5-Step Guide to Being German Rosie O’Grady’s Twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger is famous for two reasons. The first is Being and Time, his 500-page exploration of the word “being” (the major argument of which runs that in order to understand anything properly, one must first understand who is doing the understanding). The second thing […]

As I arrived at the Circus Theatre for Hidden Agenda, my first-ever Fringe World event, knowing little more than what could be found in the festival program about the band with a penchant for light rock, blues, funk and jazz from eras past, I had no idea what to expect. Entering the Circus Tent, the […]

Pretending Things Are A Cock De Parade Teatro 2, Perth Cultural Centre A pubescent male joke about penises continued into a career – how could this be anything but vulgar and offensive? In his one man show Pretending Things Are A Cock, and its associated blog, website and book, Jon Bennett has found a way […]

Soul to Soul (I Have A Dream) The West Australian Idolize Spiegeltent Friday, January 25 In a scene from The Sapphires Chris O’Dowd’s character Dave explains the difference between rock and roll and soul music, emphasising the latter’s sense of determination to fight for a way out of the shadows of the blues and stressing […]

The musician and songwriter Joanna Newsom once described her harp as an artificial limb, speaking what the rest of her found to be beyond words. Confirmed by an epilogue of quotes from Hans Christian Andersen, Claude Debussy and Primal Scream, this performance by classical harpist Catherine Ashley and jazz harpist Michelle Smith is an unconventional exploration of music as language. It would be straightforward to placate the audience’s desire to see an elegant, passive mermaid be derailed by a creature from Hades. Yet despite a name that suggests a fight and an abundance of red fairy lights, the performance does not descend into a cliché of heavenly and diabolical drama.