Tamsin Carroll belts one out in Dusty: The Musical

Troy Dodds at AussieTheatre.com has an engaging rant about the “jukebox musical” genre, of which Dusty: The Musical (recently doco’d to death on ABC TV) is the most recent Australian example:

Australia has been dealt some incredibly bad musicals over the last five years – musicals that are “passable” when it comes to viewing, but certainly don’t provide the magic of a Broadway show, or the even the excitement that Australian theatre provided in the pre-jukebox era. The jukebox musical has always existed – but the last five years has seen an explosion of them and it’s about time we ended this awful era that is in no way engaging a new generation. Going to the theatre now doesn’t provide the magic that once was experienced when the lights went down, the orchestra started playing and the curtain went up. …

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Are birds better conversationalists than humans? Why the cover illustration?

Some Troppodilians may be interested in this New York Review of Books review of a book du jour entiled On Conversation: A History of a Declining Art by Stephen Miller.

Though this is far from ‘must read’ matreial, I think the general subject is an interesting one. The decline of the art of conversation – and most particularly the art of listening is a mark of our times I think – though listening is hard and not many of us are much good at it.

Courtesy of Slashdot, there’s a new documentary on open source and free culture featuring various leading lights – most particularly Laurence Lessig and Richard Stallman. Go see a trailer here. Looks interesting. It’s odd that they haven’t ‘open-sourced’ the doco itself, allowing a full viewing (at least in ‘low-res’ on the net or by podcast). Perhaps they will after its had its first screenings in cinemas around the place.

Jacqui Stockdale, The Nature Maker. Courtesy Art Gallery of NSW.

The Art Life has a long-ish post reviewing the Wynn, Sulman and Photographic Portrait Prizes (decided at the same time as the much more famous Archibald Prize for portraiture).   Actually, although TAL has some interesting comments on the Wynn and Sulman, he/she spends most time reviewing the Photographic Portrait Prize (apparently mostly because it’s the only one of the three for which the Art Gallery of NSW  makes available  copies of images to reviewers).

Here’s  how TAL summarises the Portrait Prize selection  and deescribes the above arresting image:

In this year’s finalists there were plenty of tricky images of well known people, gallerists, actors, musicians and self portraits, but few actually provided something beyond the obvious. One image that did go further was Jacqui Stockdale‘s portrait of fellow artist Kate Rohde, the sculptor/installation artist who makes elaborate installations of faux fur animals in faux museum settings. There’s something unnerving about the way Stockdale captures Rohde, a playful innocent sort of gaze with the devilish creature she’s gently stroking in her hands. The tree fronds in the backgrounds are taken from an early European painting of the Australian landscape, a subtle and genuinely amusing reference to the fantasy element of Rohde’s own work and its links back to the earliest Colonial art.

The whole review is worth reading.

The House of Pain

Shortly, the Waratahs will be  playing the Highlanders at the House of Pain, possibly in the rain, and I’m praying that they won’t  fold again.

Having raised our hopes this season, for many a good reason, now that they’re in Dunedin, it’d be just like the Tahs, to become fallen stars.  

May the boys play  with wings,  and ensure every tackle stings,  to become the provincial kings. Go, just go, you bloody good things!

Update:   Supertahs indeed! 20-3! You beauty! This was a memorable performance. The Tahs had excuses to burn. It was an overseas game, where winning  is  the rare pearl of world rugby. Terrible weather disrupted  our timetable and our preparation. We were up for a letdown, after standing over the Brumbies and up to the Crusaders. Everything wouldn’t be lost; and  a defeat  would be just like the old Tahs.

Yet they played like legendary heroes from the ancient days of yore, in treacherous conditions, every damn glorious one of them, heart and soul, dedication, pride, maturity, capability, even friggin’ Sailor. The question must be asked. Are we standing on the precipice of a  shift in the planetary provincial rugby plates? Does the golden era of the Tahs now spread  out beyond the horizon before us, a vision without end?

Just dreamin’

Technical note only:  the Tahs’ line-out dominated in magnificent style,  their  breakdown play was world class, and, in particular, each and every front-rower played like a real life champion. I hate to criticise when things generally are going well, but it cannot be denied that our scrum  got hammered in the second half. Wallaby nightmares. Discuss.