Author: Nick Dale

★★★★☆ Neil Armfield’s revival of The Book of Everything at Belvoir St Theatre is a joyous, playful delight. It’s a totally refreshing production in a world full of endless digital noise, and a constant push for faster is better. Richard Tulloch’s adaptation of Guus Kuijer’s 2004 Dutch novel premiered on…

★★★½ Top Silk, David Williamson’s 1989 play revived at Ensemble Theatre Sydney, goes full ‘80s. There’s ambition, corruption, family drama, gloss and, of course, the shoulder pads. The play captures the gilded surface and corrupt underbelly of the decade in true Williamson form. Jane (Gordon) is a legal aid solicitor…

★★★★½ Jane Harrison’s Bennelong in London, directed by Ian Michael in its world premiere at Sydney Theatre Company, is a haunting, vital piece of truth-telling. It takes history off the museum walls and asks us to feel it in our bones.  In a cosy living room, actor Sebastian Anderson (Guy…

★★★½ There are moments in The Jungle and the Sea that crack right through you, that shake you out of the comfort of your theatre seat and into something devastatingly real. S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack’s epic companion piece to Counting and Cracking, now returning to Belvoir St Theatre, is drawn from real-life…

★★★★★ Happy Feraren’s Savior, now in its world premiere at Griffin Theatre, presented in association with Belvoir St Theatre, is a deliciously sharp, fiercely intelligent comedy. Intoxicating, fast-moving, the show is full of unique, clever theatrical devices that keep you leaning in. Drawing on her own time working for NGOs in…

★★★★★ Louise Fox’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds, now playing at Belvoir St Theatre, is a thrillingly vivid experience that whacks awake the senses. From the moment the lights go down, the theatre feels under attack. Ominous and eerie from the start, The Birds locks you in and holds you there, relentlessly. Based on du Maurier’s…

★★★½ There’s true power in dance. Its abandonment, its liberation. It brings us down to our primal senses and reminds us of the brief candle that is life. Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, directed by Isabella Milkovitsch at Sydney’s New Theatre, reaches for that power – and occasionally grabs it.…

★★★★½ The name alone has your head spinning with curiosity and perhaps slight trepidation of the journey you’re about to take. Now playing at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead conjures a visceral sense of imagery, and Eamon Flack’s adaptation more than lives up to…

★★★★★ Whether it’s Kim Carnes’ smoky Bette Davis Eyes or Joan Crawford’s notorious wire hangers, we’ve all absorbed the cultural echoes of these two screen legends. Now, Anton Burge’s highly successful play Bette & Joan takes us backstage on the set of the 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and into the…

★★★½ New York playwright S. Asher Gelman’s Afterglow arrives at the Eternity Playhouse in Darlinghurst after a Melbourne premiere season. Sleek, sensual and provocative, it’s a high-gloss production about the complications of polyamorous relationships and the messiness of love. Afterglow wastes no time, diving right into the physical. It opens…

Sydney Theatre Company’s revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart returns almost forty years after its Australian premiere in 1989. A political drama with a feisty, beating heart, it feels disturbingly relevant today. Set in early-1980s New York at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, the play follows Ned Weeks…

The Social Ladder, David Williamson’s newest play, has opened at Ensemble Theatre Sydney in a world premiere season. It’s a sharp, social satire that has you laughing one moment and squirming in your seat the next. A hilariously cutting look at our collective desperation to climb the ranks, Williamson’s new…

Dear Son opens on a familiar Australian setting. A soft sandy beach with a fire pit ready to burn, a beer-garden-like area with benches and a soothing sunset. Already there’s a sense of quiet reverence, and we’re ready to lean into the intimacy of shared stories. Adapted from Thomas Mayo’s…

‘Poppycock,’ ‘timorous,’ and ‘dead as a doornail.’ Who wouldn’t relish saying such phrases? Even better to hear them delivered by an uber-talented cast in Pleasant Laughter for the final season of 2025 at the New Theatre. A classic from the multi-talented, cultural icon Noël Coward, Present Laughter was written in…