Author Archives: lisathatcher

March 20

The Drowsy Chaperone – Squabbalogic raise the standard for independent theatre. (Theatre review)

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The Drowsy Chaperone Squabbalogic Theatre Company (buy tickets here) March 14 – April 6 2014 At its surface, The Drowsy Chaperone is an almost flawless piece of theater into which Squabbalogic manages to incorporate a low-budget-ness, seamlessly including what they can’t afford into its identity. It’s very intelligently interpreted, working to its limitations by choosing […]

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March 17

The Armstrong Lie – Alex Gibney tells the truth while Lance Armstrong continues the lie. (Film review)

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Something has gone slightly askew with The Armstrong Lie and its difficult to know exactly what, though the relationship between Alex Gibney and Lance Armstrong, something Gibney talks up much stronger than Armstrong, appears to be one of personal disappointment on Gibney’s part, and par for the course on the part of Armstrong. Lance Armstrong, […]

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March 17

Heaven Help Us – Keith Bosler offers up a guilty little pleasure. (Theatre review)

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Heaven Help Us Gherkin Global Bordello Theatre – Grab Tickets here. Keith Bosler, playwright, performer and all round funny guy, takes advantage of a thematically familiar plot to playfully wise-crack in Heaven Help Us, which at its heart is nothing more than a fun night at the theatre unapologetically staged in a time when artsy […]

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March 14

Stop Kiss – Anthony Skuse and the Crises of public love. (Theatre review)

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Stop Kiss Unlikely Productions 5 March to 22 March – Tickets available here.  In his directors notes to Stop Kiss, Anthony Skuse cites Roland Barthes A Lovers Discourse: Fragments (Noonday Press, New York 1978) to further explain Callie’s position in Stop Kiss as a catastrophe – a crises of immediacy that means through one event, […]

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March 13

Wadjda – Haifaa al-Mansour uses a cliche to access an entirely foreign world. (film review)

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If there is a problem with Wadjda, it is the Western gaze, and watching it one gets the niggling feeling that has something to do with its remarkable permissions. The film is famous for being, not just the first full feature film shot in Saudi Arabia, but the first shot by a woman in that […]

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March 13

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein – Genesian Theatre electrifies the brilliant novel. (Theatre review)

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Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein Genesian Theatre 7 March – 12 April. Tickets available here. Photograph credits to Mark Banks There has been much talk of Frankenstein lately. A new screen production, and the Ensemble theatre bringing its stage play version to life in 2013. Now, timed perfectly to offer an intelligent alternative to the latest film […]

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March 12

Seven Kilometeres North-East – Kym Vercoe takes annecdote to experience. (Theatre Review)

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Seven Kilometers North-East Kym Vercoe Seymour Centre – 8-22 March Tickets here.  One of my favourite films is taken from a play (I’m one of those annoying people who don’t mind film that looks like theatre) Six Degrees of Separation, a film I love mostly because of Ousia Kittredge’s final speech (from the Fred Schepisi […]

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March 10

Tidy Town of the Year – 3 Quacks ask what really makes a town ugly? (Theatre review)

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Tidy Town Of The Year 3 Quacks in association with the Sydney Independent Theatre Company Old Fitzroy Theatre 4-22 March – Tickets here. The Tidy Town of the Year competition is a Victorian initiative designed to give rural communities an opportunity to improve the aesthetics of their town in line with the overall Keep Australia […]

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March 10

Toute la mémoire du monde (1956) – Alain Resnais short film on Memory that predicts our need for Big Data.

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Alain Resnais had a lifetime obsession with time and memory, two of the great pillars of what makes us human. This film, made in 1956 and only twenty minutes long, is an excellent vignette in Resnais evocative and thrilling film making (he brings to perfect life why we get excited when we walk into a […]

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March 09

20 Years ago Today: Four Weddings and a Funeral. (Film Review)

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Civil partnerships (inaccurately titled “gay marriages” – they were neither exclusively gay, nor carried the same legal rights as marriages) were passed in an act of parliament in the UK in 2004, almost exactly ten years after Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film that buried it’s progressive themes under a bumbling British wit that […]

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