John Shand Posts

August 17, 2014 / Features - Archive

Sandra Bates will step down as Ensemble Theatre’s artistic director at the end of 2015, having clocked up 30 years in the job. Her successor, the current co-artistic director Mark Kilmurry, will be only the third incumbent since Hayes Gordon founded the company 1958. Bates is primarily quitting because she…

August 15, 2014 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

Eternity Playhouse, August 12 Improvising musicians do it routinely: take a short motif and investigate all its possible convolutions, like looking at a gemstone from all angles. Playwright Nick Payne applies this device to his dazzling writing of Constellations. The one-act two-hander explores the relationship between Marianne (Emma Palmer) and…

August 13, 2014 / Album Reviews - Archive

9 Dead Alive (Rubyworks)  Rodrigo and Gabriela are back to just using two acoustic guitars. They have sought to extend their palette by compositional ideas, instead, the nine pieces being homages to assorted pioneers, geniuses and philanthropists. The Soundmaker is for Antonio de Torres Jurado, the nineteenth-century Spaniard who reinvented…