John Shand Posts

May 18, 2019 / Album Reviews - Archive

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…

May 16, 2019 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

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…

May 15, 2019 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

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…