Books & arts
19 September 2024
An immense database of early modern plays reveals “a veritable avian community, a magpie nest, each writer borrowing from each other”
Books & arts
4 September 2023
The many lives of Noël Coward, playwright, composer, director, actor and singer
Essays & reportage
13 June 2023
How closely was Barry Humphries’s least domineering character based on ex–second world war servicemen?
Books & arts
11 October 2022
Kath Kenny’s intergenerational account of a key moment in Australian theatre
Books & arts
1 December 2021
Despite his critics, David Williamson created a remarkable body of popular work
Books & arts
5 November 2020
Books | Are Australians unusually prone to bad language?
Essays & reportage
28 October 2020
The playwright and screenwriter’s widely praised memoir returns to print
Books & arts
2 June 2020
Did Australian drama really go missing during the 1960s, as the standard accounts of theatre history assume?
Essays & reportage
7 May 2020
Does our pandemic shed new light on the playwright and his work?
Books & arts
26 February 2020
Theatre | Zoe Caldwell, who died last week, was the second Australian to perform Medea to wide acclaim
Essays & reportage
10 December 2019
Inspired by Nellie Melba, Judith Anderson carved out a career on stage and screen
Books & arts
6 August 2019
Theatre | A new staging of Oriel Gray’s The Torrents allows its ideas to shine
Books & arts
12 July 2019
Books | Emma Smith’s twenty-first century reading of the bard is open-minded and open-ended
Books & arts
20 June 2019
Cinema | To mine Shakespeare’s life and work successfully, filmmakers need to find something new
Essays & reportage
29 October 2018
Forty-five years ago, Sylvia Martin was among the actors who performed in the earliest productions at the Sydney Opera House
Books & arts
5 October 2018
Do Sydney’s theatre audiences yearn for the city of old?
Essays & reportage
6 June 2018
A wedding, four plays and a TV series — do the British have something to teach us about scrutinising power?
Books & arts
3 May 2016
Cinema | Has any other film resonated across the decades in so many cultural fields? Brian McFarlane investigates the Brief Encounter phenomenon
Books & arts
5 November 2015
Books | An enormous number of talented actors and directors have taken on this most difficult of theatrical challenges, writes Brian McFarlane, and a new book…
Books & arts
15 September 2015
Theatre | A new production of Aeschylus’ Oresteia has urgent contemporary relevance, writes Stephen Mills in London
Books & arts
25 May 2015
Books | David Thomson’s exploration of acting is never less than gripping, writes Brian McFarlane. But his implied question never quite gets answered
Books & arts
19 May 2015
Extract | After decades of stage and screen success, John McCallum and Googie Withers struck out in new directions in the late 1960s, writes Brian McFarlane
Books & arts
2 October 2014
Brian McFarlane revisits Chekhov’s remarkable play, on screen and away from Russia
Books & arts
23 September 2014
Jonathan Croall’s new book reveals a talented researcher and writer at work, says Brian McFarlane
Books & arts
26 April 2014
In London, Brian McFarlane reviews three valiant attempts to make the transition from celluloid to the theatre
Correspondents
31 May 2013
In London, Brian McFarlane reviews three recent stage productions
Books & arts
19 March 2013
Sylvia Lawson on the ABC’s triumphant return to the Opera House
Correspondents
25 June 2012
Brian McFarlane reviews a classic theatrical revival, a new play paired with an old one, and a musical adapted from a film for the stage
Books & arts
7 July 2011
Brian McFarlane reviews a perceptive biography of actor-director-manager John Gielgud
Podcasts
30 June 2010
John Bell talks to Peter Clarke about acting, King Lear and the Bell Shakespeare Company