John Shand

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

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

KXT on Broadway, August 26 6/10 “When Equus leaves – if he leaves at all – it will be with your intestines in his teeth,” Dysart tells Alan at the end. Equus the play should have that effect on us, the audience, too. But here there were no gnawed vitals, and not even any tears.

21 Shepherd, August 28 9/10 Pianist Mike Nock’s first intimations of the Forgotten Love motif gave me shivers. Tears even welled in my eyes. Why? I was hearing live for the first time ever music from a record that turned my world upside down when I reviewed it in 1982. Impressionism and jazz had been

and This Is Lorelei, The Singer in My Band ★★★★ By the time his first official, label-anointed album came out in 2024, Nate Amos had done his 10,000 hours.

Go to latest Theatre: Joyful Noise ★★★★ The Greek Theatre, September 10, until September 19

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Hayes Theatre, September 2 7/10 Don’t you hate it when the career seas seem to part for some people, and they glide from pinnacle to pinnacle, with no fear of drowning in drudgery or obscurity? J Pierrepont Finch is such a person. While washing windows for a New York corporation, he reads a book called