien-wilson/) - STOCK (Lionsharecords/Planet) 9/10 Here's the tangible benefit of not rushing to record a band; of letting it simmer away in rehearsal and live performance so, when it hits the studio, cohesion is a given. But this being saxophonist/clarinettist Julien Wilson, cohesion does not equate to abandoning exploration and simply settling for what he, guitarist Craig
- [BERNIE MCGANN: Slings, arrows, apathy – and a jaunty trill](https://johnshand.com.au/bernie-mcgann-slings-arrows-apathy-and-a-jaunty-trill/) - Saxophonist Bernie McGann was once hired by a juggler, who tossed him some sheet music, counted in the tune and began juggling. McGann didn't play a note; just stood staring at the music, knowing he shouldn't have come. The juggler needed McGann, but McGann didn't need the juggler. He could keep endless ideas spinning in
- [IF THIS BE NOTHING](https://johnshand.com.au/if-this-be-nothing/) - Montague Basement, June 11 5/10 Our own period of relative lock-down was but a little crack in time compared with poor Hermione's. She had 16 years to endlessly press replay in her mind; to fret and ponder how she might have swayed her once-loving husband, Leontes, that she'd not fashioned horns for him with the
- [Maxed out quest for justice](https://johnshand.com.au/maxed-out-quest-for-justice/) - The cover tells the story. Three young black men stare defiantly at the camera from a lunch counter, while the waiter's curdled expression makes plain they've sat in a whites-only area of a segregated diner. Sixty years later and, like our own black population, African Americans still face racism in countless ways. Max Roach's We
- [Lisa's long road as Nina Simone's daughter](https://johnshand.com.au/lisas-long-road-as-nina-simones-daughter/) - She met any transgression with such a withering glare that her eyes were more like flamethrowers than headlights; the voice imperious, with a crust of sarcasm. Nina Simone could scare the pants off her band and fans, alike. Watch, in Netflix's gripping What Happened, Miss Simone?, her stop playing to demand a hapless audience member
- [On being left punch-drunk by Miles and McLaughlin](https://johnshand.com.au/on-being-left-punch-drunk-by-miles-and-mclaughlin/) - Flipping through records in a department store, the 16-year-old me is hooked by the cover image: an ebony man in a bright white singlet, his body arching backwards as he plays his trumpet. Miles Davis, it says. A Tribute to Jack Johnson. I ask to hear it – in those days via headphones in a
- [VIRNA SANZONE & PHIL STACK](https://johnshand.com.au/virna-sanzone-phil-stack/) - Jazz: NOW Wired June 6 7/10 Perhaps live music video streams are here to stay – especially when the sound is this good. Of course they'll never replace the electricity of musicians and listeners crammed into the same room, but now that we've adjusted to them in the COVID-19 age, streams could possibly serve as
- [Rempis/Lopez/Packard](https://johnshand.com.au/rempis-lopez-packard/) - THE EARLY BIRD GETS (Aerophonic/Birdland) 9/10 It's like a blade – not so much a scalpel and as scythe, hewing its way straight into your central nervous system. I first heard it soon after a general anaesthetic, and I swear hospitals could use Dave Rempis's alto sound to clear their recovery rooms faster. At one
- [The divine Sarah Vaughan could have offered even more](https://johnshand.com.au/the-divine-sarah-vaughan-could-have-offered-even-more/) - It was almost as though she had emerged from the womb fully formed. In her 20s she was already feted, adored and even worshipped. Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald were freakish enough, needing only a couple of years to rise from showing promise to embodying supreme artistry. Sarah Vaughan skipped the "shows promise" phase. At
- [Gretchen Parlato & Mark Guiliana/Julien Wilson/Luca Ciarla](https://johnshand.com.au/gretchen-parlato-mark-guiliana-julien-wilson-luca-ciarla/) - These Digital Times, May 30 Streaming just doesn’t quite cut it, does it? When Gretchen Parlato performed in the cavernous Verbrugghen Hall two years ago, I suggested that, given her work's smaller-than-life ethos, a more appropriate venue may have been a living room. Well, here she was streaming from her own one in New York,
- [Josh Bennier](https://johnshand.com.au/josh-bennier/) - MODULAR (www.joshbennier.com) 7.5/10 Josh Bennier astutely builds improvising into the structures of his compositions, rather than just decorating song-forms with solos, so each player is given a context in which to carry the work forward on its multifaceted journey. The exceptional young trombonist bristles with so many ideas that he happily squeezes a swag of
- [BELVOIR IN CONCERT](https://johnshand.com.au/belvoir-in-concert/) - Belvoir St Theatre, May 22 7/10 It hits you most at the end, with a view from Belvoir's stage of the massed empty seats. The lights being switched off is such an eloquent statement of the plight; of the hole in our lives, and especially in the lives of everyone involved in mounting shows and
- [Steve Arie](https://johnshand.com.au/steve-arie/) - QUIRKS (www.stevearie.com.au) 7/10 Many musicians change their primary instrument in their teens, and the odd one (like guitarist Ralph Towner) in their 20s. But to spend 30 years as a double bassist in such stellar projects as Ten Part Invention and John Turnbull's beat-poet show, Birth of the Cool, and then suddenly decide you're really
- [Nowhere for Keith Jarrett's trio to hide - nor did they need to.](https://johnshand.com.au/nowhere-for-keith-jarretts-trio-to-hide-nor-did-they-need-to/) - Keith Jarrett's wish-list for his eighth birthday contained a walkie-talkie, a piano and an elephant. That he got the piano was a huge surprise – so one can only imagine his response had he received the elephant. In fact his own recitals had paid for the instrument, the seven-year-old's repertoire ranging from Mozart to Jarrett
- [Amanda Brown & Damian Lane](https://johnshand.com.au/amanda-brown-damian-lane/) - QUILTY: PAINTING THE SHADOWS (InSync) 8/10 If you have taken up painting during the lockdown, you might want to try working away to this. Quilty: Painting the Shadows is the soundtrack for Catherine Hunter's documentary about Ben Quility, and, while some film music can seem a nudge anaemic when taken out of context, this is
- [ANOESIS](https://johnshand.com.au/anoesis/) - Johnston St Jazz, May 14 6/10 What an apt name for a band. Anoesis refers to attaining a state of pure sensation or emotion, devoid of cognitive input – which is pretty much the improvising musician's Holy Grail. This quintet of University of New South Wales music students was deemed sufficiently close to living up
- [Paul Motian: Shape-shifting the songs of Broadway](https://johnshand.com.au/paul-motian-shape-shifting-the-songs-of-broadway/) - She wasn't even a jazz singer. She was a guitar-strumming folk singer who fled Maine for the big time in New York. The big time gave her a contract, one album, and then spat her out, but she kept plugging away, falling into a relationship with the Paul Motian Trio's brilliant bassist, Larry Grenadier. Motian,
- [Carl Orr](https://johnshand.com.au/carl-orr/) - SOMEWHERE ELSE (www.carlorr.com) 7/10 Restraint and tension are two sides of the same coin. Musicians holding something in reserve are a bit like dogs on a leash, and the very sense of anticipation induced helps spark the listener's imagination. This restraint can also maximise the air around the notes, and therefore the starkness of those
- [Charlie Haden's hidden cowboy hat](https://johnshand.com.au/charlie-hadens-hidden-cowboy-hat/) - Charlie never had to wonder what he would be. When aged two he was already singing on the radio every day: Little Charlie, the Yodelling Cowboy, held up to the microphone by his mother. The youngest member of Carl Haden and the Haden Family, his world was alive with harmonies, the best ear-training a kid
- [Monash Art Ensemble](https://johnshand.com.au/monash-art-ensemble-2/) - HERE NOW HEAR (FMR) 8.5/10 Monash Art Ensemble reaches ever higher and farther afield for imagination-stretching material. Directed by Paul Grabowsky, this combination of students and professionals moves well beyond the jazz big-band mentality on this double album, taking listeners on the genre-crossing journeys of eight composers, deep into the land where improvisation and composition
- [INTERNATIONAL JAZZ DAY LIVE STREAM](https://johnshand.com.au/international-jazz-day-live-stream/) - April 30 8/10 International Jazz Day (April 30) has celebrated jazz's role in helping unite people the world over since 2011. This year, when the host nation was to have been South Africa, it was, instead, another reminder of a community splintered into an epidemic of isolation. But, thanks to a commendable collaboration between Sydney
- [When Frank Sinatra cut loose from the big bands](https://johnshand.com.au/when-frank-sinatra-cut-loose-from-the-big-bands/) - The Melbourne hotel wasn't the dump he had feared. It even boasted a pool, which he had to himself – just how he liked it when doing laps. Especially now there was no Ava Gardner around. He relaxed into an easy freestyle, extending the number of strokes between breaths until he managed a whole length.
- [K2/THEAK-TET/BO5N](https://johnshand.com.au/k2-theak-tet-bo5n/) - Jazz: NOW Wired, June 20 7.5/10 They're not patterns so much as shadows, like an image that's been painted over. Humans being hardwired to make connections, the links and evolutions hiding in the juxtaposition of new material with archival footage in the fortnightly Jazz: NOW Wired concert streams are almost as engaging as the music,
- [Michael Jordan](https://johnshand.com.au/michael-jordan/) - AIM (michaeljordandrums.com) 9/10 Michael Jordan has dug his own musical garden, and now the flowers are blooming. His conceptions as both composer and drummer are uniquely intertwined, his pieces exploring the melodic potential of a large kit of Roto-toms tuned to specific notes. But let's put the rigour underpinning the methodology partially aside to concentrate
- [MIKE NOCK & MATT KEEGAN](https://johnshand.com.au/mike-nock-matt-keegan/) - Johnston St Jazz Live Stream, April 23 7.5/10 Our brains have been processing acoustic sounds since our forerunners warily exited the ocean and crawled up the beach. We've only heard electronic sounds, on the other hand, for one lifetime. Perhaps that somehow accounts for the delicious disorientation when music morphs between the two. In the
- [JORDAN RASKOPOULOS](https://johnshand.com.au/jordan-raskopoulos/) - LIVE STREAM THEATRE Griffin Theatre Company, April 21 In terms of relevance deprivation right now you can't sink much lower than a theatre critic. It's like the National Party without coal: absolutely no raison d'etre (which is French, Barnaby, for a shrivelled grape.) So imagine the sheer ecstasy when Griffin Theatre announced it had commissioned
- [Barefoot revolutionary was the Hendrix of the electric bass](https://johnshand.com.au/barefoot-revolutionary-was-the-hendrix-of-the-electric-bass/) - He knew he wanted this; knew he was right for it. So after the gig he slipped backstage and found his man: Joe Zawinul, keyboardist and co-leader of Weather Report, a band at the pinnacle of combining jazz and rock. "I am John Francis Pastorius the third," he told Zawinul. "I am the greatest
- [HILARY GEDDES QUARTET](https://johnshand.com.au/hilary-geddes-quartet/) - Johnston St Jazz Live Stream, April 16 7.5/10 The sheer remoteness of the experience seems not just a consequence of the times, but a metaphor for them. You watch fuzzy little people on a screen, perched the prescribed distance apart – which is already weird for jazz. Yet you know it's live, so you let
- [Col Nolan & the Soul Syndicate](https://johnshand.com.au/col-nolan-the-soul-syndicate/) - WHATEVER IT'S WORTH (Pacific Theatre Encore) 8/10 Here's a one-album encapsulation of the explosive energy that charged Sydney's music scene in the late 1960s. The musicians' idiomatic mobility – flowing freely between rock, jazz, blues and R&B – infused their playing, fuelling a dynamism further ramped up by the thousands of US servicemen swamping Kings
- [The Bard: The good and the ugly](https://johnshand.com.au/the-bard-the-good-and-the-ugly/) - A king dies, another is crowned, a friend is executed, a battle won against monumental odds and the enemy's daughter married off. Game of Thrones? No, Shakespeare's Henry V. Just as compelling, it's also better written, and, if you get sucked into Shakespeare, you can binge-watch for hundreds of hours. One of the best is
- [DON BURROWS 1928-2020](https://johnshand.com.au/don-burrows-1928-2020/) - In 1993 Don Burrows was part of an Australian fly-fishing team competing in Cuba. The members were in their hotel bar when a local band began to play, and, Burrows – being Burrows – had a flute on him, and joined in. The amazed musicians asked through an interpreter how he knew the songs. Burrows
- [The Necks](https://johnshand.com.au/the-necks-7/) - THREE (Fish of Milk) 8.5/10 Close your eyes and it entangles you, like being snagged in forest creepers and briars; like peering deeply into Pollock's Blue Poles, and feeling a whisper of vertigo as its fathomless depth takes hold. Called Bloom, the piece is the first of three 20-minute, multi-layered improvisations making up the Necks'
- [Kevin Hunt Trio](https://johnshand.com.au/kevin-hunt-trio/) - HOTHOUSE LIVE 2018 (ABC) 7/10 You hear it when Kevin Hunt just plays an electronic piano, let alone the magnificent, enhanced-range (99 keys rather than 88) Stuart & Sons grand piano heard here. It is his ability to make his lines effervesce with all the joy that has gone into their articulation, and with no
- [EVERYBODY](https://johnshand.com.au/everybody/) - Kings Cross Theatre, March 12 6.5/10 It's probably unsurprising that we don’t do morality plays any more, given we don't really do morality – although US playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins would presumably argue that's just when we need a moral prod the most. Certainly the timing of this Cross Pollinate production of his Everybody could not
- [Various Artists](https://johnshand.com.au/various-artists-2/) - PARIS CAFE (Putumayo/Planet) 3.5 A bottle of French bubbles is dirt cheap compared with an airfare to Paris, so buy two, plus the best baguette and camembert you can find, and then play this. Voila! Paris! Despite spanning many decades and variants of Parisian music, this album never breaks its own spell. The great Charles
- [On being Hamlet](https://johnshand.com.au/on-being-hamlet/) - "To be, or not to be…" The most famous six words in drama are also probably the most anticipated by audiences. When Berlin's Schaubuhne theatre company brought Hamlet here 10 years ago, the production began with that speech, as if to say, "There. We've got that out of the way. Now we can get on
- [Jo Berger Myhre/Olafur Bjorn Olafsson](https://johnshand.com.au/jo-berger-myhre-olafur-bjorn-olafsson/) - LANZAROTE (Hubro) 8.5/10 If you only ever bought music on Norway's Hubro label you'd still possess an improbably broad collection. At the same time that Lanzarote was released, for instance, out popped a bizarre album from drummer Oyvind Skarbo's band, Skarbo Skulekorps (which races between surf music, the Caribbean, free improvisation and material akin to
- [CRUNCH TIME](https://johnshand.com.au/crunch-time/) - Ensemble Theatre, February 19 6.5/10 The Crunch Time of the title is the moment when assisted dying becomes urgent, and providing that ultimate act of kindness is put to the test. This sequence has begun with Steve asking his grown-up sons the painful question, "Was there ever a moment when I was a really good
- [JULIAN CURWIN](https://johnshand.com.au/julian-curwin/) - Johnston St Jazz, May 7 9/10 In a brief interview at this concert's conclusion, the bewilderingly versatile percussionist Jess Ciampa said that in the year prior to the lockdown he suspected he'd only had one day off. In the seven weeks since, by contrast, this was his first interaction with other musicians – an almost
- [No Pay? No Way!](https://johnshand.com.au/no-pay-no-way/) - Drama Theatre, February 14 7/10 Funny? There has to be a stronger word? Funny? If I wasn't sitting down, I'd have fallen over. I mean, at one point I was crying. Playwright Dario Fo is the master of the art of silliness, the veneer of his child-like humour thinly veiling the steel-capped boot with which
- [WAR HORSE](https://johnshand.com.au/war-horse/) - Sydney Lyric February 18 8/10 Our brains are hard-wired to do this stuff: to fill in the missing number, letter or word; to complete a sentence or extrapolate the meaning of a look. So when we see a life-size, artificial horse clearly being manipulated by three puppeteers, we'll expunge the human hands and legs from
- [THE NECKS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-necks-6/) - The Playhouse, February 16 9/10 Thirty-three years on, and the Necks continue to pursue the art of the slow-cooked anti-climax. As of this concert they have now played in all six internal Sydney Opera House venues: the Studio, Joan Sutherland Theatre, Concert Hall, Utzon Room, Drama Theatre and the Playhouse. Who else's music is sufficiently
- [Pat Metheny is the last American standing in his band](https://johnshand.com.au/pat-metheny-is-the-last-american-standing-in-his-band/) - Destructive streaming services are not going to stop him. Nor are people smearing their shoddy videos across YouTube like so much audio-visual graffiti. No, Pat Metheny remains committed to the album as a work of art. When the guitarist, who has popularised sonic adventuring like few others, returns to these shores in March, he will
- [Delay 45](https://johnshand.com.au/delay-45/) - BIG EARS (Static) 8/10 Beyond the music itself, much pleasure may be had hearing successive generations of local improvisers take the baton of possibility to destinations of their own. The four members of Sydney's Delay 45 have been mentored by some of the finest jazz musicians the country has produced. The upshot, however, is not
- [David Williamson is bringing down the curtain with a bang](https://johnshand.com.au/david-williamson-is-bringing-down-the-curtain-with-a-bang/) - No one can accuse David Williamson of going out quietly. Having called it a day on a half-century play-writing career comprising over 50 works, he currently has his two final plays, Family Values (Stables) and Crunch Time (Ensemble), playing simultaneously in Sydney with a revival of Emerald City in Brisbane (which then moves to Melbourne).
- [THE CATHOLICS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-catholics/) - Foundry 616, January 31 8/10 The lives of bands should be measured in dog years rather than human years, because it's so wretchedly hard to form one, write material, organise rehearsals, find a gig (let alone a decent one), work with any regularity and somehow record. To hold a septet like The catholics together for
- [KATIE NOONAN](https://johnshand.com.au/katie-noonan/) - Camelot Lounge, February 12 6.5/10 "I want you to realise you're hearing one of the best bass players in the known universe," Katie Noonan told us after singing Sign Your Name. She's right. Phil Stack is among our living cultural treasures, to rate with a Ben Quilty or Nicole Kidman. As the great Danny Thompson
- [WAKE IN FRIGHT](https://johnshand.com.au/wake-in-fright/) - Playhouse, February 11 9.5/10 Since the First Fleet spewed out its cargo of cons and screws, Australian men have often enjoyed playing brutes in a brutish land. That's the awful truth that lay behind Kenneth Cook's 1961 novel Wake in Fright. Those who would deny it could ponder the fact that other nationalities can drink
- [AMANDA PALMER: THERE WILL BE NO INTERMISSION](https://johnshand.com.au/amanda-palmer-there-will-be-no-intermission/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, February 8 8.5/10 In fact there was an intermission, slicing the four hours in half. Otherwise it was one woman's voice, piano and ukulele, leading us through the secret doors of her life: the ones behind which hide the memories most people try to forget. And this soul-baring, heart-baring, abortion-baring and life-baring
- [NICK GARBETT QUINTET](https://johnshand.com.au/nick-garbett-quintet/) - Old 505 Theatre, February 6 8/10 Finding it on a map demands heavy use of the zoom function. The remote Italian island of Lampedusa actually lurks about half way between Malta and Tunisia – so nowhere near Sicily, let alone the main boot. But that's where trumpeter/composer Nick Garbett recently resided for 16 months, and
- [Xylouris White](https://johnshand.com.au/xylouris-white-5/) - THE SISYPHEANS (ABC) 9/10 Like Sisyphus, drummer Jim White and multi-instrumentalist Georgios Xylouris are engaged on a journey without end. The rock they bear is the limitless investigation and expansion of a musical tradition rooted in Crete. With The Sisypheans they unravel that ancient tradition still further, the multi-tracking of Xylouris's lute, lyra and vocals
- [BUNGGUL](https://johnshand.com.au/bunggul/) - Concert Hall, January 25 9/10 You left Bunggul feeling both insignificant and elated, having been afforded a glimpse of a culture almost as old as time. We – that is, most Australians – have spent over 200 years ignoring that culture (when we haven't been trashing it). Perhaps more of us are less ignorant about
- [ARCHIE ROACH](https://johnshand.com.au/archie-roach/) - City Recital Hall, January 24 9/10 Some song-writers wrap themselves in cloaks, whether of enigma or inanity, and some bare their souls. Then there's Archie Roach. His recent autobiography and eponymous album, Tell Me Why, showed how inseparable are his life and his songs, and when he bares his soul it's never to wallow in
- [THE LIFE OF US](https://johnshand.com.au/the-life-of-us/) - Hayes Theatre, January 22 2.5/10 Why do people sing in musicals? Since the art-form began to achieve some sophistication with Show Boat (1927), the answer, beyond pure entertainment, has lain with plot and, primarily, character. When expressing inner thoughts, for instance, a character can sing lines that would sound lame if merely spoken, and the
- [The Bad Plus](https://johnshand.com.au/the-bad-plus-2/) - ACTIVATE INFINITY (Edition/Planet) 8/10 That the Bad Plus could continue without Evan Iverson came as a surprise. That the trio would still sound this much like Bad Plus with a different pianist is mind-boggling, especially as the brilliant Orrin Evans is very much his own man at the keyboard. It's testimony to bassist Reid Anderson
- [THE RECIDIVISTS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-recidivists/) - Old Fitz Theatre, January 21 7.5/10 Given that corruption is now a fully legitimate tool in the democratic process (if it wasn't always), perhaps we should look at legalising other previously reviled behavioural forms. What about such low acts as cutting other people's kite-strings, or obliging actors to eat broken glass at horror-movie auditions? Perhaps
- [TWELFTH NIGHT](https://johnshand.com.au/twelfth-night/) - Wentworth Falls School of Arts, January 18 8/10 "Nothing that is so is so," says Feste the fool, the only character in Twelfth Night who has a firm grip on his own heart, mind and identity. The rest are pretenders, double-dealers, liars, spongers, narcissists, sycophants, self-deceivers, maniacs, or all of the above. And what fun
- [Andrew Dickeson](https://johnshand.com.au/andrew-dickeson/) - GROOVE! (www.andrewdickeson.com) 7/10 They say some twins know what the other is thinking. Bassists and drummers have no choice. In fact humans probably do nothing outside the bedroom demanding as such sublimation of the self as in the cause of creating groove. It's an apt name for this album, which sees Sydney drummer Andrew Dickeson
- [BRAN NUE DAE](https://johnshand.com.au/bran-nue-dae/) - Riverside Theatre, January 17 6/10 Rather like that of an early Shakespeare comedy, the plot of Bran Nue Day spirals into ever greater silliness. To hold the audience, however, it needs to ride a mounting wave of joy – a joy that can't be faked. You should feel it as a contagion in the room,
- [BLACK DROP EFFECT](https://johnshand.com.au/black-drop-effect/) - Bankstown Arts Centre, January 15 7/10 You could be forgiven for thinking the stage has become a soapbox, rather than being a surprising, sacred and profane space, where actors convey stories about the sad, weird, cruel, funny, compassionate, sexy, visionary and gripping ways in which humans interact. If a play's impetus was not to illuminate
- [LADY TABOULI](https://johnshand.com.au/lady-tabouli/) - Lennox Theatre, January 14 6.5/10 Danny's revelation to his Lebanese-Australian family that he's gay is met with fury and contempt – not just because it's supposedly a "phase" or a "disease", but because he dared to raise this just before his eight-month-old nephew's christening. From this, the half-way mark in James Elazzi's 90-minute play, the
- [BLACK COCKATOO](https://johnshand.com.au/black-cockatoo/) - Ensemble Theatre, January 9 6/10 "I like the idea of a room full of white people, all looking at me, all listening to what I say," says Johnny Mullagh. "I would say, 'Listen to my story. Listen to my people. And listen to your hearts.'" The real Mullagh may have thought no such thing, but
- [Chase Baird](https://johnshand.com.au/chase-baird/) - A LIFE BETWEEN (Soundsabound) 8/10 Perhaps it was inevitable that Chase Baird would be a jazz saxophonist, with his first name referencing a Coltrane tune (among others) and his second containing "bird". But making this second album was not easy, with a little serendipity required before his pieces could be played by titans like pianist
- [EXTINCTION REBELLION TRIO](https://johnshand.com.au/extinction-rebellion-trio/) - Venue 505, December 14 8.5/10 They began with As the Flow Cries from Barney McAll's new An Extra Celestial Christmas album, and ended with Nectar Spur from the pianist's 2015 Mooroolbark opus. The final note marked the end of the last Saturday night at Venue 505, which closes its doors this week, to rise phoenix-like
- [2019 Year in Review: Theatre](https://johnshand.com.au/2019-year-in-review-theatre/) - The haze of sad and sorry shows could not extinguish 2019's brightest lights, including watching Jonathan Biggins become the missing link between Paul Keating and Krapp. Decades of The Wharf Revue had demonstrated Biggins' intelligent versatility, but in his own The Gospel According to Paul and Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape he had to dig much
- [JOAN DIDION'S THE WHITE ALBUM](https://johnshand.com.au/joan-didions-the-white-album/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, January 8 7.5/10 When director Lars Jan of US theatre company Early Morning Opera opted to thrust the three dozen pages of Joan Didion's The White Album on to a stage, the famed piece of prose could have been as uncomfortable a participant as an unwilling audience member. The success or failure
- [2019 Year in Review: Jazz, World & Cabaret](https://johnshand.com.au/2019-year-in-review-jazz-world-cabaret/) - Sometimes you'd think Bill Frisell was a singer rather than a guitarist. You have to reach back across the decades to a Miles Davis or a Ben Webster to find comparable mastery of the art of making a lyric come to life without a word being sung. Instead those words resonated and echoed in the
- [Monster digs doctor out of hole](https://johnshand.com.au/monster-digs-doctor-out-of-hole/) - The full blast of a Katoomba winter westerly was rattling the windows. Dr Funkenstein tried to smile, and heard a disturbing cracking sound. Was it his teeth, or the long-unused muscles in his cheeks? He brooded before the fire; gulped his red wine without tasting it. Then his lady-love spun a Chuck Brown record, and
- [ROMEO AND JULIET](https://johnshand.com.au/romeo-and-juliet-2/) - Bella Vista Farm, December 22 7.5/10 All the comedic pieces are in place, from skipping lightness to ribaldry, and there's enchantment here galore: a keen sense of the play as a game, thanks to using teenaged actors to play teens. In fact Damien Ryan's Sport for Jove production better serves the comedy than the tragedy
- [Chick Corea Trio](https://johnshand.com.au/chick-corea-trio/) - TRILOGY 2 (Concord/Planet) 9.5/10 Just 10 seconds of music tells you so much about this trio. They come after Chick Corea's solo piano introduction to How Deep Is the Ocean, whereupon, rather than making a bold entrance, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade merely insinuate themselves. This fluidity defines a band so startling in
- [Michael Gordon](https://johnshand.com.au/michael-gordon/) - A FRUITFUL HARVEST (michaelgordon.bandcamp.com) 6/10 What do one of the greatest philosophers of the last 200 years and the most incendiary musician Australia has ever produced have in common? They are both inspirations for Michael Gordon's debut album as leader. In the liner-notes the Sydney saxophonist/composer provides quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche as background to each
- [Alvin Curran & Jon Rose](https://johnshand.com.au/alvin-curran-jon-rose/) - CAFE GRAND ABYSS (ReR Megacorp) 9/10 Of all the many wonders of free improvisation, perhaps the most extraordinary is the way the music places itself beyond the confines of time. This happens both in the moment of creation, and, if recorded, on playback. Transient time, as we know it, ceases to exist, to be replaced
- [TOM BURLINSON](https://johnshand.com.au/tom-burlinson/) - City Recital Hall, December 13 7/10 As ingenious as the lyrics of Cole Porter, Ira Gershiwn, Lorenz Hart and others might be, the secret to a song becoming a standard lies not in the words. It's the countless jazz instrumental renditions that ultimately raise a song to "standard" status. But that doesn't mean the words
- [HAYDEN TEE](https://johnshand.com.au/hayden-tee/) - Eternity Playhouse, December 8 7/10 "Where," Hayden Tee wondered aloud in the course of his cabaret show, "do the characters end, and you begin?" For many actors this might not be such an issue, but when one hits the stage performing as oneself after bouncing from role to role in musical theatre, it's a question
- [Holopeak](https://johnshand.com.au/holopeak/) - SUMMIT OVER (Earshift) 7/10 There's nothing like new sounds to keep the ears young. Yes, you hear a wild spray of reference points in the music made by Sydney trio Holopeak on this debut album, but the totality of what they're doing is unique. Having met when studying jazz at Sydney Conservatorium, guitarist Nick Mielczarek,
- [Jazzmeia Horn](https://johnshand.com.au/jazzmeia-horn/) - LOVE AND LIBERATION (Concord/Planet) 8.5/10 A month ago Veronica Swift's incandescent singing lit up the Sydney International Women's Jazz Festival, yet her recent album, Confessions, provided no preparation for this in-person agility, power, beauty, commitment and excitement, it being overproduced and her singing relatively constrained. What has this to do with Jazzmeia Horn? In 2015
- [OF DEITIES AND DEMONS](https://johnshand.com.au/of-deities-and-demons/) - Annandale Creative Arts Centre, December 7 7/10 Rituals offer connectivity not only to those who participate, but to those who observe. Their familiarity is reassuring, and the shared experience a bond. Of course they are practised within broader cultural traditions, and these only survive because, while they might be rooted in iron-rod conservatism, they have
- [THE SPLIT](https://johnshand.com.au/the-split/) - Old 505 Theatre, December 5 4.5/10 At her best playwright Sarah Hamilton suspends time and place, so the two characters float in her play just as the little boat they occupy does in the water. Aided by Kobe Donaldson's projections of sea and sky and the subliminal shimmer of Max Garcia-Underwood and Mario Spate's score,
- [Dave Holland/Zakir Hussain/Chris Potter](https://johnshand.com.au/dave-holland-zakir-hussain-chris-potter/) - GOOD HOPE (Edition/Planet) 9/10 Zakir Hussain has done it again. The tabla master – among the great living musicians – has form in helping make unlikely jazz trios work brilliantly, including 2006's Sangam with saxophonist Charles Lloyd and drummer Eric Harland. Here his fingerprints are all over an enthralling dialogue he shares with bassist Dave
- [KRAPP'S LAST TAPE](https://johnshand.com.au/krapps-last-tape/) - Old Fitz Theatre, November 30 9/10 When Jonathan Biggins' decrepit Krapp grieves for a lost love at the play's end, it tears at your chest like claws. For this monumental sadness to work, the character must be firmly established as too filled of self-loathing to wallow in self-pity, the miracle being that, at 69, Krapp
- [MARTIN BARRE BAND](https://johnshand.com.au/martin-barre-band/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, November 22 8/10 What a sound. Just as a child draws a generic house with a door, two windows and a chimney, this is the generic sound conjured by the words Electric Guitar: raw, visceral and neon-bright. When a Martin Barre solo erupts from a song, it's as though a purple Lamborghini's
- [Various Artists](https://johnshand.com.au/various-artists/) - WE LIKE IKE (Triangle 7/Planet) 7/10 The late Ike Isaacs' supple interweaving of beautifully-voiced chords and melodic lines laden with a pensive longing made him beloved by such guitar giants as Jim Hall and George Benson. Because the Rangoon-born Isaacs, who became preeminent in British jazz before moving to Australia, would have turned 100 on
- [The Crooked Fiddle Band](https://johnshand.com.au/the-crooked-fiddle-band/) - ANOTHER SUBTLE ATOM BOMB (Bird's Robe) 7/10 It could count as assault and battery were it happening to any other part of the body than the eardrums. Then, just when you're considering laying charges, they lull you into forgiveness with a swooning melody such as could only be conceived by the most angelic of pacifists.
- [PACKER & SONS](https://johnshand.com.au/packer-sons/) - Belvoir, November 20 6/10 Even cute-billed, fluffy ducks do it, so it's hardly surprising our own more belligerent species suffers bickering rivalries between fathers and sons. Fathers are loath to leave the mating/hunting field to their sons, and the sons, torn between craving approval and wanting to prove themselves better than their sires, become variously
- [Jonathon Crompton](https://johnshand.com.au/jonathon-crompton/) - INTUIT (New Lab) 8/10 Like a kid in a candy store, a modern improvising musician is spoilt for choice. The infinite ways of melding composition and improvisation are compounded by infinite possible inputs from the gamut of jazz, classical and the deep pools of music in assorted cultures around the world. Australian alto saxophonist/composer Jonathon
- [SCHOOL OF ROCK](https://johnshand.com.au/school-of-rock/) - Capitol Theatre, November 15 6/10 How good might School of Rock have been had Andrew Lloyd Webber not bought the stage rights to the film? The 2003 movie had a cute enough premise, but converting it to a musical required someone who could hammer out more convincing songs than the flaky slate that Lloyd Webber
- [LAKECIA BENJAMIN](https://johnshand.com.au/lakecia-benjamin/) - Foundry 616, November 13 8/10 If this sometimes this felt like an uphill struggle, it was more than justified when they reached the peak. That was when Lakecia Benjamin realised that this band of strangers from a strange land called Australia could actually go with her wherever she wanted to go, both in terms of
- [Anat Cohen Tentet](https://johnshand.com.au/anat-cohen-tentet/) - TRIPLE HELIX (Anzic/Birdland) 8/10 This one tears up the rule-book. Forget all preconceptions of what a large jazz band sounds like, and listen to the sonic vistas that New York's Anat Cohen Tentet opens up, including on the title track, a 22-minute Concerto for Clarinet and Ensemble. Composed by musical director Oded Levi-Ari, this places
- [Martin Barre: trying to out-Tull Jethro Tull](https://johnshand.com.au/martin-barre-trying-to-out-tull-jethro-tull/) - One phone-call was all it took for Jethro Tull guitarist Martin Barre to have the thick-as-a-brick-pile rug pulled out from underneath him. That was in 2012 when Ian Anderson, the band's singer, songwriter and flautist, rang and told Barre he was breaking up one of the world's most famous rock groups. No consultation – after
- [EISHAN ENSEMBLE](https://johnshand.com.au/eishan-ensemble-2/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, November 8 8.5/10 Notes can be mere building-blocks in the prosaic craft of making music, or they can sound so organic as to seem to have been sweated into existence by the very air that carries them. Hamed Sadeghi shapes his notes on the tar so they carry that sort of inevitability.
- [Martin Hayes & Brooklyn Rider](https://johnshand.com.au/martin-hayes-brooklyn-rider/) - THE BUTTERFLY (In a Circle) 9.5/10 The greatest musicians and singers in any idiom share three qualities: beauty of sound, compelling phrasing and emotional truth. That the Irish fiddler Martin Hayes is so blessed has been quietly evident for decades, whether in his duo with guitarist Dennis Cahill or in the otherworldly quintet that is
- [VERONICA SWIFT](https://johnshand.com.au/veronica-swift/) - Foundry 616, November 6 8.5/10 Remember when music exploded with the shock of the new? It was miraculous that sound could be so thrilling, moving, mind-expanding and even life-defining. But, inevitably, the older you grew and the more you heard, the harder it was to replicate that feeling – at least until Veronica Swift stepped
- [COSI](https://johnshand.com.au/cosi/) - Drama Theatre, November 5 6.5/10 It's why corporate-speak extols the term "team". We humans find collaboration exhilarating when it works, and mounting a show together is among the biggest highs of all. The ultimate magic of Louis Nowra's 1992 play is its ability to communicate this joy, and then compound this (without overly sweetening it)
- [Lakecia Benjamin: justifying the oxygen she breathes](https://johnshand.com.au/kakecia-benjamin-justifying-the-oxygen-she-breathes/) - The last time Lakecia Benjamin was in Sydney her alto saxophone was part of the sound surrounding comedian Craig Robinson. This time she'll play jazz in an intimate club. That's a perfect snapshot of a career that could be seen as swinging between rubbing shoulders with mega-stardom and digging deep into her art – except
- [THE UNDERPANTS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-underpants/) - Reginald Theatre, November 2 6/10 Sixteen years after The Underpants of Steve Martin dropped at Belvoir St (soon after premiering in New York), it seems a curious play to revive. It's a free adaptation of Carl Sternheim's rather racy – for 1910 – farce, Die Hose, and you can almost see Martin's rubbery face and
- [Joseph Tawadros](https://johnshand.com.au/joseph-tawadros-4/) - BETRAYAL OF THE SACRED SUNFLOWER (JT/Planet) 9.5/10 If moonlight made a sound, this might be it. But it would be the sound of a shy moon: one who opts to cloak herself in clouds, rather than wander baldly naked through the skies; whose muted light is dappled by still trees; a moon to whom we
- [KIM SANDERS' MUSIC LAUNCH](https://johnshand.com.au/kim-sanders-music-launch/) - Camelot Lounge, October 27 9/10 This is how cultural treasures survive: because people care enough to ensure they do. A book of compositions by the late Australian music pioneer Kim Sanders was exactly the sort of project the Australia Council should be supporting, rather than propping up bureaucracy-obese companies with low artistic yields. The launch
- [WHITE PEARL](https://johnshand.com.au/white-pearl/) - Lennox Theatre, October 26 8.5/10 You know that feeling when you're standing on a cliff, and are drawn inexorably a little closer to the edge, and then a little more, and then… This play is like that. It's all edge, no safety-net. Daring and a touch dangerous, its sense of breakneck velocity and unpredictability are
- [Phil Slater](https://johnshand.com.au/phil-slater/) - THE DARK PATTERN (Earshift) 9/10 Virtually all art is built on conventions. Only the brave or foolish strip them away, because of the danger only a vacuum will remain. On this deeply mysterious double-album Phil Slater applies some of the language of jazz, while often inverting accepted customs of groove, harmony and melodic narrative. The
- [MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING](https://johnshand.com.au/much-ado-about-nothing/) - Playhouse, October 24 4.5/10 Here was a curiosity: a show disarmingly similar to William Shakespeare's play of the same name. The words were identical, and arrived in more or less the same order. Moreover it, too, was a comedy, generating several smiles and one really good laugh, and so it was intermittently entertaining enough. But
- [BABY DOLL](https://johnshand.com.au/baby-doll/) - Ensemble Theatre, October 23 7.5/10 Sometimes just as you think you've failed to light a fire, it suddenly flares up. This production is like that. It flickers and hisses and fizzes for a while, and then the key kindling, desire and arousal, catch alight, and the play begins to burn. As gas and wood have
- [Bushman's Revenge](https://johnshand.com.au/bushmans-revenge/) - ET HAN MOT OVERKLASSEN (Hubro) 8/10 They suck you in, first – not exactly with sunny daffodils, but certainly they hold off gashing you with sonic thorns. Initially the soundscapes are dark, brooding and slightly dangerous, like spotting labyrinthine climbing roses in the dark, just before you were about to become entangled in them. But
- [TAIKOZ – SEVEN FLOWERS](https://johnshand.com.au/taikoz-seven-flowers/) - City Recital Hall, October 18 6/10 The idea was enticing. Take the 15th-century Japanese writer Zeami Motokiyo's concept of the seven ages of the artist, and depict them in music while incorporating taiko-style drumming. Three of Zeami's "seven flowers", as he calls these ages, are clustered in childhood, three between 24 and 49, and the
- [DANIEL WELTLINGER](https://johnshand.com.au/daniel-weltlinger-3/) - Wentworth Falls School of Arts, October 12 7.5/10 If you can make sound tell a story it becomes music, and were Daniel Weltlinger not a musician, he would still be a story-teller. You hear it in the way he devised his recent Szolnok album, named for the Hungarian town where his violin was made in
- [Abdullah Ibrahim](https://johnshand.com.au/abdullah-ibrahim/) - THE BALANCE (Gearbox/Planet) 8/10 The journey continues. It began in South Africa, where Abdullah Ibrahim (then Dollar Brand) participated in the country's first jazz album by black musicians. But the tyranny of apartheid drove him away, ultimately to the US, where Duke Ellington championed the pianist. In the 1970s he made one of the greatest
- [Behind the only kiss in Baby Doll](https://johnshand.com.au/behind-the-only-kiss-in-baby-doll/) - The billboard for the 1956 movie Baby Doll was the world's biggest sign, covering an improbable 15,000 square metres high above Broadway in New York. It showed a thumbing-sucking Carroll Baker in the titular role, with limbs 24 metres long and three-metre eyebrows above her sultry stare. The film needed this scale of commercial push
- [HAIR](https://johnshand.com.au/hair/) - Concert Hall, October 3 7/10 When Hair first hit Kings Cross in June, 1969, it gave the mainstream a glimpse behind the curtains of a counter-culture already nascent in Sydney. For the hippies, themselves, it was only a minor affirmation, although more immediate and real than Woodstock, half a world away. What the mainstream glimpsed,
- [Aaron Whitby](https://johnshand.com.au/aaron-whitby/) - COUSIN FROM ANOTHER PLANET (Ropeadope) 7/10 Music, like story-telling, is partly the art of balancing the predictable and the unpredictable. You lead someone down the garden path, only to find a chasm, a mountain, a pot of gold, an axe-murderer or a lover. No one who masters funk is troubled by being predictable: that's what
- [Brandee Younger](https://johnshand.com.au/brandee-younger/) - SOUL AWAKENING (www.brandeeyounger.com) 8/10 You have to be equally committed and imaginative to even think about doing it. The harp first appeared in jazz in 1934 and, 85 years on, a complete collection of all jazz harp records will hardly clutter your shelves or hard-drive, it being a challenge to make the instrument work harmonically,
- [HAYES AT THE HAYES](https://johnshand.com.au/hayes-at-the-hayes/) - Hayes Theatre, October 2 8/10 For some they come true. When Nancye Hayes was in her teens she used to sing and dance along to records of Broadway shows; to dream of playing starring roles. Now here she was, 58 years after her professional debut (My Fair Lady) and 52 years after her first starring
- [JOHN](https://johnshand.com.au/john/) - Reginald Theatre, September 21 7.5/10 Only one of this play's four men appears on stage. Two of the others, both called John, haunt the minds of Jenny, Elias and Genevieve. Mertis, alone, has a John-free psyche, and hers is partly occupied by George, a husband too sick to make an entrance. So thick are the
- [UNIVERSAL RHYTHMS](https://johnshand.com.au/universal-rhythms/) - Ashfield Town Hall, September 15 9/10 Here was one to lodge in the memory. Here were sounds, idioms, moods and torrential energies never before combined, and together they made an unfamiliar emotion well up inside you, I believe called joyousness. This was what the Sydney Sacred Music Festival has been building towards for nine years,
- [Bill Evans](https://johnshand.com.au/bill-evans/) - EVANS IN ENGLAND (Resonance/Birdland) 8/10 Before the tour on which this previously unreleased double album was recorded at Ronnie Scott's in London, Bill Evans' mother caught the pianist's trio in Washington DC. Coming backstage, she said she couldn't hear her son because Marty Morrell's drums were too loud. Following no less than Paul Motian and
- [The Real Thing](https://johnshand.com.au/the-real-thing/) - Drama Theatre, September 13 6.5/10 "What's so good about putting words together?" asks Henry, a playwright. Tom Stoppard, a real playwright, incorporates reviewing his own writing into what he facetiously – or not – calls The Real Thing. In fact, one could almost review this play entirely using Stoppard's words – or possibly a review
- [JADE MACRAE](https://johnshand.com.au/jade-macrae/) - Giant Dwarf, September 11 8/10 Gladys could have saved us all a fortune by having Jade MacRae demolish the Sydney Football Stadium. One note should have done the job, such is the singer's staggering power. Were anything left tottering, Carl Dewhurst could have napalmed it with a guitar solo. MacRae, you see, doesn't do things
- [AN INTIMATE EVENING WITH PAUL CAPSIS](https://johnshand.com.au/an-intimate-evening-with-paul-capsis/) - Ensemble Theatre, September 9 9/10 The ghosts from his past turned out for this one. Marlene was there, as was Billie, hyperactive Judy (of course), Nina, Aretha and Janis. But the point was that now they were just ghosts. Where once Paul Capsis built his reputation on doing wickedly accurate impressions of these great divas,
- [FREEDMAN JAZZ](https://johnshand.com.au/freedman-jazz-3/) - The Studio, September 8 8/10 The standard of musical excellence in Australia is only going north. This was the strongest of 17 editions of Freedman Jazz, the annual concert partly determining the winner of the $20,000 Freedman Jazz Fellowship. Standing out was not just the musicianship, but the artistry: the ideas and creativity in play.
- [Matt McMahon & Carl Dewhurst](https://johnshand.com.au/matt-mcmahon-carl-dewhurst/) - TRAPEZE FOR TWO ATOMS (www.carldewhurst.com.au) 4 stars You hear the hours and years of communing across so many varied projects, before finally coming together as a duo. Given the vast array of idioms at their mutual disposal, the common ground upon which they settle might surprise. Matt McMahon (piano) and Carl Dewhurst (acoustic and electric
- [THE LAST WIFE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-last-wife/) - Ensemble Theatre, September 4 6/10 Most plays with historical settings are now relocated to the present, by way of offering obeisance to the false god of relevance. Canadian playwright Kate Hennig didn't wait for a director to do the inevitable, but took matters into her own hands. Her drama, centred on Katherine Parr, and with
- [AVALANCHE: A LOVE STORY](https://johnshand.com.au/avalanche-a-love-story/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, August 31 7/10 Unlike with a Sydney apartment building, you can see that this play has been well-built. You can sense it has been measured and fitted and slotted together until the joins are almost invisible. Almost. Julia Leigh's play about the trade in hope that, for a woman of a certain
- [TITUS ANDRONICUS](https://johnshand.com.au/titus-andronicus/) - Playhouse, August 30 If you're desperate to hold any Shakespeare up to a dreamlike distorting mirror, Titus Andronicus is the one. It's already a carnival of grotesques; of blood, murder and mutilation on a heroic scale. Thirteen die during the show and another is condemned, and director Adena Jacobs (for Bell Shakespeare) rounds that up
- [Oblivion Tango Duo](https://johnshand.com.au/oblivion-tango-duo/) - NOCTURNE (facebook.com/Oblivion-Tango-Duo) 8/10 Do dynamics shape any other musical idiom to the extent that they do tango? It's this ability to swell a melodic line to just the right crescendo, then drop it back to precisely the right softness, that lends tango its almost exaggerated sense of drama. But if these dynamic shifts are too
- [Maxine Peake: one woman against the world](https://johnshand.com.au/maxine-peake-one-woman-against-the-world/) - Maxine Peake now knows just how much of a stretch performing a play by yourself is. Not only are there vast slabs of text to learn without the handy cues of others' lines, but one also misses out on an ensemble's tribal camaraderie. Peake, the British star of such hit TV shows as Silk, and
- [CAROLINE, OR CHANGE](https://johnshand.com.au/caroline-or-change/) - Hayes Theatre, August 28 8.5/10 Remember your first time at the theatre? How miraculous it was to find another world within the one you knew? Caroline, or Change is as different from any musical you've ever seen on that scale of wonderment. Just for starters, what other musical has Washing Machine, Dryer, Radio and Moon
- [Chicago](https://johnshand.com.au/chicago/) - Capitol Theatre, August 27 8.5/10 The best writers are clairvoyants. They pen a play, novel or even a musical that might have a contemporaneous or historical setting, yet it predicts the future by speaking to subsequent generations so precisely of their own time. Fred Ebb's brilliant book and lyrics to Chicago (the book co-authored by
- [Andrea Keller](https://johnshand.com.au/andrea-keller/) - TRANSIENTS VOLUME 1 (AK) 9/10 You can hear pianist Andrea Keller scraping the irrelevances from her art like unwanted skin. Always a fine composer, she has honed and polished these pieces with a crystal clarity about each sound-world and the direction the improvising should take. Musings is a robust framework for waves of rhythmic energy
- [WEST SIDE STORY](https://johnshand.com.au/west-side-story/) - Joan Sutherland Theatre, August 20 7/10 Art that causes a stir at birth tends to retain some vestige of that initial shock of the new. When West Side Story, which kills off three of its leads, depicts a rape and includes extra-marital sex, hit Broadway 62 years ago, a steamy musical was one that climaxed
- [BUNGARRIBEE](https://johnshand.com.au/bungarribee-2/) - The Boiler House, August 17 9/10 It's a rare sensation these days, but there is still such exhilaration in being taken to the edge of the possible. Many sections of this concert made you felt you'd had a craniotomy, and the top of your skull had rocketed skyward. Led by Gary Daley (piano, accordion), with
- [Robyn Archer](https://johnshand.com.au/robyn-archer-2/) - CLASSIC CABARET RARITIES (Rouseabout) 7.5/10 Had his music not done the job, Astride Bruant's immortality was assured by Toulouse-Lautrec's posters famously depicting the singer-songwriter in black hat and scarlet scarf. A third of this album focuses on Paris circa 1880-1900, featuring Bruant's scowling view of a corrupted world. Robyn Archer's English translations reveal chilling parallels
- [Astrolabe – Suite for La Perouse](https://johnshand.com.au/astrolabe-suite-for-la-perouse/) - Lennox Theatre, August 10 7.5/10 The rolling undulations of the waves were so palpable that those with imaginations livelier than their stomachs are robust could well have felt quite queasy. This was one of many passages of startlingly effective programmatic music in Chris Cody's 70-minute Astrolabe – Suite for La Perouse, a music-and-text retelling of
- [Sun Ra and his Arkestra](https://johnshand.com.au/sun-ra-and-his-arkestra/) - IN THE ORBIT OF RA (Strut/Planet) 8/10 The Sun Ra canon is an intergalactic gold mine that keeps on giving. Some live recordings and B-sides are for completists only, but this double-album (which first appeared in 2014) is a must. Setting it apart from the plethora of compilations is the fact it was curated by
- [Vivian Sessoms](https://johnshand.com.au/vivian-sessoms/) - LIFE II (Baby Buddha) 7.5/10 She's spent her career enhancing the music of Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder, Cher, Chaka Khan, Pink and others. But, as with Lisa Fischer, when Vivian Sessoms leads her own project, her towering voice and sensitive musicality shunts many bigger names into the shade. Nor is she over-eager to
- [WINK](https://johnshand.com.au/wink/) - Kings Cross Theatre, August 8 7/10 There's this dead cat, you see. Well, not only dead, but skinned – and yet it still knows how to have a good time. We humans are certainly amateurs compared with cats when it comes to pleasure, and Jen Silverman's play is about an emotionally rainy month in the
- [LIFE OF GALILEO](https://johnshand.com.au/life-of-galileo/) - Belvoir St, August 7 6/10 Ignorance is an avalanche; science a snow-plough trying to bulldoze through it to a less ignorant future. So it was in Galileo's time (1564-1642), and so it is today. Some of the fruits of Galileo's genius were temporarily stymied by Catholicism, which feared the rug being pulled from under it
- [GREGG ARTHUR/QUARTET QUARTET](https://johnshand.com.au/gregg-arthur-quartet-quartet/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, August 3 7/10 At his best Gregg Arthur is to jazz singing what a luxury resort is to a bedsit. Everything just happens rather than having to be wrangled into existence, with his voice sounding as if the component parts have been oiled. Conveying effortlessness is a strong suit to have, when
- [Anat Fort Trio](https://johnshand.com.au/anat-fort-trio/) - COLOUR (Sunnyside) 9/10 Some music shouts to gain attention, some whispers in your ear. Listening to Anat Fort's 20-year-old trio is like being privy to an erudite conversation between intimates. Nothing extraneous is said: every note is pertinent to the subject at hand, those subjects being nine of Fort's compositions, improvised upon by her (piano),
- [HUGH JACKMAN](https://johnshand.com.au/hugh-jackman/) - Qudos Bank Arena, August 2 7/10 Had he been born half a century earlier you can imagine Hugh Jackman slapping backs and swapping highballs with the Rat Pack. Even if he wasn't quite wicked enough for those boys, his skillset would have been right: an actor, singer and dancer blessed with an easy-in-his-own-skin charm that
- [PHIL SLATER QUINTET](https://johnshand.com.au/phil-slater-quintet/) - Sound Lounge, July 27 9/10 It doesn't hit full-frontally, but rather slides into your consciousness like a chimera just caught in the corner of your eye. Then it gradually insinuates itself, until the absorption is complete and time seems to stop. Phil Slater has achieved a rare profundity by ruthlessly paring back the component parts
- [Daniel Weltlinger Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/daniel-weltlinger-quartet/) - SZOLNOK (DMG) 9/10 This is the one he's been working towards. This is the one where the violin sound flows from the speakers like thickened cream; where the programmatic ideas and the purely musical ones are in complete accord. Daniel Weltlinger's profound fascination with the love, peregrinations, tribulations and grief of his family is
- [Mary Rapp](https://johnshand.com.au/mary-rapp/) - BY ONE OF THE NIGHT (www.maryrapp.com) 7.5/10 You can stomp, jackbooted, into the dark places in your psyche, or you can do what Mary Rapp does, and flit between the shadows; observe the abyss without plunging in. Rapp, a jazz and free-improvising bassist/cellist and a composer for theatre, here brings forth her inner singer-songwriter, albeit
- [A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE](https://johnshand.com.au/a-view-from-the-bridge/) - Ensemble Theatre, July 24 9/10 Acting is ultimately a physical art, and Zoe Terakes expresses teenaged Catherine's fretfulness by twisting her limbs around her body like a vine choking a tree, or by anxiety and confusion racing across her face like black clouds chasing grey across a stormy sky. This startling performance shifts the play's
- [Phil Slater : Finding a new Place in the Music](https://johnshand.com.au/phil-slater-finding-a-new-place-in-the-music/) - A trumpet is not what the mountain-bike riders expected to hear on the steeps slopes of Mr Keira in the Illawarra. A siren was more likely, given their activity is illegal. But they swiftly accepted the foreign sound. After all, the guy making it was just finding another way to harness and enjoy the landscape's
- [THE TORRENTS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-torrents/) - Drama Theatre, July 20 6/10 It takes 14 pages for her to appear, and another five before she has much to say, but JG Milford certainly shakes up the 1890s town of Koolgalla. Just her gender kicks off that process, because Rufus Torrent, editor of the Koolgalla Argus, assumed JG was a man when he
- [Elsen Price](https://johnshand.com.au/elsen-price/) - DESCENT OF THE FREE (ABC) 8/10 His name may be unfamiliar, but his playing is unforgettable. Elsen Price is one of Australian music's treasures: a double bassist who ranges across classical, avant-garde, jazz, Middle Eastern, free improvisation and more, and is utterly convincing in every context. He also uses real-time looping and extended techniques to
- [THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN](https://johnshand.com.au/the-cripple-of-inishmaan/) - Old Fitz Theatre, July 13 8/10 Had the good Lord not seen fit to invent Ireland, the post-Shakespeare English-speaking stage would look a nudge threadbare without Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, Yeats, Synge, O'Casey, Beckett, Behan and the rest. Despite being London born and bred, Martin McDonagh can just about squeeze into this panoply, thanks to
- [Pierce Wilcox Sells Oscar & Lucinda for a Song](https://johnshand.com.au/pierce-wilcox-sells-oscar-lucinda-for-a-song/) - It's rather like an episode of Mission Impossible: take a 500-page book and condense it into an 80-page opera libretto, leaving ample space for the music to weave its spells. This was the assignment Pierce Wilcox undertook in penning the words for Elliott Gyger's opera of Oscar & Lucinda. Amid myriad editing, narrative and aesthetic
- [Oyvind Torvund](https://johnshand.com.au/oyvind-torvund/) - THE EXOTICA ALBUM (Hubro) 7.5/10 The trick with travelling is to make the journey the adventure, rather than it being the tedium before the destination. This album is one such adventure. In fact there is no destination: just a sonic journey through improbable soundscapes, so it's like continuously rounding bends on a river, where whole
- [ALISON JIEAR](https://johnshand.com.au/alison-jiear/) - Everest Theatre, July 12 7/10 As a little girl Ella Fitzgerald longed to be a dancer. When (while yet in her teens) she instead became a singer, her ascent to greatness was hastened because she still danced, except that now it with her voice. More than any other jazz singer, Ella made a melody lighter
- [JENNIFER HOLLIDAY](https://johnshand.com.au/jennifer-holliday/) - Sydney Town Hall, July 6 9/10 I could hear that last, diaphanous note still hanging as we left her debut Australian concert; as we walked to the car. The song was The Way We Were, a spontaneous encore sung without the band, just against musical director Brian Nash's piano and Michael Tyack's synthetised strings, and
- [McConnachie/Dewhurst/Barker](https://johnshand.com.au/mcconnachie-dewhurst-barker/) - ROCK DOG (Earshift) 8.5/10 It comes in waves: troughs of slight respite walled in by rearing crests from which white fragments spray at dangerous velocities. Sometimes Scott McConnachie (alto and sopranino saxophones), Carl Dewhust (guitar) and Simon Barker (drums) invoke all the furies of hell, and the density and intensity of the collective improvising is
- [THE SYDNEY CABARET ALL-STAR-GALA](https://johnshand.com.au/the-sydney-cabaret-all-star-gala/) - City Recital Hall, July 5 6/10 Sydney finally has a cabaret festival to call its own, rather than just scoffing titbits flicked from Adelaide's groaning table. But "all-star gala"? I don't think so. This opening night was more like the sky outside: the odd dazzling star, some paler ones, and some that should have hid
- [Once](https://johnshand.com.au/once/) - Eternity Playhouse, July 3 7/10 It's apt that "upon a time" is missing from the title, because Once is a timeless fairy-tale of some dreams coming true, and others withering. John Carney's 2007 film ruthlessly stripped away any sentimentality, thereby making achingly real the tale of love thwarted and musical ambitions fulfilled. It was also
- [Lachy Hamilton](https://johnshand.com.au/lachy-hamilton/) - ALCHEMY (www.lachyhamilton.com) 7/10 John Sangster did it with Tolkien, Jeremy Rose with The Fatal Shore, and Ellen Kirkwood, Barney McAll and the Allan Browne Quintet have done it with multiple sources. So in using Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist as a fertile launch-pad for his first album, saxophonist Lachy Hamilton joins a rich tradition of programmatic
- [THE HAPPY PRINCE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-happy-prince/) - SBW Stables Theatre, June 27 6.5/10 Ah, to be enchanted once again, just for an hour. Regrettably, an obsession with the literal – with drab reality – often denies our stages their chance to be that source of wonderment. Actors shout and furiously emote, but the plays themselves bleed only dried and blackened blood. This
- [GIRL IN THE MACHINE](https://johnshand.com.au/girl-in-the-machine/) - Lennox Theatre, June 25 4/10 Where's my hammer? Glass walls between actors and audience have plagued Sydney stages since Benedict Andrew's malformed Belvoir production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? 12 years ago. If alienating audiences is the point of theatre, then, yes, glass walls are the ultimate coup, but if engaging them seems a
- [MUSIC OF THE OUD](https://johnshand.com.au/music-of-the-oud/) - Concert Hall, June 22 8.5/10 Joseph Tawadros gave an equally jokey and insightful musicological lesson when he and his percussionist brother, James, rejoined the Sydney Symphony Orchestra following the first movement of Mozart's Symphony in G minor (K183). After his oud and James's req (small tambourine) duetted on a brief excerpt, Tawadros observed that, with
- [TIM ROLLINSON](https://johnshand.com.au/tim-rollinson/) - OLD NEW BLUES (www.timrollinson.com) 3.5 stars There's a frightful phenomenon that inhabits elevators and airports called smooth jazz, the perpetrators of which should have turned their hands to hanging wallpaper rather than making music. This is not say classy jazz can't be made while cruising own a road devoid of speed humps or potholes. The
- [HERBIE HANCOCK](https://johnshand.com.au/herbie-hancock/) - Concert Hall, June 11 8.5/10 Herbie Hancock has restored my faith. For years I've despaired that audiences for most concert music idioms have steadily grown older, with players now routinely half the age of their listeners. But Hancock packed the place out with all ages – as he has probably done for 57 years. Few
- [GLORIA](https://johnshand.com.au/gloria/) - Reginald Theatre, June 8 8/10 Offices are like dense traffic: they can distort human behaviour, inducing irrationality in otherwise reasonable people, and paranoia, poison and vengefulness in those who are a nudge less stable to begin. "I've forgotten how to be… in an office," says Lorin near the play's end. "Isn't it funny how these
- [Eric Dolphy](https://johnshand.com.au/eric-dolphy/) - MUSICAL PROPHET (Resonance/Birdland) 9.5/10 Eric Dolphy was dead at 36. Among jazz's most innovative improvisers, he died of undiagnosed diabetes; died not knowing his place in history was assured, after suffering such relentless sniping and slurs in New York as drove him to Europe. Some mistook his leaping melodic lines for untutored freedom, but the
- [Brighde Chambeul](https://johnshand.com.au/brighde-chambeul/) - THE REELING (River Lea) 9/10 The intricacy of Celtic jewellery, with is maze-like interweaving of lines without apparent end, its recurrent patterns and its mythical creatures swallowing their own tails, finds a sonic mirror in the culture's traditional music. Brighde Chambeul (pronounced Bree-choo Campbell), who hails from the Isle of Skye, plays the Scottish smallpipes,
- [THRONES! THE MUSICAL PARODY](https://johnshand.com.au/thrones-the-musical-parody/) - Playhouse, June 6 6/10 One could become an outsider at school just by not watching the must-see soapie of the time. Now the whole world seems split into two camps: those obsessed with Game of Thrones, and those who can't tell their Lannisters from their Starks. The latter, presumably, are sweet souls whose interests lie
- [LISA FISCHER](https://johnshand.com.au/lisa-fischer/) - Concourse Concert Hall, June 4 8.5/10 And then it happens: her chocolatey contralto disappears like a missile into the ozone layer, leaving vapour trails of improbably high notes. It's not the range that floors you (although I've probably never heard a singer with more), but the beauty: the complete absence of any brittleness of sound
- [BILL FRISELL TRIO](https://johnshand.com.au/bill-frisell-trio/) - Verbrugghen Hall, June 2 9.5/10 The theory is so simple: leave your ego and all your hours of practice at the door, and let the music play itself. Were it that easy, of course, everyone would do it. In fact shedding the baggage can be even harder than mastering the instrument, but for the Bill
- [BARNEY MCALL MONKNOW](https://johnshand.com.au/barney-mcall-monknow/) - Venue 505, May 30 8.5/10 His music was like a religion, so it was right his name was Monk. Sometimes the piano was no longer sufficiently expressive, and he felt compelled to perform strange, shuffling dances, instead. These bore scant relationship to what was happening rhythmically, but in that regard they were perfect metaphors for
- [DIRTY THREE](https://johnshand.com.au/dirty-three-2/) - Concert Hall, May 26 8/10 Maybe this is the difference. The great artists and bands in any idiom would never dream of simply replicating their old work. That reeks of the mediocrity of being your own tribute band. No, the great ones can only investigate past material through the prism of their current creativity. No
- [Cyrille Aimee](https://johnshand.com.au/cyrille-aimee/) - MOVE ON: A SONDHEIM ADVENTURE (Mack Avenue/Planet) 8/10 The wonder is that it has not been done more often. Precious few songwriters across the last 60 years hold a candle to Stephen Sondheim, yet jazz musicians have largely shied from engaging with his material. In 1995 came a worthy attempt called Jazz Sketches on Sondheim,
- [AMERICAN PSYCHO](https://johnshand.com.au/american-psycho/) - Hayes Theatre, May 16 8.5/10 Were the dog-eat-dog world of Wall Street a mathematical series, its logical conclusion would be American Psycho. Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel – among the most misunderstood in history – prophetically suggested that if greed, sexism, hedonism and narcissism go unchecked, they will spawn mutants incapable of empathy. Ellis just
- [GORAN BREGOVIC WEDDING AND FUNERAL BAND](https://johnshand.com.au/goran-bregovic-wedding-and-funeral-band-2/) - Concert Hall, May 13 8/10 One song can change a concert. While still more rousing and distinctive than most acts can dream of being, Goran Bregovic and his Wedding and Funeral Band spent a proportion of their two hours on stage turning in the least mesmerising performance of their four Sydney visits. Then, as the
- [The Gloaming](https://johnshand.com.au/the-gloaming-3/) - The Gloaming 3 (Real Word/Planet) 9.5/10 The Gloaming is surely the only band rooted in Irish traditional music that would dare to begin an album with prepared piano. When Iarla O Lionaird joins – with an instantly haunting melody sung in Gaelic – you have an encapsulation of why this is not just a good
- [KURT ELLING/JAMES MORRISON](https://johnshand.com.au/kurt-elling-james-morrison/) - Sydney Town Hall, May 11 6.5/10 It's been fascinating to follow. Some 22 years ago Kurt Elling burst on to the international jazz scene as an already extraordinarily distinctive singer and improviser. Initially he was too eager to shower us with all the options at his disposal: his range, array of timbres, virtuoso scatting, vocalese
- [David Liebman and Friends](https://johnshand.com.au/david-liebman-and-friends/) - ON THE CORNER LIVE! (Ear Up) 8.5/10 The impetus was Sly and the Family Stone's In Time from the 1973 album Fresh, crowned by Andy Newmark's drumming. Miles Davis walked into the rehearsal room, played it to his band over and over, and told them that this was how he now wanted the music to
- [The Inevitability of Being Eric Bibb](https://johnshand.com.au/the-inevitability-of-being-eric-bibb/) - When your father was a musical theatre and folk singer, your uncle was one of jazz's most famous pianists (John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet), and you grow up in New York during the 1960s folk boom, perhaps the cards have already fallen. Perhaps a career in music was inevitable. Eric Bibb thinks it
- [Goran Bregovic puts a message in a bottle](https://johnshand.com.au/goran-bregovic-puts-a-message-in-a-bottle/) - Given the hatred that continually blisters relations between Muslims, Christians and Jews, Goran Bregovic could have been forgiven for making his most recent album, which partly addresses the musical cultures of those three religions, one of laments. In fact the mood of Three Letters from Sarajevo is mostly celebratory, but then Bregovic is the man
- [FOLK](https://johnshand.com.au/folk/) - Ensemble Theatre, May 9 5/10 Playwright Tom Wells said that he set out to write a play "that felt a bit like a folk song". What he ended up with is more LA pop anthem than East Yorkshire ballad: you know those wretched songs where the verse, chorus and bridge are hammered together despite the
- [SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS](https://johnshand.com.au/small-mouth-sounds/) - Eternity Playhouse, May 7 6.5/10 This cute little play is rather like an assignment at drama school: construct a comic scenario in which the actors will have to communicate non-verbally more than verbally. American Bess Wohl's solution was to set her 90-minute work at a silent spiritual retreat, introduce a mix-and-match batch of six characters,
- [The Vampires](https://johnshand.com.au/the-vampires-2/) - PACIFICA (Earshift) 7.5/10 This is the first Vampires opus to feel more like a destination than a journey. That destination still has multifarious influences, but you sense a band that has moved beyond trying to be something, and is now a project allowing the four members fully to express their individual musicality within the shared
- [CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF](https://johnshand.com.au/cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof-2/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, May 3 5.5/10 Truth can be even more elusive on a stage than in politics. Some plays are heightened in search of a much deeper truth than mere naturalism can ever hope to dispense. Tennessee Williams wrote lines for his three main characters in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that sway
- [ENTER OPHELIA](https://johnshand.com.au/enter-ophelia/) - National Gallery of Australia, April 27 8.5/10 It's widely thought to be the greatest play ever penned, and some consider it the pinnacle of the western canon, period. Yet despite its intellectual breadth, psychological depth and sheer length, Hamlet's only females are a queen who marries her husband's murderer with unseemly haste, and a spurned
- [PYGMALION](https://johnshand.com.au/pygmalion/) - New Theatre, April 25 5.5/10 Bernard Shaw, often a wanton provocateur in matters of religion, politics and spelling, was certainly a forthright champion of equality, whether of gender, race or class, and his gift for comedy was blessed with a rare timelessness. Pygmalion is now 107 years old, yet the humour is as sharp-edged as
- [TOMMY EMMANUEL](https://johnshand.com.au/tommy-emmanuel/) - Concert Hall, April 21 6.5/10 Three hours of Tommy Emmanuel and Jerry Douglas's virtuosity must add up to about as many notes as there are stars in the sky. But, unlike those stars, these notes didn’t have much in the way of space around them. Close your eyes when either of them was playing solo,
- [Chris Potter](https://johnshand.com.au/chris-potter/) - CIRCUITS (Edition/Planet) 8/10 As Chris Potter approaches the 200-album mark, it becomes ever more apparent that the saxophonist's most profound work occurred in his decade with Paul Motian – but that's like saying a fine actor's greatest role was Hamlet. What I like is the range of "roles" Potter is prepared to assume, and Circuits
- [ALICE IN SLASHERLAND](https://johnshand.com.au/alice-in-slasherland/) - Old Fitz Theatre, April 21 5.5/10 You know you've entered a parallel theatrical universe when the teddy bear steals the show. Yes, Alice in Slasherland features Edgar, a talking teddy bear, who's actually a demon from hell. And I now know that in hell's grand pantheon, Edgar's one of the good guys. Whoever heard of
- [Jeff Ballard](https://johnshand.com.au/jeff-ballard/) - FAIRGROUNDS (Edition/Planet) 8/10 The opening shoots your eyebrows skyward, and the rest of the album keeps them there. Clearly much that is new is still to be mined at the intersection of jazz, funk and electronics. Ballard, who forged a reputation drumming with Ray Charles, Chick Corea, Brad Mehldau and Pat Metheny (among others), recorded
- [A LITTLE PIECE OF ASH](https://johnshand.com.au/a-little-piece-of-ash/) - Kings Cross Theatre, April 17 6.5/10 How many plays dare to deal with death – or more precisely, with the relationship between the dead and those they've left behind? The title refers to the cremated remains of Lily, Jedda's mother. Just because she's dead doesn't mean she intends abandoning the grown-up daughter she still calls
- [MANRAN](https://johnshand.com.au/manran/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, April 13 7/10 Ah, poor Scotland. Its people could have ducked the whole Brexit debacle if they'd voted for independence from the UK five years ago. Still, on the bright side (a very occasional summer phenomenon in those latitudes, much remarked upon), they have Manran to keep their spirits up. Across the
- [Andy Milne & Dapp Theory](https://johnshand.com.au/andy-milne-dapp-theory/) - THE SEASONS OF BEING (Sunnyside) 8/10 Ah, the old chestnut of music and healing. Even born sceptics like me subscribe to it, having experienced the effect too many times for doubt. Pianist/composer Andy Milne understands the link, too. He might take his theorising into new-age zones that prickle my scepticism, but, hell, that doesn't affect
- [MOSQUITOES](https://johnshand.com.au/mosquitoes/) - Drama Theatre, April 12 7.5/10 With each play she comes closer to fulfilling her ambitious goals. Sydney Theatre Company has staged three Lucy Kirkwood plays in three years, each an improvement on its predecessor. After the widescreen, big-cast Chimerica, the Briton pulled focus for the domestic three-hander of The Children, with Mosquitoes occupying a mid-ground
- [I Want to Know What Love Is](https://johnshand.com.au/i-want-to-know-what-love-is/) - The Joan, April 6 6.5/10 I know, I know. The title turns you right off. It sounds like some sugary Valentine's Day cabaret loaded with the sort of songs that, if you squeeze them enough, exude essence of schmaltz. Worse, it's the wrong title for the show. Referencing one of the most obnoxious, overwrought songs
- [Jerry Douglas: The Taming of the Dobro](https://johnshand.com.au/jerry-douglas-the-taming-of-the-dobro/) - When he was 13, back in 1969, Jerry Douglas met his hero, Josh Graves, then the most acclaimed player of the Dobro resonator guitar in bluegrass music. Douglas, who now wears that mantle, himself, not just in bluegrass, but across all idioms, was at a summer camp, and Graves who was visiting friends nearby, was
- [Saturday Night Fever](https://johnshand.com.au/saturday-night-fever/) - Sydney Lyric Theatre, April 2 7/10 Forget the story, acting and music for a moment. Let's get physical. Let's talk dancing. This is the best ensemble dancing I've ever seen in an Australian production of a musical. Obviously Malik Le Nost's red-hot choreography (aided by Mitchell Woodcock) is vital to that success, but what has
- [Dave Douglas](https://johnshand.com.au/dave-douglas/) - UPLIFT (Greenleaf) 9/10 Few artists are so prolific without compromising quality as trumpeter Dave Douglas, his Greenleaf label a tap for pouring out exceptional records. This one was immediately preceded by four double-albums of his quintet in incendiary form live at the Jazz Standard. The Uplift project could hardly be more different, the music intended
- [The Rime of the Ancient Mariner](https://johnshand.com.au/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/) - Kings Cross Hotel, April 5 8/10 The success of the audacious decision to carve a theatrical work from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner rode on whether the result conjured visual poetry to match – or at least bring to life – the force of ST Coleridge's astonishing imagery. This the Little Eggs Collective has
- [Band of Five Names](https://johnshand.com.au/band-of-five-names/) - Annandale Creative Arts Centre, April 4 9/10 This is a bond that's thicker than blood. Trumpeter Phil Slater, pianist Matt McMahon and drummer Simon Barker had not played as a trio under their Band of Five Names moniker for five years, but you wouldn't have picked it. It's not just that they have over a
- [The Last Five Years](https://johnshand.com.au/the-last-five-years/) - Ensemble Theatre, April 3 7.5/10 Can there be a bigger gulf in the world of musical theatre than seeing Saturday Night Fever and The Last Five Years on successive nights? The dance-focused former has a skeletal story and functional music; the latter is a bold piece of conceptual and compositional ingenuity. Now 18 years old
- [Emilio Castillo: Keeping the Tower powering on](https://johnshand.com.au/emilio-castillo-keeping-the-tower-powering-on/) - It all happened in a flash. In 1964, aged 14, Emilio Castillo took up the tenor saxophone. Just four years later, when San Francisco was better known for turning hippy hair into flower-arrangements, he formed Tower of Power, the band that has remained a benchmark for super-funky soul for 51 years. Sly Stone was a
- [Noli Me Tangere](https://johnshand.com.au/noli-me-tangere/) - Riverside Theatre, March 30 4.5/10 Dr Jose P Rizal is a hero of the Philippines' struggle for independence from Spain. He was executed for his writings, including his semi-autobiographical novel Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not), which in part exposed the Catholic Church's complicity in brutal colonialism. Allan McFadden (music and lyrics) and Peter Fleming
- [Adam Simmons](https://johnshand.com.au/adam-simmons/) - THE USEFULNESS OF ART (Fat Rain) 9.5/10 The breadth of the music matches the scale of the ambition. These five albums of scintillating creativity let you dig deep into the oeuvre of brilliant Melbourne composer/multi-instrumentalist Adam Simmons, beginning with Concerto for Piano and Toy Band, a dense, giddy conversation between pianist Michael Kieran Harvey and
- [The Afro-Cuban All Stars](https://johnshand.com.au/the-afro-cuban-all-stars/) - Blacktown Workers Club, March 29 7.5/10 It's a fine line between the good and the great, and Cuba's Juan de Marcos Gonzalez has worked both sides of that line. In the 1970s he formed the exceptional Sierra Maestra (whom some will remember at the Basement in the 1990s), and then in 1996 he was pivotal
- [Dan Barnett Big Band](https://johnshand.com.au/dan-barnett-big-band/) - STRICTLY SWINGING (www.danbarnett.com.au/) 7.5/10 This recording has such presence as to plant you smack in the middle of Balmain's Unity Hall Hotel, where Dan Barnett's 13-piece band nailed these arrangements of swing classics before a live (and excited) audience. The band is choc-full of gifted improvisers above and beyond Barnett's own skills as a singer
- [GROUNDED](https://johnshand.com.au/grounded/) - Lennox Theatre, March 16 9/10 Gods were pretty much expunged from western art when the Roman Empire succumbed to Christianity. A pity. Understanding this waste of raw material, American writer George Brant used his 2011 one-hander, Grounded, to reinstate the god-figure to our stages. His god is just called The Pilot, initially flying F-16 missions
- [Afenginn](https://johnshand.com.au/afenginn/) - Blue Mountains Music Festival, March 15 8/10 Why is so much exceptional television, cinema, music and more generated by the tiny populations of the Scandinavian countries? Could it be that they've been better than most at balancing the conflicting demands of the individual and the community, and that there's a relationship between art and empathy?
- [THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL](https://johnshand.com.au/the-gospel-according-to-paul/) - The Joan, March 8 9/10 If those opposite would try the novel experience of piping down and just listening – which I know, technically, is doing two things at once, thereby putting them at full stretch – the point I'd like to make is that this is a show for true believers. It's a show
- [Andrea Keller & Miroslav Bukovsky](https://johnshand.com.au/andrea-keller-miroslav-bukovsky/) - THE KOMEDA PROJECT (www.andreakellerpiano.com.au/) 9/10 What a treasure trove of music the great Polish composer and jazz pianist Krysztof Komeda (1931-69) left after a too-short life. Pianist Andrea Keller and trumpeter Miroslav Bukovsky have arranged the raw material of some of Komeda's famed film scores for an improvising octet of the highest calibre – and
- [RUSSIAN TRANSPORT](https://johnshand.com.au/russian-transport/) - Eternity Playhouse, March 14 8/10 So you think your family is dysfunctional? Meet Diana and Misha, their children Alex and Mira, and Diana's brother Boris. If you rubbed two sheets of coarse-grade sandpaper together you couldn't generate more friction than this family of Russian immigrants living in Brooklyn. These people are verbal abuse virtuosos –
- [SILKROAD ENSEMBLE](https://johnshand.com.au/silkroad-ensemble/) - Concert Hall, March 9 7/10 The Silk Road was a network rather than a specific route. In this regard Silkroad Ensemble is well-named, with its variable personnel and repertoire bridging the musical divide between East and West. But whereas trade was the ancient network's obvious purpose, here the music sometimes seemed lost in a labyrinth
- [Tim Haldeman](https://johnshand.com.au/tim-haldeman/) - OPEN WATER AS A CHILD (Woolgathering) 9/10 If ever an opening line was going to transfix you, "I followed whiskey into the country of Legionella" should do it. The Kerouac-influenced poem Open Water is graffitied through this album in three instalments, written and delivered by John Goode, whose voice is a scythe slicing straight into
- [DEAD CAT BOUNCE](https://johnshand.com.au/dead-cat-bounce/) - SBW Stables Theatre, February 27 6/10 We get the thrust. Unrequited love hollows you out; leaves a husk where a heart should have been. In case we didn't get it, playwright Mary Rachel Brown has Angela, Gabriel's ex, tell him: "Say goodbye, it is the least you could do if you really do love me…
- [Sandeep Das: Creator of Myths](https://johnshand.com.au/sandeep-das-creator-of-myths/) - The great cellist Yo-Yo Ma has called Sandeep Das "a creator myths", referring to the profundity of his tabla playing within Indian classical, orchestral and cross-cultural music (including with Ma's Silkroad Ensemble). But he could also have been talking about Das's capacity for dire-looking predicaments to become happy endings. When he was eight, for example,
- [Casey Golden](https://johnshand.com.au/casey-golden/) - ATLAS (https://caseygolden.bandcamp.com/) 7/10 I like the way Casey Golden's mind works. He likes to disguise cleverness or surprise with veneers of logic or just plain beauty. You're never thinking to yourself, "Now he's being experimental", or "Now he's being lyrical": it's all the same river; it's just that the banks change. The Australian pianist/composer
- [MARY COUGHLAN](https://johnshand.com.au/mary-coughlan-2/) - Foundry 616, February 22 8/10 Mary Coughlan is still casting her earthy, Irish spells, as she has been doing for 35 years. The chief ingredient in her incantations is hardly unique: emotional truth should be a basic building-block of all singing and all art. Setting Coughlan's espousal of this candour apart are the other spells
- [Geir Sundstol](https://johnshand.com.au/geir-sundstol/) - BRODLOS (Hubro) 9/10 It could be the soundtrack to a film, but it's not. If that film existed it would juxtapose shots of blasting sun with extreme close-ups of squinting eyes. It would convey an impression of time being suspended, while cuts to a clock show time is, in fact, running out. Norwegian guitarist Geir
- [HOW TO RULE THE WORLD](https://johnshand.com.au/how-to-rule-the-world/) - Drama Theatre, February 16 6/10 A key element of transforming Lewis Lewis, an out-of-work actor, into Tommy Ryan, a malleable Senator, is a substantial haircut. That is exactly what this play needs. It could lose fully 40 minutes, and sacrifice nothing of its narrative, ideas or comedy. In fact the latter would benefit most, because
- [Myra Melford's Snowy Egret](https://johnshand.com.au/myra-melfords-snowy-egret/) - THE OTHER SIDE OF AIR (Firehouse) 9/10 This is gripping music. Pianist Myra Melford may have penned all the compositions, but the members of Snowy Egret fly them to places of which she probably never dreamed. The intensity is unrelenting. Even when it's in the form of lyrical beauty rather than ferocious energy, that beauty
- [ALON ILSAR/HINTERLANDT](https://johnshand.com.au/alon-ilsarhinterlandt/) - 107 Projects, February 7 6.5/10 Attending Alon Ilsar's performance this time was ever more like peeking around the corner of the time-space continuum and glimpsing the future. It was there in the technology and its use, the presentation and, to a lesser extent, the music itself. The interrelationship between process and product is eternally fascinating.
- [The Art Ensemble of Chicago and associated ensembles](https://johnshand.com.au/the-art-ensemble-of-chicago-and-associated-ensembles/) - THE ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO AND ASSOCIATED ENSEMBLES (ECM) 9.5/10 It was a life-changing event: the breadth of music, profundity, virtuosity and presentation elevated one to near-ecstasy. This was in 1980, the Art Ensemble of Chicago's only Sydney concert. As sensational as their albums were, to encounter one of music's most revolutionary entities live was
- [Joe O'Connor Trio with Scott Tinkler](https://johnshand.com.au/joe-oconnor-trio-with-scott-tinkler/) - CONFRONTATIONS (https://joeoconnor2.bandcamp.com) 7.5/10 If this music contained any more tension it would snap. Each note seems to be stretched dangerously taut, and the instruments do no so much cohere as collide. Melbourne pianist/composer Joe O'Connor invited the incendiary trumpeter Scott Tinkler to join his trio (with bassist Marty Holoubek and drummer James McLean) at the
- [THE BIG TIME](https://johnshand.com.au/the-big-time/) - Ensemble Theatre, January 25 6/10 David Williamson knows all about stage and screen, writers and actors, success and disappointment. His new play concerns two actors and a writer chasing the elusive big time: a snakes-and-ladders game of shattered dreams, backs for climbing on or stabbing, glints of inspiration and reward, and the remote chance of
- [THE ILIAD OUT LOUD](https://johnshand.com.au/the-iliad-out-loud/) - Belvoir St Theatre, January 24 8/10 You can't do it passively. This is the blood and fury of war, the lies and greed of men and the fickleness of the gods made incarnate in the greatest epic poem ever written. Actor/director/adaptor William Zappa began work on the project seven years ago, and now that it
- [BEWARE OF PITY](https://johnshand.com.au/beware-of-pity/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, January 23 9.5/10 This was more like a dream than a play. But then director Simon McBurney has a way of doing that: of disorienting you – in this case of reminding you that what you are watching is not real, and simultaneously making it so completely immersive as to keep the
- [BRETT AND WENDY](https://johnshand.com.au/brett-and-wendy/) - Lennox Theatre, January 19 6/10 Perhaps it's almost appropriate that the visual, dance and musical elements of a theatrical piece about a painter are stronger than the text-based performances. In this world premiere of a portrayal of Brett Whiteley and his muse, Wendy Whiteley, writer/ director/designer Kim Carpenter has depicted the painter's artistic process with
- [Keith Jarrett](https://johnshand.com.au/keith-jarrett/) - LA FENICE (ECM) 9/10 "Not another Keith Jarrett solo piano album," I hear you say. In a sense there's no such thing as a Jarrett solo piano album, anyway: they are all conversations between the improviser, the piano, the room's acoustics and the audience's listening intensity. For many years he has recorded all his concerts,
- [THE WEEKEND](https://johnshand.com.au/the-weekend/) - Carriageworks, January 18 6.5/10 Everyone is addicted to something, whether smart-phones, religion, shopping or sex. In The Weekend assorted drugs and alcohol are the addictions of choice. First-time playwright Henrietta Baird is non-judgemental about this. Like the rest of us, her characters are just trying to cope. Lara is addicted to Simon, the father of
- [THE CHAT](https://johnshand.com.au/the-chat/) - Carriageworks, January 16 5.5/10 Ah, the dangers of improvisation. This was a stimulating idea, both dramatically and morally: a play about parole and rehabilitation, partially performed by ex-offenders, with audience participation in deciding whether an offender, Les (Les Wiggins) faces a future of freedom or a return to jail. The script, by JR Brennan (an
- [Barker/Kaiser/Laswell/Mahanthappa](https://johnshand.com.au/barkerkaiserlaswellmahanthappa/) - MUDANG ROCK (Fractal/Birdland) 9/10 Let no early notes foster expectations, because they're sure to be dashed by music that keeps shifting shape and slithering out of reach. Initiated by guitarist Henry Kaiser, the project uses traditional Korean music to underpin seven improvisations. Kaiser assembled Sydney's Simon Barker (the ultimate western improviser incorporating Korean drumming language),
- [SHANGHAI MIMI](https://johnshand.com.au/shanghai-mimi/) - Riverside Theatre, January 13 7/10 I tend to view circus and fireworks through the same lens: haven't I seen that done before? But China's Quinghai Acrobatic Troupe performed routines that made my eyebrows shoot heavenward and my jaw so drop the wonder is there was no cascade of saliva. I mean, picture five women, each
- [Simon McBurney: The Art of Trust](https://johnshand.com.au/simon-mcburney-the-art-of-trust/) - Director Simon McBurney walked into the first day of rehearsals for Beware of Pity with no script. He had Stefan Zweig's 1939 novel of that name, and the task before him was to adapt it into a play with the input of the actors. The catch? The company was Schaubuhne Berlin, and McBurney doesn't speak
- [Paris of the East in the Jazz Age](https://johnshand.com.au/paris-of-the-east-in-the-jazz-age/) - It was just an old, dusty trunk in a Mumbai warehouse – one that EMI was cleaning out prior to its demolition in 2003. The trunk had Chinese writing on it, and inside was a treasure: the mother-shells (from which 78rpm records were made) of 800 songs recorded in Shanghai, mainly during the 1930s, in
- [Year in Review - recorded music: Dangerous times breed protest and revolution](https://johnshand.com.au/year-in-review-recorded-music-dangerous-times-breed-protest-and-revolution/) - If Donald Trump has been good for anything, it has been prodding the art of protest songs with the sharpest stick since the Vietnam War. Simultaneously, after cracking for half a century, the foundations underpinning musical genres collapsed almost entirely in 2018. Occasionally the genre-disintegration and protesting collided, as on Marc Ribot's brilliant Songs of
- [BRIDGE OF DREAMS](https://johnshand.com.au/bridge-of-dreams/) - City Recital Hall, January 12 9/10 For some artists it happens when they're very young, fostering only disappointment thereafter. For others it never happens, leaving a uniform career trajectory of relative mediocrity or unacknowledged genius. For Sandy Evans it happened here: everything she has poured into the previous four decades as an artist, saxophonist, composer,
- [CAMILLE O'SULLIVAN](https://johnshand.com.au/camille-osullivan-2/) - Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, January 10 7/10 Dear God, when she's good, she's so very good. You hear it in the way she can snip a consonant as precisely as a practiced circumciser might something else; even more in the way she can let a final consonant crumble to nothing more than breath, like a fine
- [HOME](https://johnshand.com.au/home/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, January 9 7/10 It might be the sense of belonging or security, or it might be a nest for hatching offspring. It may be cluttered with possessions or memories, or be the one house in the street where love lives. Whatever the case, most – but certainly not all – people seem
- [ADRIAN LIM-KLUMPES NEW PROJECT](https://johnshand.com.au/adrian-lim-klumpes-new-project/) - Annandale Creative Arts Centre, December 20 7.5/10 Picture four painters working on the same canvas with no outlines sketched in. Imagine the mutual trust and sympathetic cohesion demanded. This four-way interaction across a 65-minute improvisation was like that, with Adrian Lim-Klumpes new quartet having inbuilt sonic individuality, consisting as it does of piano/keyboards (shared by
- [Mezza/Ginsburg Ensemble](https://johnshand.com.au/mezzaginsburg-ensemble/) - CONVERGENCE (Ozella) 7/10 When this music is really working it is the fluidity that draws you in. You hear it in the compositions of pianist Vittoria Mezza and saxophonist Mark Ginsburg, in the rendering of the melodies, in the improvising and in the suppleness supplied by bassist Luca Bulgarelli and drummer Marcello di Leonardo. At
- [Tim Stevens Double Trio](https://johnshand.com.au/tim-stevens-double-trio/) - WITH WHOM YOU CAN BE WHO YOU ARE (Rufus) 8/10 Ultimately the secret lies in the integration. It is one thing to put improvising and non-improvising musicians in the same room; another to avoid one group sounding like a river, while the other sounds merely like the banks. In his first attempt at writing for
- [Sandy Evans: Building a Bridge of Dreams](https://johnshand.com.au/sandy-evans-building-a-bridge-of-dreams/) - The first rehearsal for Bridge of Dreams will be a symbol of the project, itself. Seeking to span the divide between Indian classical music and jazz (including a 17-piece big band), it will bring together 22 musicians who until now have only interacted via technology, with some of them in Mumbai and some in Sydney.
- [Looking ahead in theatre...](https://johnshand.com.au/looking-ahead-in-theatre/) - Given his stature and breadth of career, it's remarkable that Hugo Weaving has never performed any play from the great canon of 20th-century American works. That's about to change when he inhabits the larger-than-life character of Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (STC, Roslyn Packer Theatre, April 29-June 8), a
- [THE MOORS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-moors/) - Reginald Theatre, February 9 6.5/10 Most of us enter a theatre for brief respite from dowdy lives. I don't know why playwrights stopped cherishing theatricality, the lifeblood of their art form, but it's happened to such a degree that a rarity like The Moors socks you fair in the imagination. Rampaging through this play is
- [Tyshawn Sorey](https://johnshand.com.au/tyshawn-sorey/) - PILLARS (Firehouse) 10/10 It is the sheer audacity that hits you right between the eyes. In a quick-fix world where art must snare you in a trice, then hold you hooked with shocks and swift delights (to stop thoughts wandering to phones), Tyshawn Sorey dared to dream; dared to aspire to higher art. He dared
- [Andrew Dickeson Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/andrew-dickeson-quartet/) - THE SONG IS YOU (www.andrewdickeson.com) 7/10 This music shouts "real!", from the leaping vibrancy of the analogue sound, to "period" jazz being played with such conviction as to be completely authentic in the moment you listen, rather than being a facsimile of something past. Snappy drummer Andrew Dickeson assembled saxophonist Nick Hempton (alto/tenor), guitarist Carl
- [Aviva Endean](https://johnshand.com.au/aviva-endean/) - CINDER: EMBER: ASHES (Sofa) 8/10 An explorer and a musician, an improviser and a composer, Aviva Endean takes her assorted clarinets (and occasional other instruments) into uncharted musical lands on this solo album; lands where – as if she has stepped through an aural looking-glass – they suddenly cease to sound like themselves. Especially striking
- [Of Earthquakes and Fatal Shores: Jazz - The Year in Review](https://johnshand.com.au/of-earthquakes-and-fatal-shores-jazz-the-year-in-review/) - Some concerts soothe, some shake you up, and then there are Peter Brotzmann's concerts. Here the issue is survival. His monstrous tenor saxophone sound may well register on the Richter scale, yet it's also profoundly human: exhilarating, heart-rending, terrifying and, yes, beautiful. With typical perverseness he chose to place his sonic squalls against a pedal
- [Dan Barnett](https://johnshand.com.au/dan-barnett/) - THROUGH HER EYES (www.danbarentt.com.au) 7.5/10 Given that it is memorial to his mother, a remarkable optimism pervades this opus from singer/trombonist Dan Barnett. Or perhaps it is stoicism alchemised into optimism in the very act of making the music. It was recorded live in a private home, which can sometimes make for a minor level
- [NED](https://johnshand.com.au/ned/) - New Theatre, December 19 4.5/10 Like all art, a piece of theatre is never more perfect than when just an idea: before a word is written. Once the process of making the concept tangible begins, perfection usually has its fall. The idea of writing a new musical about Ned Kelly was good, and Adam Lyon (music/lyrics)
- [ZELA MARGOSSIAN QUINTET](https://johnshand.com.au/zela-margossian-quintet/) - Foundry 616, December 15 9/10 What a bright new force is pianist Zela Margossian. Her debut album, Transition, announced her range and fascination as a composer, splashing her Armenian heritage across the broad canvas of jazz. But whereas the album (as good as it is) felt slightly stifled by a preoccupation with precision, here her
- [TIM ROLLINSON TRIO](https://johnshand.com.au/tim-rollinson-trio/) - Foundry 616, December 12 7.5/10 Tim Rollinson holds his guitar very distinctively, so the fingerboard is almost facing him. It's as if he's having a conversation with it – which he is: one in which charm and erudition predominate over lightning bolts of wit or thunderclaps of innovation. Rollinson, best known as a member of
- [THE SMALLEST HOUR](https://johnshand.com.au/the-smallest-hour/) - SBW Stables Theatre, December 7 6/10 Is it a play? Is it a duologue? Is it stand-up comedy? No, it's a hybrid: part play, part anecdote of the type where two raconteurs keep interrupting each other to tell you what really happened. Devised and performed by Phil Spencer and Susie Youssef, and directed by Scarlet
- [TABLE MANNERS](https://johnshand.com.au/table-manners/) - Ensemble Theatre, November 8 7/10 For the snide critic to rip into Alan Ayckbourn's TV-style sit-coms is as easy as shooting ducks on a pond. But that is to miss many skilful subtleties, most notably the shrewd plotting of his plays, brilliantly exemplified by the 45-year-old trilogy known as The Norman Conquests. The interaction between
- [Jeff "Siege" Siegel Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/jeff-siege-siegel-quartet/) - LONDON LIVE (ARC) 8/10 No, I hadn't heard of Jeff Siegel, either, but the American drummer leads a storming band. This live album was recorded on the last date of a European tour, so the quartet was well primed. Alas the gig was in London on the night of a tube strike, so the audience
- [Ivona Rose](https://johnshand.com.au/ivona-rose/) - SO MODERN (Foghorn) 7/10 You hear the assortment of musical influences remotely, as if they are in the next room. In the foreground is a voice as both a singer and songwriter that sounds like no one else. Perhaps partly it is Ivona Rose's Polish background adding a layer of sepia-tinted Euro nostalgia to the
- [Ten years of weathering Shakespeare's verse](https://johnshand.com.au/ten-years-of-weather-shakespeares-verse/) - They've battled scorching sun, icy winds, persistent rain, nagging fogs, chirping birds, aircraft noise and more. Even worse were the days of unpredictable weather, necessitating last-minute decisions to move from the outdoor settings in Bella Vista or Leura. But despite all that the weather has thrown at both actors and audiences, Sport for Jove's summer
- [Dave Panichi/New York Jazz Orchestra](https://johnshand.com.au/dave-panichinew-york-jazz-orchestra/) - PARADIGM (www.davepanichimusic.com) 8/10 Some people do get to realise their dreams. In 2017 trombonist Dave Panichi flew from Sydney back to New York, where he had been based for many years, and assembled the New York Jazz Orchestra to record music he wrote and arranged. Panichi, whose past includes stints with the bands of Buddy
- [CZAREKTRIO/SKRAM LUFF](https://johnshand.com.au/czarektrioskram-luff/) - Annandale Creative Arts Centre, December 7 7.5/10 When you look at a painting you not only see the whole, but let your eyes wander across fragments and details, right down to individual brush-strokes. Listening to music can be like that, and with both these bands it was fascinating to pull focus from the ensemble sound
- [Phronesis](https://johnshand.com.au/phronesis/) - WE ARE ALL (Edition/Planet) 8/10 Following an underwhelming big-band collaboration, We Are All sets Phronesis back on course in the quest to miniaturise and yet intensify a piano/bass/drums trio's interaction. It's not just that bassist Jasper Hoiby, pianist Ivo Neame and drummer Anton Eger are dazzlingly original instrumentalists, it's that they've collectively pushed the format's
- [A VERY KRANSKY CHRISTMAS](https://johnshand.com.au/a-very-kransky-christmas/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, November 23 7/10 Until the Kransky Sisters intrepidly set out to discover the bit of Australia that wasn't Esk, no one had heard of their home town (near Ipswich), other than the few sober Eskys. But while Mourne, Eve and Dawn can lay claiming to putting Esk on the map, they fail
- [POETRY & MUSIC: BRIGHT STAR](https://johnshand.com.au/poetry-music-bright-star/) - Lennox Theatre, November 18 9/10 Exact contemporaries, John Keats and Franz Schubert were also identical twins in bringing the nascent Romantic movement to full flower. Between them they were responsible for the most lyrical poetry and music ever penned. Schubert infused his music with the purest poetry and Keats his verse with the most mellifluous
- [CHARENEE WADE](https://johnshand.com.au/charenee-wade/) - Foundry 616, November 16 9/10 It's the difference between engaging the audience and casting a spell. Not many can do it, but jazz singer Charenee Wade can. Betty Carter was a supreme exemplar, and while Wade's spell is not yet as profound as Carter's, she has Carter-like raw materials in her singing, musicianship, sensibilities, conviction.
- [THE WHARF REVUE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-wharf-revue-3/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, November 15 8/10 That ideological curiosity, Gerard Henderson, used the inimitable John Clarke's Tory lampooning as further proof of the ABC's heinous pinko bias. He apparently failed to understand that satirizing people who want a more open and generous world isn't nearly as funny as poking fun at those who would make
- [Phillip Johnston](https://johnshand.com.au/phillip-johnston/) - THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (Asynchronous) 7.5/10 If you've seen the film, to hear the music is to have the magical images once more dancing before your eyes. The Adventures of Prince Achmed is Phillip Johnston's score for the revolutionary silent feature film of that name made in 1926 by Lotte Reiniger, which brings tales
- [Alan Ayckbourn's still trying to get it right - 82 plays on](https://johnshand.com.au/alan-ayckbourns-still-trying-to-get-it-right-82-plays-on/) - Playwright Alan Ayckbourn received his first review at the age of 10, the critic being a fellow schoolboy. Ayckbourn had adapted one of Anthony Buckeridge's popular Jennings children's books, and had cast himself in the role of the comic sidekick. Then he contracted a highly infectious disease, was packed off to the school sanatorium, and
- [KIRA KIRA/JACHLO](https://johnshand.com.au/kira-kirajachlo/) - Foundry 616, November 14 7.5/10 Unlike on Kira Kira's album, Bright Force, it was not the maelstroms of energy that were so transfixing here, but the softer passages. Twice during the hour-long suite – in which composed elements provided pathways and signposts for very open improvising – the dynamics and energy dropped away to little
- [A CHEERY SOUL](https://johnshand.com.au/a-cheery-soul/) - Drama Theatre, November 9 7.5/10 Patrick White led Australian playwrights to a crossroads: the stultifying dead-end of naturalism, or the boundless possibilities of rampant theatricality. The latter offered dreams and fancies painted in surreal extravaganzas, and people's internal and external worlds mingling like mismatched guests at a cocktail party. Alas, naturalism won, and 1963's A
- [The Palm Wine Ambassadors](https://johnshand.com.au/the-palm-wine-ambassadors/) - SHADY CABAL (azobell.bandcamp.com) 7.5/10 Is there a sound closer to heaven than the kora? More than any other instrument it defines the texture of Byron Bay's Palm Wine Ambassadors, with its ability to drape melody across rhythm in such a way that the harder lines of the groove become shrouded in its own celestial beauty.
- [Elixir/Katie Noonan/Michael Leunig](https://johnshand.com.au/elixirkatie-noonanmichael-leunig/) - GRATITUDE AND GRIEF (Kin/Universal) 8/10 The dichotomy could not be wider, and yet it is exactly this that makes the album work so well. Firstly Michael Leunig reads one of his picture-of-innocence, charm-laden, spell-casting poems in his uniquely lugubrious way, and then that same poem is set to music and sung my Katie Noonan in
- [MADIBA](https://johnshand.com.au/madiba/) - State Theatre, November 1 5.5/10 Nelson Mandela's is one of the great triumph-over-adversity stories. Jailed for 27 years by a regime bereft of morality, he maintained his courage, stoicism and honour, and eventually led his people out of the hell of apartheid. That story deserved better than this hot-and-cold musical. The show's strengths make its
- [Charenee Wade: Carrying Gil Scott-Heron's blazing torch in to jazz](https://johnshand.com.au/charenee-wade-carrying-gil-scott-herons-blazing-torch-in-to-jazz/) - Talk about being ahead of the game. In 2013 jazz singer Charenee Wade recorded Offering, an album reimagining the politically-charged r&b of the late Gil Scott-Heron, whose defiant 1970s-80s anthems (such as The Revolution Will Not Be Televised) are among hip hop's precursors. Offering came three years before Trump was even a candidate, and yet
- [FORQ](https://johnshand.com.au/forq/) - Venue 505, October 31 7/10 Reviewing by resort to comparison always seems lame, but Forq defeats me. It's not that the band overtly copies anyone specific, but rather that the whole concert flares with sounds and ideas you've heard before. Happily they are often ones you don't expect to hear in the same musical
- [Eishan Ensemble](https://johnshand.com.au/eishan-ensemble/) - NIM DONG (Art As Catharsis) 9/10 This has such diverse influences at work that it could easily have become like a dish with too many ingredients and no restraint in the spicing. Instead it casts a spell all its own. The opening title track is already attractive enough, but in no way prepares you for
- [DEGENERATE ART](https://johnshand.com.au/degenerate-art/) - Old Fitz Theatre, October 21 7.5/10 Two highly intelligent American musicians – Joan Baez and Marc Ribot – have told me in interviews this year that Trump's US is already a fascist state. This exaggerates symptoms of a potential metamorphosis towards fascism, most obviously via racism, scapegoating minorities, discrediting the media, law-enforcement and the judiciary,
- [JESUS WANTS ME FOR A SUNBEAM](https://johnshand.com.au/jesus-wants-me-for-a-sunbeam/) - Lennox Theatre, October 20 9/10 Here's a gentle irony buried in a shallow grave: the play that finally signals the coming of age of the National Theatre of Parramatta is about the premature death of a little girl. In this relentlessly Philistine land it's unsurprising that Peter Goldsworthy's 1993 novella Jesus Wants Me for a
- [The Necks](https://johnshand.com.au/the-necks-5/) - BODY (Fish of Milk) 8/10 This is like opening the door on a gig already underway: an instant groove of sparse bass (Lloyd Swanton), cymbal-bell and an intermittent backbeat (Tony Buck). Over this snake unpredictable rivulets of piano (Chris Abrahams) that sink into the groove like water into sand, occasionally thickened by half-heard Hammond organ.
- [SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE](https://johnshand.com.au/scenes-from-a-marriage/) - Playhouse, October 18 7.5/10 Other people's marriages are mysteries. Even if you know the couple well you only see the version presented for external consumption; not the bedroom nuts and bolts, the power dynamics, conflict resolution or any other aspects of shared domesticity. When Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage first aired on Swedish television
- [WORLD/CABARET/JAZZ/BLUES - Concerts to look forward to in 2019!](https://johnshand.com.au/worldcabaretjazzblues-concerts-to-look-forward-to-in-2019/) - Marsala: Camelot, December 31. If you want sonic fireworks on New Year's Eve rather than those humdrum ones in the sky, the place to go is Camelot Lounge and the band to hear is Marsala. This is multicultural Australia transformed into plain old fun. No band attracts a diversity of ethnicities and ages like Marsala.
- [EVIE MAY](https://johnshand.com.au/evie-may/) - Hayes Theatre, October 17 7/10 She's a star. Loren Hunter takes the role of Evelyn May Murphy and, just as the character becomes a star within the story, Hunter proves herself one in realising it. She grips us with her absolute commitment to the truth of her character, the even beauty of tone across her
- [Kira Kira](https://johnshand.com.au/kira-kira/) - BRIGHT FORCE (Libra) 8/10 You know that wild, spiralling look in the eyes when a border collie suffering cabin fever is suddenly released into park or paddock? This music is the sonic equivalent, played with such ferocious intensity you'd think that Natsuki Tamura (trumpet), Alister Spence (keyboard, electronics), Satoko Fujii (piano) and Ittetsu Takemura (drums)
- [Ceramic Dog](https://johnshand.com.au/ceramic-dog/) - YRU STILL HERE? (Northern Spy) 7.5/10 Is this the year's angriest record? Marc Ribot is sick of seeing his Brooklyn friends and neighbours randomly arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Agency (contemptuously known as "La Migra"). When he's not baring his punk roots in tsunamis of fury like Personal Nancy, Muslim Jewish Resistance and
- [EAR TO THE EDGE OF TIME](https://johnshand.com.au/ear-to-the-edge-of-time/) - Reginald Theatre, October 13 7.5/10 "If you stir a cup of tea," explains Martina, a PhD candidate in astrophysics, "it all goes round. If you stir a superfluid [like the interior of a neutron star], what happens is you start a lot of vortices going through the liquid, so instead of a whole lot swirling
- [THE FEATHER IN THE WEB](https://johnshand.com.au/the-feather-in-the-web/) - SBW Stables Theatre, October 12 8/10 When it comes it's as unexpected as a wedge of gorgonzola in a bag of jellybeans. Playwright Nick Coyle leads you into a mad tunnel of laughs, that has jokes, slapstick, silliness and satire jostling you relentlessly from all angles, until you feel pinched and punched into a state
- [AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE](https://johnshand.com.au/an-enemy-of-the-people/) - Belvoir St Theatre, October 11 4.5/10 Henrik Ibsen's 1882 drama An Enemy of the People seems freakishly prescient in an era when politicians abandon all pretence of truth as a basis for decision-making, preferring to serve black-magic ideologies and special-interest groups (no doubt on promises of post-politics pay-backs). About a whistle-blower whose exposure of dangerously
- [MAGGIE STONE](https://johnshand.com.au/maggie-stone/) - Eternity Playhouse, October 9 7/10 She's as hard as her surname. On the surface. Beneath that lie various strata of gravel, grit and dirt, and it's only deeper still you hit the little seams of guilt, vulnerability and compassion. It's not easy being Maggie Stone: bank loans officer, sick, lonely woman and racist in Australia's
- [JULIUS CAESAR](https://johnshand.com.au/julius-caesar/) - Q Theatre, October 5 3/10 Staging Julius Caesar necessitates using some of the finest verse in Shakespeare's canon to paper over the play's structural and narrative fault-lines. Enthral an audience with this verse, dispersed between Antony, Brutus, Cassius and Calphurnia, and the other dimension, the politics of backstabbing, are – as we know! – timeless.
- [JULIEN WILSON QUARTET](https://johnshand.com.au/julien-wilson-quartet-2/) - Springwood Presbyterian Hall, September 6 8.5/10 Musicians are like children. Some of their cries come from the heart and some are merely for attention. Julien Wilson's only cry is the polar opposite of grandstanding. You hear it instantly; instantly feel the connection of a warmth of spirit reaching out. Wilson's importance in the pantheon of
- [Sam Anning](https://johnshand.com.au/sam-anning/) - ACROSS A FIELD AS VAST AS ONE (Earshift) 8/10 In a cover note bassist/composer Sam Anning acknowledges the late drummer Allan Browne "for illuminating everything". It's heart-warming to hear Browne's legacy live on, however indirectly, in Anning's work. Primarily you hear it in the lack of pretence with which the music is presented, and in
- [Erica Bramham](https://johnshand.com.au/erica-bramham/) - SONGS FROM A MIDNIGHT ROOM (ericabramham.com) 8/10 In 2017 Melbourne's Erica Bramham set about writing a song a day, sustaining the project for an impressive 203 days. This double album contains some of the results. Working in a musical world where a fine mist obscures any lines between jazz, folk, improvisation and rock, she writes
- [Stefano Bollani](https://johnshand.com.au/stefano-bollani/) - QUE BOM (Alobar/Planet) 8/10 More than most idioms Brazilian music has a way of sucking non-Brazilian musicians into its rhythmic, harmonic, melodic and textural vortices – aided by the dominant mood being irrepressible optimism. Once it really gets under their skin they tend to be lost causes. When it comes to the prime purveyors of
- [JULIAN CURWIN & JANE SHELDON](https://johnshand.com.au/julian-curwin-jane-sheldon-2/) - @ Django, September 27 8/10 You don't need to spend a day in the family courts to know that love breeds as much anguish as joy: you just have to read poetry or listen to music. Julian Curwin and Jane Sheldon's compositions specialise in love lost, love unrequited and love gone wrong, and they largely
- [IRON IN THE BLOOD](https://johnshand.com.au/iron-in-the-blood/) - Lennox Theatre, September 24 9/10 The impetus is easy to understand. The youngish Jeremy Rose reads Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore and has his conception of his homeland turned on its head. Where was this in the school history syllabus? Last year Rose, a Sydney-based composer and jazz saxophonist, released a recording of Iron in
- [Marc Ribot: drawing a line](https://johnshand.com.au/marc-ribot-drawing-a-line/) - It's November 8, 2016. Guitarist Marc Ribot is so appalled by Donald Trump's election he knows he needs to respond. But how? He was making an album with his band, Ceramic Dog, at the time. "I realised that the world might have to wait for another record about me fighting with my girlfriend," he says
- [XYLOURIS WHITE](https://johnshand.com.au/xylouris-white-4/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, September 21 8/10 Xylouris White don't do polite folkloric music. They direct-inject us with the culture that spawned the blood and fury of such characters as Theseus. Nor are they obsessed with priggish, academic authenticity. In an age when music groans beneath so many sub-genres as to make them all obsolete, George
- [ESPADRILLE/TABUA-HARRISON](https://johnshand.com.au/espadrilletabua-harrison/) - Annandale Creative Arts Centre, August 9 7/10 Marriages between sound and image remain fickle when, unlike in a movie, the music is intended as the primary focus. Sometimes the two bring each other to mutual fulfilment; more often they are at cross purposes. Still the most successful such marriage I've witnessed was Sex, Lynch and
- [Gregory Generet/Richard Johnson](https://johnshand.com.au/gregory-generetrichard-johnson/) - 2 OF A KIND (Afar Music) 7/10 It's the quality of the voice that makes you do a double-take. Gregory Generet is blessed with a baritone of such lusciousness as has rarely been heard in jazz (aside from Andy Bey), making for a distinctive tension between sound and material. But it only takes the opener,
- [The Uyghurs lucky enough to celebrate their own culture](https://johnshand.com.au/the-uyghurs-lucky-enough-to-celebrate-their-own-culture/) - They're the lucky ones. Australia's Uyghurs are still able to celebrate their ancient culture in music and dance. Their compatriots in China's north-west Xinjiang province, meanwhile, are ever more widely reported as being arrested without charge, sent to political "re-education" camps, or simply disappearing altogether. Such allegations are denied by Chinese authorities, and yet the
- [Dave Holland](https://johnshand.com.au/dave-holland/) - UNCHARTED TERRITORIES (Dare2/Redeye/Planet) 9/10 They recorded this 50 years after first playing together. Meanwhile Evan Parker had become one of the key post-Coltrane tenor saxophonists, and Dave Holland one of the world's most revered bassists. The two Britons also epitomised the increasingly pivotal role played by non-Americans in expanding the language of jazz. Completing this
- [ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST](https://johnshand.com.au/accidental-death-of-an-anarchist/) - Drama Theatre, September 14 7/10 Karl Marx thought it religion that stupefied us into obeisance. Writing 127 years later, Dario Fo astutely hit upon what had become the new mass opiate: scandal – and this nearly half a century before Trump, fake news and social media! Imagine the Italian playwright's nods and winks at our
- [THE MERCHANT OF VENICE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-merchant-of-venice-2/) - Pop-up Globe, September 12 4.5/10 Shylock's demented desire for a pound of Antonio's flesh (with all its anti-Semitic type-casting implications) makes him the supposed villain of this comedy. But for whom, exactly, are we supposed to cheering? Portia? She is willing to accept an airheaded, money-grubbing playboy to share her vision of long-term connubial bliss.
- [MACBETH](https://johnshand.com.au/macbeth/) - Pop-up Globe, September 9 8.5/10 This was always going to be the test. For nearly 140 years theatre audiences have enjoyed the endless possibilities created by electric stage lights, and, paradoxically, no play has benefitted more than Macbeth, the darkest investigation of the human psyche ever made. Via such lighting modern audiences have grown used
- [THE COMEDY OF ERRORS](https://johnshand.com.au/the-comedy-of-errors/) - Pop-up Globe, September 8 7/10 This is to The Comedy of Errors what The Life of Brian was to the New Testament. Okay, so the New Testament wasn't quite as gag-laden to begin with, but Miles Gregory's production shares a similar intent to maximise the silliness of every event, and The Comedy of Errors was
- [IRONBOUND](https://johnshand.com.au/ironbound/) - Kings Cross Theatre, September 5 It's not just Darja's second husband who punched her in the face. Life's done it often enough to make a move from Poland to America attractive. But then America turned out to be factories, house-cleaning, two broken marriages, a dysfunctional de facto relationship and a runaway son. Some dream. Playwright
- [THE MISANTHROPE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-misanthrope/) - Playhouse, August 31, until September 28 6.5/10 At their best the rhymes come fizzing and spitting at you, the wit sizzling as writer Justin Fleming throws fat on Moliere's fire. At other times the work feels more laboured, as if Moliere's satire and Fleming's meter, rhymes and token modernity have been scrunched together like so
- [MUQAM RAK](https://johnshand.com.au/muqam-rak/) - Riverside Theatre, September 3 7/5/10 Freedom has no greater expression than music. African Americans have largely defined popular music's last 100 years by voicing their post-slavery resilience, and, amid countless examples, explosions of musical culture occurred as the Irish survived English oppression and non-white South Africans survived apartheid. Uyghur musical culture may not have been
- [THE HARP IN THE SOUTH PART ONE AND PART TWO](https://johnshand.com.au/the-harp-in-the-south-part-one-and-part-two/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, August 25 8/10 At its best it's like wading against the great wash of humanity in peak hour at Central: an endless press of faces registering worry, sorrow, panic, anger and, yes, even joy. Many of the 90 roles leave you bruised as they stream from the pages of Ruth Park's trilogy
- [ROBYN ARCHER](https://johnshand.com.au/robyn-archer/) - City Recital Hall, August 22 6/10 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The euphoria of the end of the war to end all wars – with its consequent artistic, social and sexual bravado – collided with the crunch of the Great Depression and then impaled itself on the rise
- [Paul Grabowsky](https://johnshand.com.au/paul-grabowsky-2/) - MOONS OF JUPITER (Air-Edel) 9/10 The link to Paul Grabowsky's brilliant 2014 release The Bitter Suite is unmistakable. Listen to the inky darkness that shadows the notes; that charges the mood variously with portentousness, melancholy or desolation; that lurks behind each line, or just around the corner from a jauntier moment – much as life
- [Jon Rose and Chris Abrahams](https://johnshand.com.au/jon-rose-and-chris-abrahams/) - PEGGY (ReR) 8.5/10 Some couples are so different from each other you wonder how the hell their relationship works. Violinist Jon Rose (for 40 years an epicentre of Australian free improvisation) and pianist Chris Abrahams (one third of the Necks) are a bit like that. Often you feel this tension – almost a tug of
- [James Muller](https://johnshand.com.au/james-muller/) - LIVE AT WIZARD TONE (54 Records) 7/10 Having been party to exceptional live recordings by the Steve Hunter Band and the Subterraneans among others, Australia's slipperiest jazz guitarist, James Muller, here makes a live one of his own, telling us in the liner notes that, despite all the sessions, he's never been a comfortable studio
- [FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN](https://johnshand.com.au/falling-in-love-again/) - Lennox Theatre, August 5 8/10 As much as an actor and singer she was an artefact of an era. Like an exquisite piece of art deco glass, Marlene Dietrich simultaneously epitomised the 1930s and was timeless. That quality, missing in the first half of Jennifer Ward-Lealand's tribute, luxuriantly filled Act Two, transforming a capable show
- [Julian Curwin & Jane Sheldon](https://johnshand.com.au/julian-curwin-jane-sheldon/) - CROSSING (Romero/Newmarket) 9.5/10 Out of the constant deluge of new music bursts an expected vision of beauty to rival Joseph Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne. Part bucolic dream and part sonic rainbow (arching from the 13th century to now), this has guitarist Julian Curwin and soprano Jane Sheldon composing settings for assorted French, Spanish and English poetry
- [Barney McAll/Monash Art Ensemble](https://johnshand.com.au/barney-mcallmonash-art-ensemble/) - ZEPHYRIX (Extra Celestial Arts) 9/10 With each album Barney McAll's artistry currently seems to scale new heights. Certainly Zephyrix (Zephyr amalgamated with Phoenix) is his most ambitious composition to date: a suite for 15 players evoking the five birds of alchemy. The music is both programmatic and philosophical in intent, celebrating transformation, while providing a
- [KING OF PIGS](https://johnshand.com.au/king-of-pigs/) - Old Fitz Theatre, August 4 6/10 Do you remember being accused as a child, and feeling guilty when you were innocent? Or perhaps you convinced yourself of your innocence when you were guilty? Steve Rodgers' King of Pigs is like a giant finger pointing at every male in the audience and generating one of those
- [FREEDMAN JAZZ 2018](https://johnshand.com.au/freedman-jazz-2018/) - The Studio, July 30 8/10 It's actually quite simple: just feelings expressed as sound. As long as that truism remains in place regardless of other layers of complexity, you have half a chance of making music. Nick Garbett has always understood this. Treating his trumpet as a palette of colours, he has looked to draw
- [Silke Eberhard and Sandy Evans](https://johnshand.com.au/silke-eberhard-and-sandy-evans/) - WHAT SHE SEES (Rufus) 7.5/10 Sometimes the sounds merge into one, is if controlled by the same lips, the same breath. At other times they strobe against one another, the phasing effect unsettling and even disorienting. Sometimes the music is like a toyshop come to life when the humans have all gone home, as on
- [THE LONG FORGOTTEN DREAM](https://johnshand.com.au/the-long-forgotten-dream/) - Drama Theatre, July 27, until August 25 6.5/10 The giant sand-coloured backdrop flies up and billows in ways that suggest the very land is breathing. Certainly the warm heart of H Lawrence Sumner's play is, despite The Long Forgotten Dream often being at its strongest when it at its most epic or ritualistic – a
- [Joseph Tawadros](https://johnshand.com.au/joseph-tawadros-3/) - THE BLUEBIRD, THE MYSTIC AND THE FOOL (Planet) 8.5/10 All music is a dialogue, and here Joseph Tawadros zeroes in on discourses between moods, with the oud player's compositional breadth starring as much as the brilliant improvising. The 21 shortish pieces make the listening experience one of constant flux, whether between serenity and joy, or
- [PAUL CUTLAN'S STRING PROJECT](https://johnshand.com.au/paul-cutlans-string-project/) - The Sound Lounge, July 21 8.5/10 One of the wonders of music is its ability to conjure ideas and evoke emotions without the limiting specificity of words. The world premiere of The Eleventh Hour was composer Paul Cutlan's response to the centenary of the end of World War I. In four movements (plus two interludes),
- [John Coltrane](https://johnshand.com.au/john-coltrane/) - BOTH DIRECTIONS AT ONCE – THE LOST SESSIONS (Impulse!) 9/10 Fifty-five years ago the most explosive band in jazz history trooped into their favourite studio and recorded an album that was never released. Until now. Both Directions At Once – The Lost album is almost a holy relic, blessed with some sensational music, sound quality
- [Ladysmith moves with the times](https://johnshand.com.au/ladysmith-moves-with-the-times/) - It was news that came from nowhere. Ladysmith Black Mambazo were on tour when they heard that someone from New York wished to meet their leader, Joseph Shabalala. That someone turned out to be Paul Simon, who, to their complete amazement, wanted to work with them. At the time, after all, the all-male a capella
- [YOU GOT OLDER](https://johnshand.com.au/you-got-older/) - Kings Cross Theatre, July 17 8/10 Behind the prosaic title lurks the odes and elegies of aging: ill-health, mortality, separation, loss and grief. American playwright Clare Barron's You Got Older is essentially her autobiographical response to her father's diagnosis with terminal cancer. If that doesn't sound like much of a fun night out so far,
- [TINA HARROD](https://johnshand.com.au/tina-harrod/) - Camelot Lounge, July 12 8/10 A song is not a finished work of art, but a start point. The wonder of the songs on Tina Harrod's recent City of Longing album – mostly written by Harrod and pianist Stu Hunter – is the level of refinement leant by the arrangements, whether these ornately embellish or
- [Jim White dirties up Greek music](https://johnshand.com.au/jim-white-dirties-up-greek-music/) - The purists were probably sharpening their knives. Here, after all, was Jim White, famed Australian rock drummer, taking the traditional music of Crete back to Greece, and, being one half of just a duo with George Xylouris's laouto and baritone voice, there was nowhere to hide. "I was apprehensive," White concedes of that first time
- [Kamasi Washington](https://johnshand.com.au/kamasi-washington-3/) - HEAVEN AND EARTH (Young Turks/Remote Control) 6/10 Kamasi Washington loves playing alternate cards of predictability and surprise. Having created an expectation of further monumentalism with 2015's The Epic, he doesn't disappoint, but nor does he fail to surprise. Try opening with the theme from the kung fu film Fists of Fury, for instance: who else
- [THE MAN IN THE ATTIC](https://johnshand.com.au/the-man-in-the-attic/) - Eternity Playhouse, July 11 7/10 The idea of "blue" conjures a different image in every mind. Is morality also plastic enough to be swirled together with other shades on a palette, or is it an absolute? Even if it exists as an absolute conceptually, what about in practice? Timothy Daley's The Man in the Attic
- [THE ROLLING STONE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-rolling-stone/) - Reginald Theatre, July 7 7/10 A brick makes a satisfying "clunk" as it slots into place in a wall being built. The Rolling Stone is like that wall, with British playwright Chris Urch slotting the parts of his plot together with similar precision. It is built with alternating layers of tension and rapport between his
- [Origami](https://johnshand.com.au/origami/) - ORNETTE (Fat Rain/Trailblazer) 8/10 Those who heard Ornette Colemen in concert will die clutching the memory deep in their hearts. The great tide of warmth flooding from the stage exposed the old taunts that he was "untutored" or "played sharp" for the detritus they were. His revolutionary approach was meticulously conceived long before people began
- [THE GIRL THE WOMAN](https://johnshand.com.au/the-girl-the-woman/) - Lennox Theatre, June 30 6/10 You see it in tantalising glimpses amid the dry ice, or peeking out from a nook in the mountain of furniture detritus: a pinched facial expression; a fluttering hand; a lost-girl voice; a furtive idea; a piece of self disembodied from the rest Aanisa Vylet's character. In this labyrinth of
- [The Yowie Hunter](https://johnshand.com.au/the-yowie-hunter/) - This blast from my highly disreputable past has found its way on to YouTube: https://youtu.be/7hMipbxQwOU
- [Laurence Pike](https://johnshand.com.au/laurence-pike/) - DISTANT EARLY WARNING (Leaf) 8.5/10 Laurence Pike has said that his "goal is to get into a space where the music makes itself", and no musician can have higher aspirations. That he reached this zone during a single day in a recording studio to make this album can be heard note by note, as cohesive
- [Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas](https://johnshand.com.au/joe-lovano-dave-douglas/) - SCANDAL (Greenleaf/Planet) 7/10 Among Australia's many jazz exports Linda May Han Oh shapes up as the one to have most thoroughly infiltrated the New York scene's labyrinths. Born in Malaysia and raised in Perth, Oh moved to the Big Apple in 2008, and now finds herself the bassist of choice for an array of artists
- [PATTI LUPONE](https://johnshand.com.au/patti-lupone/) - Concert Hall, June 23 7.5/10 Patti LuPone knows a stage like koalas know gum trees and pandas bamboo. It's her natural habitat, her instincts taut and senses zinging. She owns it, commands it, nurtures it and prowls it so completely that you'd think she was born on one. Nine years after she was here with
- [Matt Keegan](https://johnshand.com.au/matt-keegan/) - VIENNA DREAMING (http://mattkeeganmusichub.com/) 8.5/10 Put on this album and slide through a rent in time and space to another world. Matt Keegan, always an exceptional saxophonist, shows ever more intriguing compositional ambitions, Vienna Dreaming being dedicated to his pianist great grandfather, Heini Portnoj, who had to flee the City of Music due to the rise
- [DRESDEN](https://johnshand.com.au/dresden/) - Kings Cross Theatre, June 20 7.5/10 In a note in the program the playwright Justin Fleming asks why various events in Dresden between 80 and 180 years ago might "reach" us in Sydney today. His answer is that "we live at a time when world leaders fuse fiction with fact". We needed no such justification.
- [THE HYPOCHONDRIAC](https://johnshand.com.au/the-hypochondriac/) - Eternity Playhouse, June 16 4.5/10 The French have a flair for lightness. It aerates their cooking, from choux pastry to souffle, their music from Offenbach to Satie, and even their very language, with all those silent consonants. And of course it is especially prevalent in their humour, from Voltaire to Tati, with Moliere the godfather
- [Jakob Bro](https://johnshand.com.au/jakob-bro/) - RETURNINGS (ECM) 9/10 Self-effacement is a handy trait for an improviser. You would never discern that Jakob Bro was this band's leader, for instance, simply by listening. The Danish guitarist's main concern has been creating contexts to maximise his colleagues' creativity. And what colleagues! From the absolute vanguard of Scandinavian jazz come trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg
- [MADELEINE PEYROUX](https://johnshand.com.au/madeleine-peyroux/) - City Recital Hall, June 13 6.5/10 Like the other party in a thorny marriage, Madeleine Peyroux can vex as much as she enchants. After an intimate opening, in which she just accompanied herself on acoustic guitar for three tunes, an expert band joined her to revisit the song that opened up the world: Leonard Cohen's
- [Christopher Young Trio](https://johnshand.com.au/christopher-young-trio/) - DIGITAL ANALOGUE (Newmarket) 8.5/10 Christopher Young has a gift for crafting charged atmospheres in which to improvise. This gift is especially prominent on this double album's 20-minute centrepiece, the slow, dreamy Out of Time, which has minimal harmonic movement, instead using layers of post-Robert Fripp guitar played by guest Brendan Hains, whose long, sustained notes
- [ASSASSINS](https://johnshand.com.au/assassins/) - Playhouse, June 12, until July 1 8/10 Assassins may be that rarity, a musical that's still daring, edgy and innovative 28 years on, but it was instantly obvious that Bobby Fox's fall when his character, Charles Guiteau, is hanged, was not scripted. David Campbell (playing the lead role of John Wilkes Booth) announced an unscheduled
- [GRETCHEN PARALTO FLOR](https://johnshand.com.au/gretchen-paralto-flor/) - Verbrugghen Hall, June 3 Whether in politics, broadcasting, plays, films or music, we live in an era where bluster, gaucheness and antagonism trump subtlety, nuance and simple beauty. But Gretchen Parlato is fighting back. Well, not exactly fighting. She's showing that there's another way. Rather than trying to make herself and her work larger than
- [Simon Barker](https://johnshand.com.au/simon-barker/) - URGENCY! (Kimnara) 8/10 Most people use language lazily, in pre-fabricated modules, whether speaking or writing. Musicians can also be snared, regurgitating pre-digested patterns, whether composing or improvising. Rare ones devise the actual language: its syntax, vocabulary and potential for expressing the new. This is what drummer Simon Barker does on the first two volumes of
- [Sarah Snook unlocks her inner teen visionary](https://johnshand.com.au/sarah-snook-unlocks-her-inner-teen-visionary/) - She was improbable to her contemporaries 600 years ago, and she remains just as improbable, now. Joan of Arc bent France's king, nobility, army and church to her will (turning the tide of the 100 Years War with England), all as a low-born, teenaged girl claiming to be an agent of the Almighty, and in
- [BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET](https://johnshand.com.au/branford-marsalis-quartet/) - City Recital Hall, June 2 8.5/10 They begin at such a whisper they almost have you leaning forward in your seat, and then suddenly spin into the thrills and spills of bassist Eric Revis's Dance of the Evil Toys – aptly named, given its wicked syncopations. The energy level is instantly blistering, but without the
- [STALKING THE BOGEYMAN](https://johnshand.com.au/stalking-the-bogeyman/) - Old Fitzroy, May 26, until June 23 7/10 When theatre bites down hard on a subject like this you, too, are caught in its teeth. The subject is child molestation – here a euphemism for child rape. David Holthouse knows about it. At the age of seven he was raped by the 17-year-old son of
- [Zack Teran](https://johnshand.com.au/zack-teran/) - PORTALIS (Orenda) 7.5/10 As Orenda Records' catalogue expands, so does both the scope of its music and the significance of the Los Angeles-based label. This, the debut album by bassist/composer Zack Teran, interweaves jazzy threads with streams of electronica, bursts of rock and more. Groove and drama are often uneasy bedfellows, the one tending to undermine
- [OBSCENE MADAME D](https://johnshand.com.au/obscene-madame-d/) - 107 Projects, May 23, until May 27 7/10 That each of us is wearing headphones as we enter the performance space makes a usually shared experience now oddly solitary. Synthesizer music swirls into our ears as we gaze at hanging light bulbs swathed in lacy tablecloths, fiery abstract images on giant screens and enigmatic installations
- [GYPSY](https://johnshand.com.au/gypsy/) - Hayes Theatre, May 22, until June 30 9/10 It was hatched at night, about three weeks into rehearsals. Although Stephen Sondheim, to his frustration, had been employed to write only the lyrics, not the music, this night he sat at the piano and mashed up fragments of composer Jule Styne's existing songs, splicing together the
- [BLACKIE BLACKIE BROWN](https://johnshand.com.au/blackie-blackie-brown/) - Wharf 2, May 18, until June 30 7.5/10 We’re well used to black comedy (gallows-humour style) on our stages, to caustic satire and comedy-drama. But angry comedy? Nakkiah Lui's Blackie Blackie Brown: The Traditional Owner of Death is sometimes so angry that you're inclined to flinch and start framing excuses why you, of all people,
- [PRISCILLA: QUEEN OF THE DESERT](https://johnshand.com.au/priscilla-queen-of-the-desert/) - Capitol Theatre, May 17 6.5/10 Someone left the cake out in the rain, and now, 12 years after first opening in Sydney, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert – The Musical, has been rebaked. Having played Bernadette some 1750 times across five countries (including on Broadway and in the West End), Tony Sheldon is once again
- [Steve Barry Quartet](https://johnshand.com.au/steve-barry-quartet/) - BLUEPRINTS & VIGNETTES (Earshift) 8/10 Music has a way of smoothing its own path. Given the chance, our brains readily accommodate complexity that comes via the ears, so the unfolding of even quite convoluted material can swiftly assume an air of inevitability. Of course relentless complexity may ultimately test powers of concentration, but pianist/composer Steve
- [Wes Montgomery](https://johnshand.com.au/wes-montgomery/) - IN PARIS (Resonance/Birdland) 8/10 Wes Montgomery always stood out from the welter of jazz guitarists who emerged in Charlie Christian's wake. Using his thumb (rather than a plectrum) he developed the warmest sound: a bronze tone that was equally effective on tender ballads or for lighting sudden spot-fires amidst his otherwise cruising, groovy solos. Not
- [GOOD COOK. FRIENDLY. CLEAN.](https://johnshand.com.au/good-cook-friendly-clean/) - SBW Stables, May 11, until June 16 2/10 Oh, dear. Somehow this play sneaked all the way to the stage without someone whispering, "It's not ready." While not entirely without merit, that merit adorns a small proportion of what is only a 70-minute work, anyway. Otherwise it is beleaguered with problems of characterisation, narrative, dramatic
- [SHIRLEY VALENTINE](https://johnshand.com.au/shirley-valentine/) - Ensemble Theatre, May 10, until June 9 8/10 "I know the film and play, so why bother?" you ask. Because Sharon Millerchip is not playing Shirley Valentine, she's living her. Because performances of such comprehensive truth are rare in Sydney. Because here's a chance to see every flex of a neck muscle, twitch of an
- [THE SUGAR HOUSE](https://johnshand.com.au/the-sugar-house/) - Belvoir St Theatre, May 9, until June 3 7/10 For most of The Sugar House Margo has a mountain ash-sized chip on her shoulder, inducing relentlessly bitchy, aggressive and unforgiving behaviour. Then, in Act Two, after a cancer diagnosis, she suddenly blurts out the line that encapsulates Alana Valentine's Pyrmont-set play. "Why," she asks, "are
- [I HOLD THE LION'S PAW](https://johnshand.com.au/i-hold-the-lions-paw/) - Boiler House, May 5 7/10 This was both refreshing and vaguely nostalgic, because in this fast-forward world it has become so rare to encounter art of any sort that takes its time – like Mozart operas, 19th-century novels or '60s jazz improvisations. Here was music that dared to spend 15 minutes just establishing moods and
- [JOSEPH TAWADROS](https://johnshand.com.au/joseph-tawadros-2/) - Blue Mountains Theatre, May 4 7.5/10 You know when you turn the gas down low, so the flame has that singular violet luminescence? Joseph Tawadros's solo oud features have that quality. Like a cello, the instrument has an innate, dignified melancholy. Meanwhile Tawadros crafts a note's shape and weight, along with the spaces between them,
- [BROTZMANN/LEIGH](https://johnshand.com.au/brotzmannleigh/) - People's Republic of Australasia, May 2 9/10 I've lived through earthquakes, cyclones, blizzards, floods, bushfires and now a Peter Brotzmann concert. On the one hand the veteran German saxophonist's playing is of such ferocity as to seem a force of nature, and yet on the other it is so profoundly human as to be the
- [CARMEN LIVE OR DEAD](https://johnshand.com.au/carmen-live-or-dead/) - Hayes Theatre, April 28 7.5/10 They were both married, so it was just a brief affair in the Mexican summer of 1937 between the political revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, 57, and the artistic revolutionary, Frida Kahlo, 29. "What," asks the eccentric musical Carmen Live or Dead, "if that affair had resulted in a love child?" Natalie
- [Xylouris White](https://johnshand.com.au/xylouris-white-3/) - MOTHER (ABC) 8.5/10 In concert George Xylouris and Jim White conjure up a mighty sound for just a duo, given that the former plays lute or lyra and the latter (of Dirty Three fame) a drum-kit. Here that sheer mass often seems like a wall of water: a vast wave of sound rearing up and
- [Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette](https://johnshand.com.au/keith-jarrettgary-peacockjack-dejohnette-2/) - AFTER THE FALL (ECM) 8.5/10 Before you get too excited, no, pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette have not reunited. This double album is just another glittering gem from deep in the ECM vaults, released just on 20 years after it was recorded live. In fact this was the first concert
- [THE EFFECT](https://johnshand.com.au/the-effect/) - Old Fitzroy, April 22 (until May 19) 3.5/10 If a tiny kernel of truth lay buried somewhere deep within Lucy Prebble's play, this production did not find it. Instead it piled more layers of falsity atop those already in the British playwright's text. Combine that with the theatre's 40-degree heat, and the shorthand version of
- [Nile Rodgers says, "Let's Dance!"](https://johnshand.com.au/nile-rodgers-says-lets-dance/) - Try lumping Jeff Beck with Madonna, or putting Duran Duran in the same sentence as avant-gardist Laurie Anderson, or maybe David Bowie with Al Jarreau. Not only does Nile Rodgers have a way of doing that, but part of his secret is skipping sleep. Among the world's most in-demand record producers, Rodgers – also a
- [The Gloaming](https://johnshand.com.au/the-gloaming-2/) - LIVE AT THE NCH (Real World/Planet) 9.5/10 A fine mist seems to descend right from the opening moments of The Booley House, so delicate and wistful is Martin Hayes' fiddle, and immediately you sense that the Gloaming's third album (recorded live in Dublin's National Concert Hall) is going to sustain the wonder and peculiar magic
- [Jonathan Zwartz album](https://johnshand.com.au/jonathan-zwartz-album/) - ANIMARUM (Planet/MGM) 8/10 You sense again the fastidious distillation of ideas that was a hallmark of Jonathan Zwartz's two previous albums as leader, The Sea and The Remembering & Forgetting of the Air. Something of the same introversion that imbued those records with such soothing, reflective music is at work, too, but this time the
- [SERGIO MENDES](https://johnshand.com.au/sergio-mendes/) - Concert Hall, April 8 6/10 I once attended a Peter Sarstedt concert (yes, really), and of course the entire audience was only there to hear Where Do You Go to (My Lovely)? to the extent that, had he played it first rather than last, everyone would probably have bolted after one song. Pianist Sergio Mendes
- [THE FLICK](https://johnshand.com.au/the-flick/) - Reginald Theatre, April 7 9/10 This is dangerous theatre. You feel it testing your responses, stamina, patience and involvement. It's asking you to enter into a pact: if you accept that a play which could have lasted two hours is going to last for three, you will be rewarded with infinitely finer veins of meaning
- [BLOODLINES 4 stars](https://johnshand.com.au/bloodlines-4-stars/) - Foundry 616, April 6 8/10 In 1972 Dave MacRae was in one of the most endearingly quirky and innovative jazz-rock bands of them all, Matching Mole. A particular gem on the British band's indispensable Little Red Record was MacRae's Smoke Signal, and here, to the infinite delight of a critic who thought himself immune to
- [Mucho Mambo](https://johnshand.com.au/mucho-mambo/) - ORGANICO (http://www.muchomambo.com/) 7/10 It's a quite particular form of excitement generated at the intersection where the precision and energy of multi-member percussion sections collide. Multiple percussionists are found in spectacularly diverse contexts, from the minimalism of Steve Reich to South India's Carnatic music; from the Middle-East to the profusion of percussion textures populating sub-Saharan Africa.
- [THE SOUND OF WAITING](https://johnshand.com.au/the-sound-of-waiting/) - Eternity Playhouse, April 4, until April 22 5.5/10 Dehumanising them was the political masterstroke. If the people rotting in offshore detention had no names and no stories, how could we begin to care about them? Depoliticising her play was Mary Anne Butler's masterstroke. Had her protagonist, Hamed Mokri, been subjected to offshore "processing" as an
- [THE CHILDREN](https://johnshand.com.au/the-children/) - Drama Theatre, April 3, until May 19 8/10 The play begins and ends with the sound of waves; with the rhythm of inevitability. And yet in between it keeps you wondering. Will it become soggily sentimental? Will some devastating secret be revealed? Will the underlying resentments explode? And for just shy of its two hours
- [Sergio Mendes: Still curious after all those years](https://johnshand.com.au/sergio-mendes-still-curious-after-all-those-years/) - Years after he had a hit with a bossa nova version of Paul McCartney's song The Fool on the Hill, Sergio Mendes received a letter from the Beatle thanking him for his interpretation. Burt Bacharach was similarly appreciative of what Mendes did with The Look of Love. In the late 1960s Sergio Mendes and Brasil
- [Jimi Hendrix album](https://johnshand.com.au/jimi-hendrix-album/) - BOTH SIDES OF THE SKY (Legacy) 9/10 Jimi Hendrix snuck up on the blues from behind, popped a hallucinogen in its mouth, clamped shut its jaws and waited for the gulp. Where his contemporaries Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck (all born within 28 months of each other) aspired to some African American blues ideal just
- [Showa 44 album](https://johnshand.com.au/showa-44-album/) - KAIHOGYO (Kimnara) 8/10 Showa 44's Simon Barker and Carl Dewhurst are not just among the world's finest improvisers, they are also obsessive runners of the barefoot, long-distance variety. This information is far from tangential to their latest offering, because they recorded themselves running in the studio to form a rhythmic bed for two of the
- [Tina Harrod album](https://johnshand.com.au/tina-harrod-album/) - CITY OF LONGING (http://www.tinaharrod.com/) 9/10 This is the album Tina Harrod had in her all along. Here there's no attempt to be something, whether an r'n'b singer, a jazz singer or anything else. Here she just is. Harrod always had the ability to sing with such conviction as to make listening convulsive, but the good
- [DUSTY RAVENS](https://johnshand.com.au/dusty-ravens/) - Camelot Lounge, March 29 5.5/10 The dust fell from my ears. The cowboy album that had so excited me was just a recording, after all, and recordings can be manipulated as infinitely as the sun bakes the desert. While Sydney's Dusty Ravens remain worthy of attention, they have some serious rehearsing to do to approximate
- [Joanna Wallfisch album](https://johnshand.com.au/joanna-wallfisch-album-2/) - BLOOD & BONE (joannawallfisch.com) 7/10 Joanna Wallfisch often puts a gloss upon her songs: a shiny surface on which the listener my safely glide over the lyrics' emotional barbs and snags. The result is that much of her (admittedly uneven) work could easily be dismissed as merely pleasant, when in fact her words can create
- [YOUSSOU NDOUR](https://johnshand.com.au/youssou-ndour/) - Concert Hall, March 28 7/10 Youssou Ndour promised a party and most members of the audience would probably say he delivered. It's just that aiming for a party may have been to set the bar too low when another level was possible: a plane on which exuberance and joy sometimes vacated the dance floor to
- [THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI](https://johnshand.com.au/the-resistable-rise-of-arturo-ui/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, March 27 9.5/10 If part of the art of theatre is to put people in a vice and squeeze them until their thoughts are squished into their bodily juices, this was such a night. How often does your seat becomes a migration zone in which you inch forward in astonishment or to
- [Jacob Collier does it in his room](https://johnshand.com.au/jacob-collier-does-it-in-his-room/) - Jacob Collier's response to Quincy Jones's offer to produce his first album was certainly novel: "Can we just be friends?" This was a London kid, whose ingenious reimagining of such songs as Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely? had gone viral on YouTube, knocking back the producer of all those Michael Jackson hits, and the man
- [Joan Baez: the voice of folk bids farewell](https://johnshand.com.au/joan-baez-the-voice-of-folk-bids-farewell/) - The luminous soprano extension to her voice melted away years ago, but that was just the snowy peak of her singing, anyway, not the mountain. The mountain was her conviction. Even back in high school Joan Baez took a lone stance against participating in a nuclear war drill. This was what set her apart; what
- [FLIGHT PATHS](https://johnshand.com.au/flight-paths/) - Lennox Theatre, March 17 5/10 The gap between intent and outcome is the hardest artistic chasm to bridge. The second hardest is to detach the work of art from the causal impetus, so it becomes self-contained, rather than being reliant on the audience's sympathy for the artist's peeves du jour. Julian Larnach's Flight Paths (having
- [KAMASI WASHINGTON](https://johnshand.com.au/kamasi-washington-2/) - Concert Hall, March 13 7/10 "We're going to go on a little journey together," Kamasi Washington told us at the outset. Nearly two hours later when that journey ended what had been striking about the trip was its the sheer scale. The LA-based tenor saxophonist called his 2015 magnum opus The Epic (which, at almost
- [ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA](https://johnshand.com.au/antony-and-cleopatra-2/) - The Playhouse, March 10, until April 7 4.5/10 Antony and Cleopatra is Shakespeare's most opulent play in terms of both scale and language. Yet its challenging, operatic scope is also a graveyard for actors and directors. Unfortunately this production adds tombstones to that crowded cemetery for Evans (directing for Bell Shakespeare), Catherine McClements (Cleopatra) and
- [Andrew Dickeson with Eric Alexander album](https://johnshand.com.au/andrew-dickeson-with-eric-alexander-album/) - IS THAT SO? (www.andrewdickeson.com) 7/10 I'd been listening to this for a while, trying to work out what was different. Eventually I turned to the liner notes and press release: it is an all-analogue, all-valve recording, made with the four players in the same room, without headphones. That's why it sounds different: the connection, the
- [Spyglass Gypsies album](https://johnshand.com.au/spyglass-gypsies-album/) - VOYAGES (spyglassgypsies.com) 7/10 Gypsy music is proliferating like a plague in Australia, the quality swinging between banal and sublime, with both camps including copyists and freer thinkers. That Spyglass Gypsies extricate themselves from the pack is largely thanks to their original songs. These come from all five members, and while each composer has differing quirks
- [THE BOOK OF MORMON](https://johnshand.com.au/the-book-of-mormon/) - Sydney Lyric Theatre, March 9 8/10 Had the creators Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone not called this The Book of Mormon, they could have called it Teeth. I remember those teeth when the Mormons came door-knocking in my childhood. They were as spectacularly white as their shirts, and seemed to loom at you
- [Linsey Pollak & Lizzie O'Keefe album](https://johnshand.com.au/linsey-pollak-lizzie-okeefe-album/) - DANGEROUS SONG BLUE (https://dangeroussong.bandcamp.com/) 8/10 This is different. Usually to be heard playing wind instruments of his own devising, here Linsey Pollak plays the sounds of endangered or extinct aquatic creatures via a digital wind instrument, the sampled sounds now controlled via his breath, lips and fingering. He uses looping to layer some of these
- [THE VAMPIRES](https://johnshand.com.au/the-vampires/) - Lawson Mechanics Institute, March 2 8/10 These Vampires are very much alive. A decade ago they were a little too close for comfort to the vein of Lloyd Swanton's world-beat band The catholics. Now they are as distinct from them as everyone else, using reimagined rhythms from the Caribbean and Africa on which to set
- [Errol Buddle: The Man Who made a Dent in US Jazz](https://johnshand.com.au/errol-buddle-the-man-who-made-a-dent-in-us-jazz/) - Few – if any – Australian jazz exports can rival the significance of Errol Buddle. The great multi-instrumentalist, who has died at the age of 89, enjoyed phenomenal success in the US in the 1950s, and was the first musician anywhere to use the bassoon extensively in jazz. Born in Adelaide in 1928, and sharing
- [JORDI SAVALL](https://johnshand.com.au/jordi-savall/) - Concert Hall, February 25 8/10 Recreating with "authenticity" music from before the recording era is fraught with peril. The older the music the greater the danger of misinterpreting notated intentions and of reverentially setting in stone what was actually as fluid as water. Catalan Jordi Savall's reputation as a preeminent performer of early music rests
- [The Marais Project album](https://johnshand.com.au/the-marais-project-album/) - SPINNING FORTH (Move) 8.5/10 Only two pieces on this enthralling album are genuinely "baroque", but the Marais Project's central instrument, Jennifer Eriksson's viola da gamba, is a machine for imbuing all it touches with that stately grace of the music of 300 years ago. Sumptuously recorded, its bass notes are as sonorous as the voice
- [SINGLE ASIAN FEMALE](https://johnshand.com.au/single-asian-female/) - Belvoir St, February 17, until March 25 7.5/10 We've all dined at somewhere like the Golden Phoenix: the suburban Chinese restaurant that doesn’t look promising, yet serves surprisingly good food. What we're not used to seeing is the Golden Phoenix depicted on our stages, which have been the domains of European – mostly Anglo –
- [John Scurry's Reverse Swing album](https://johnshand.com.au/john-scurrys-reverse-swing-album/) - POST MATINEE (Liosharecords) 7.5/10 Like revenge, art is sometimes a dish best served, if not cold, then certainly well stewed. Guitarist John Scurry, long a force in Australian mainstream jazz (and painting!), has waited a mere five decades to make his debut album as leader. The upshot is 17 original compositions distilled from across all
- [MAMMA MIA!](https://johnshand.com.au/mamma-mia/) - Capitol Theatre, February 15 3.5 Mamma Mia! is like a warm current of water on which you can happily float along, twirl gleefully about in the eddies of Money, Money, Money, Dancing Queen, Honey, Honey and the title song, and smile all the while. Stay in that carefree place and it's fairly consistent fun. Just
- [Chimerica](https://johnshand.com.au/3748/) - Roslyn Packer Theatre, March 4 7.5/10 A single man carrying two plastic shopping bags confronts the first in a column of tanks. The Tiananmen Square image spoke not only of individual frailty facing the clanking steel of monolithic power, but also of sufficient moral outrage to invert fear. Chimerica is the answer to some what-if
- [METAMORPHOSES](https://johnshand.com.au/metamorphoses/) - Old Fitz Theatre, February 10 6/10 Water: infinitely malleable and forever changing before our eyes. A pool of milky water occupies the stage and is central to Mary Zimmerman's lavishly theatrical Metamorphoses, a refreshingly ambitious work to see attempted in Sydney, where so many productions ignite our imaginations about as much as TV sit coms
- [The Thrillseekers album](https://johnshand.com.au/the-thrillseekers-album/) - JOHNNY SANTO (Tone Ranger) 7/10 Wow! If recorded sounds came any fatter than these they would have to be reclassified as obese. Jim Kelly – the fabled guitarist from Crossfire all those years ago – now plays producer and engineer in a studio he built near Lismore, and I suspect there are facilities that probably
- [AN ACT OF GOD](https://johnshand.com.au/an-act-of-god/) - Eternity Playhouse, February 6 6/10 Religion has to be humanity's single most catastrophic invention. With its decrees and wars measured in lives lost, children orphaned, women raped, bodies tortured and hearts wracked with guilt and malice, it makes greed, weapons manufacturing and even nuclear bombs look as benign as soup spoons. So writer David Javerbaum
- [Adrian Lim-Klumpes album](https://johnshand.com.au/adrian-lim-klumpes-album/) - YIELD (Off-Label) 8.5/10 If the knowledge that a solo pianist is playing a Steinway even infinitesimally narrows your idea of how this album may sound, forget it, because post-production treatments have been used in ways that are both disorienting and enchanting. It is like hearing a piano conversing with its own ghost. Adrian Lim-Klumpes has

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- [ALL RISE](https://johnshand.com.au/all-rise/) - Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, August 31 9/10 Many have tried, but no one’s succeeded like Wynton Marsalis. Collaborations between jazz musicians and symphony orchestras tend to see the latter obliged to play drab accompaniments, and the jazz players’ rhythmic fluidity stymied. Add a 100-voice choir – putting about 200 performers on the stage –
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