Theatre

Stephen Page has known acclaim and accolades as head of Bangarra Dance Theatre. Off stage he’s had more than his fair share of personal tragedy. Here, he talks to about family, his latest show, Dark Emu, and the power of language to change Australia. “Through this symbolism of visual art and story, under that came this kinship idea of connection to land, people and story. That’s why lore and customs exist.”

Solid acting from Marta Dusseldorp and her supporting cast at MTC can’t save A Doll’s House, Part 2, an unnecessary and misguided sequel to Ibsen’s masterpiece.

Eddie Izzard burst onto the comedy scene in make-up and heels, later proving his chops as a dramatic actor. On the eve of the release of The Flip Side, set in South Australia, he talks about taking risks, being gender queer and his newest passion – running for British parliament. “I want people, moderate people like me, to get politicised, because it’s going to get rough and we’d better work out how we’re going to make it work. It’s up to us.”

Actress-singer Christie Whelan Browne catapulted to the attention of theatregoers at a young age, untrained but bursting with talent. Here, she talks about fate, timing and discovering a love of musical theatre. “I was the clown, I really made people laugh. Boys told me I was ugly … I used comedy to fit in.”

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ much-hyped Gloria is well executed by MTC, but its pretensions outweigh its eminence.

A tricked-up Andrew Lloyd Webber version of a timeless classic has the viewer realising they’re not in Kansas anymore.

She’s a writer whose plays have been widely lauded by critics but largely neglected by the mainstream. Now Patricia Cornelius’s work will take its place on the main stage. “It sounds so hifalutin, but my ambition was really just to be able to create great work … that I felt soared. It never entered my mind that it would happen in the mainstream.”

While the cast of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical fails to deliver an uplifting experience, Bernadette Robinson, in her solo performance of The Show Goes On, is transcendent as she channels the great women of song.

As Elizabeth LeCompte’s theatrical take on a controversial 1971 debate about women’s liberation heads to the Sydney Festival, the director talks about art and feminism, then and now. “We thought [The Town Hall Affair] was too urbane and distant for most people to be interested in,” she says plainly, but “things just broke around it”.

John Bell delivers perhaps his finest performance as a man suffering dementia in Florian Zeller’s masterpiece The Father.