Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (MCPP) 2025

Photography Review | Brian Rope

Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (MCPP) 2025 | Various artists

Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre (MRAC) | 14 August – 11 October 2025

As always, it is somewhat difficult to review an exhibition where the artworks are from numerous artists, and the only connection is that they have been selected as finalists in a competition. So, I’ll follow my practice of discussing just a selection of the exhibits, starting with the adjudicator, Antares Wells, awarded pieces.

The winner of this year’s $30,000 is a woman wearing a choker is walking in a crowd, 2024, an inkjet print on cotton rag, inkjet print on clear film 80.5 x 59.4 cm by Johanna Ng. It will be acquired and join all previous MCPP winners in MRAC’s permanent collection of post-war contemporary paintings, ceramic and photography. The prizemoney amount puts this event amongst the major Australian photographic contests.

The work traces what the artist describes as “the parallel erasure of Asian identities in computer vision and network television.” She captured screenshots of Asian bodies then photographed them into new compositions. In this winning image, an Asian woman becomes “a woman” and “a woman” conjures the image of a white one. 

Johanna Ng - a woman wearing a choker is walking in a crowd, 2024

Wells also named two Highly Commended works. They were Miho Watanabe’s Awareness of Between-ness: A Day After My Father’s Departure – Self-Portrait in His Room on His Chair, 2025, and Mungo Howard’s Studio Window, 2025. Watanabe’s artwork is delightful – a self-portrait, taken the day after his father died. Transferred onto silk using a phototransfer technique, the image will gradually fade, mirroring how memory dissolves with time and evoking the quiet passage between presence and absence. I hope I’ll have an opportunity to view this artwork again when that fading has advanced significantly. 

Miho Watanabe - Awareness of Between-ness: A Day After My Father’s Departure – Self-Portrait in His Room on His Chair, 2025

Mungo Howard - Studio Window, 2025

Let me now comment on just a few of the other finalist works in the exhibition. Hilary Wardhaugh is amongst them for the second year running; this time with her work Dad’s Last Swim, 2024.

The artist statement tells us that before scattering her dad’s ashes into the waves at his favourite beach she made a lumen 'portrait' of him using the ashes. She then washed the paper in the sea, leaving sand where his ashes had lain. Wardhaugh always remembers “Dad being sandy and salty at the beach after swimming.” I have no doubt her family will enjoy this clever artwork about Dad for all time. 

Hilary Wardhaugh - Dad's Last Swim, 2024

I must mention Angus Brown’s Torqued Image Object 1, 2024. How many of us who print our images have mounted them on a rolled aluminium sheet? I certainly haven’t. Brown has done that with this pearl-finished silver gelatin print. He tells us that “In an effort to stretch the conventions of image-making outside the flat pictorial plane, I employ the operations of sculpture into the field of photography……. Maintaining the logic of image making, whilst speaking the language of sculpture, these blended outcomes have come to be known as ‘image-object’.”

Angus Brown - Torqued Image Object 1, 2024

There are many other interesting artworks in this exhibition, including Carolyn Craig’s Re/mediate, 2024, which is screen-printed charcoal dust on paper. And Tamara Voninski’s Chemo Decay: Sun Ritual, 2025, a photographic lightbox. She exposed images from her chemotherapy-induced dreams to the same chemo cancer drugs that drip into her veins during treatment.

Carolyn Craig - Re/mediate, 2024

 

Tamara Voninski - Chemo Decay: Sun Ritual, 2025

When reviewing the 2024 MCPP, I said that I considered it to be the best one yet overall. This 2025 exhibition is considerably better again.

All the selected finalists and their accompanying artist statements can be seen in a virtual gallery here. However, it would be a much better experience to visit the MRAC and see the finished artworks up close if you possibly can do so.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

CANBERRA CIRCUS FESTIVAL 2025

 

Canberra Circus Festival. 

Artistic Director Tom Davis.  May Wirth Big Top on Chifley Oval. September 26-October 5 2025. Bookings and Information: https://www.canberracircusfestival.com.au/

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

Wide eyes, loud laughter and deafening applause welcome the Canberra Circus Festival back to the May Wirth Big Top on rthe Chifley Oval behind the Chifley Shops for a week of thrills, spills and sheer delight. The Canberra Circus Gala (h) Festival director Tom Davis with an army of artists, trainers and volunteers once again serves up a week of performances that showcase the talents of young performers from Canberra’s own Warehouse Circus, emerging artists, amazing professionals and superstars of tomorrow. It is an eclectic company of aerialists, jugglers, acrobats, clowns and daredevils, a smorgasbord of talent that would tempt any captivated child to run away to join the circus or at least rock along to the festival and remember the time they dreamed of being a circus performer.

The opening Gala one night stand of snapshot entertainment, emceed adroitly by Canberra clown Pablo presented short pieces from the various shows that would be performing during the week. Circus performers from Warehouse Circus and interstate whet the appetite with a programme of skills and thrills. There was spontaneous applause as the opening act amazed audiences with a skillfully choreographed display of Devil Sticks by a sunglassed cool quartet of guys. Georgia’s Marble Act was a unique act of balancing and juggling, while Estelle, Jade and Charlotte of all female act Out of Bounds displayed the risky routine of the Juggle Stick juggling. There were aerial acts by Lucy and Issy, and Jamie and Claire, and a gymnastic act with blocks by Banjo and Lizzie  from  The Waiting Place. A young prize winning aerialist 'Bendy Gigi' showed how grace and artistry on the rope could stop the breath while a NICA hopeful  showed what it takes to qualify for a life on the hoop. The evening’s entertainment ended with a heart-stopping balancing act on a tower of chairs which one on top of another led the performer Hamish to the ceiling. His control was precise and there was no need for the precautionary rope that would have left him twirling in mid-air had the chairs collapsed.

Of course there was the dropped juggling ball, the mistimed error, the slip up and the  ever-present possibility that something could go wrong. That is the stuff of suspense and surprise and the audience applauded success and slip up in equal measure. This was a night of fun and appreciation of remarkable feats of skill and devotion. The Gala(h) gives circus goers a taste of the festival’s offerings. It may lack the glitz and glamour of the bigtime shows. It may not have the sophistication of the top pro shows. What it does have is the commitment and the passion and the emerging talents of the young performers with family fun entertainment on offer and the passion to present the possibility to peers that they too could revel in the marvellous world of the circus.

The hour passed quickly as Pablo cleverly emceed the night with a combination of audience participation and introduction of each act. His rapport with the audience was instinctive and instantaneous and the night passed in a flash of utter enjoyment.

Each festival, Warehouse Circus shows that it is an organization that continues to develop the skills of young performers under the guidance and training of professional circus artists. This year became not only a demontsrtaion of skills, but an injection of theatrical flair as in the case of Laurel and Hardy like duo Jamie and Claire on the trapeze. This was a touch of comic ingenuity. Warehouse Circus returns with school holiday entertainment that will delight young and old alike.

  

TRENT DALTON'S LOVE STORIES - Canberra Theatre.

 

Adaptor: Tim McGarry – Director/Dramaturg: Sam Strong – Assoc. Director: Ngoc Phan

Choreographer, Movement Director, Intimacy Co-ordinator: Nerida Matthaei

Set & Costume Design: Renee Mulder – Lighting Design: Ben Hughes

Video Design: Craig Wilkinson – Composition & Sound Design: Stephen Francis.

Canberra Theatre 24 – 27 September 2025.

Opening Night performance on 25^th September reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

Jason Klarwein - cameraman, Antony Dyer -Bryan Probets - Ensemble - in 
Trent Dalton's Love Stories.

Part dreamscape, part musings on his own marriage, Trent Dalton’s Love Stories is a stage adaptation by Tim McGarry, Fiona Franzmann and Dalton himself of his best-selling book which resulted from two months in which Dalton famously sat on a street corner in Brisbane asking strangers to tell him a love story.

Sam Strong’s remarkable staging embraces a surprising amount of dance, choreographed by QL2 Alumni Nerida Matthaie, in which characters, words and movement entwine as a ballet with words in which a succession of stories becomes a rapturous idyll illustrating the many forms of love.

Only Jason Klarwein and Anna McGahan as characters Husband and Wife, (presumably Dalton and his real-life wife, Fiona), and Rashidi Edward, as a delightfully whimsical character called Jean Benoit, perform continuing roles.

Jason Klarwein - Rashidi Edward - Hsin-Ju Ely - in Trent Dalton Love Stories.

Elsewhere, Valerie Bader, Hsin-Ju Ely, Joss McWilliam, Ngoc Phan, Bryan Probets, Will Tran, Jacob Watton between them portrayed the myriad of real-life characters and their stories, drawn from the interviews conducted by Dalton during his two-months street corner sojourn.

Two of the couples whose stories are featured in this adaptation were in the Canberra Theatre audience on opening night, and judging from the shrieks of laughter and murmurs of recognition from surrounding audience members, it was obvious that many were identifying with the experiences being portrayed.

Of course, there are many other elements of Strong’s staging that make it so compelling. Among them, the use of a huge video screen to capture audience members settling into seats pre-performance, and their responses to their previously submitted definitions of love.

Will Tran - Jason Klarwein - cameraman Antony Dyer in Trent Dalton's Love Stories.

Then, during the performance this screen was utilised to display stunning real-time close-ups of the actors captured by an on-stage video-cameraman, Antony Dyer, revealing the affecting connection of the actors to their characters. So engrossing were these images that it was easy to forget the skill of the actors in creating a myriad of characterisations with only minimal use of props or costume changes.  

The only disappointment on opening night was that not all the actors had adjusted their performances sufficiently to the size of the Canberra Theatre auditorium. Their over-reliance on their personal mikes to capture what they were saying, resulted in much of Dalton’s dialogue being lost, which combined with the peripatetic staging, made it difficult to keep track of some of the stories.

Hopefully this will have been corrected for later performances, because even with this blemish, judging by the vociferous applause at the end of this performance, many in the audience had identified strongly with the stories represented in this superb production.  

Jason Klarwein - Will Tran - Anna McGahan - Bryan Probets in "Trent Dalton's Love Stories".

                                                                  Images by David Kelly

     This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au

  

2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize | Various Artists

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra | 16 August – 12 October 2025

Then touring nationally - Cairns, Mount Gambier, Geraldton & Horsham | between 6 December 2025 & 26 January 2027

Now in its 18th year, the National Photographic Portrait Prize supports and celebrates photographic portraiture in Australia. There are many great works in this exhibition of finalists, only some of which I will discuss here.

The winner for 2025 is Untitled #01 (from the series Code Black/Riot) 2024 by Hoda Afshar, a Naarm/Melbourne-based visual artist whose practice focuses on the intricate relationships between politics and aesthetics, knowledge and representation, visibility and violence. All participants in the series were invited to use a means of their own choosing to conceal their identities while making a personal statement. The three First Nations youngsters in this image chose to conceal their faces to avoid being identified by the youth justice system.

Untitled #01 (from the series Code Black/Riot) 2024 © Hoda Afshar

 

When we viewed the exhibition, both my companion and I observed that there were numerous images of (and by) members of the LGBTQIA+ and Indigenous Australian communities. Amongst them is Hilary Wardhaugh’s Zev and Nick, 2025, their relationship revealed partly by the image and also by the accompanying artist statement. Mary-Lou Orliyarli Divilli’s Langi, 2024, is a portrait of her niece Violet, which “personifies the pride that goes with belonging, skills, knowing about your heritage and living within your culture.” Gerwyn Davies is a queer artist who works across photography, textile, and costume. He takes a “performative approach to photographic portraiture, exploring self-representation, camp aesthetics and kitsch Australiana.” His Bather, 2024, is a delightful example of that.

Zev and Nick, 2025 © Hilary Wardhaugh

Langi, 2024 © Mary-Lou Orliyarli Divilli

 

Bather, 2024 © Gerwyn Davies

T W Baker’s image Waiting on the Wet, 2024 has an interesting back story. It was taken in between massive afternoon downpours. A roll of Italian, medium-format cinema film jammed in Baker’s camera, but he managed to salvage and store it in a light-tight pouch away from the brutal sun and humidity. Two days later that pouch was opened by a curious member of the Darwin Airport security team. A week later, after processing the film in Sydney, it appeared that the harsh Top End of Australia had left its mark.

Waiting on the wet, 2024 © T W Baker

Jennie Groom’s Lola in utero, 2024 is a very different image of pregnancy. Indeed, a most unusual portrait. It is both clever and effective, a fine monochrome study.

Lola in utero, 2024 © Jennie Groom

 

Laura Zviedre’s Hands, 2024 is a delightful portrayal of a child - one of his hands holding his parents’ hands whilst his other one rests on his mother’s growing belly. It is all about love.

Hands, 2024 © Laura Zviedre

Back in 1995, Raoul Slater and his father Peter produced a lavishly illustrated book, Photographing Australia's Birds. More recently, he has been working in the medium of wet plate collodion, the pre-eminent photographic technology of the 1860s. His selected finalist work Muni, 2024 is a fine example of that medium.

Muni, 2024 - Raoul Slater

There are two other artworks that I found myself studying for lengthy periods of time. Michael Cook’s Individuation – Persona 2024 and Dida Sundet’s Philomela 2024. Cook’s works interrogate the legacy of colonisation and invite viewers to experience roles in reversal and histories re-written. This particular artwork ponders his life and that of his friend and artistic collaborator, Joey Gala. It recreates a scene from Greco-Roman mythology that depicts rape and is my favourite work in the exhibition. Through feminist intervention, it “alters perspective and challenges established gendered tropes.” Again, there is so much to see – movement in the woman’s arms, cyanotypes in the fabric, a toy held by a hand under the food-laden structure, and much more.

Individuation - Persona, 2024 © Michael Cook

Philomela, 2024 © Dida Sundet

Overall, this is a splendid exhibition, perhaps the best selection of finalists yet in this annual major Prize. Whilst we do not know what other works were amongst the thousands not selected (except for our own if we entered), the judges are to be commended for their 48 choices – all of which can be seen online here.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

TRENT DALTON'S LOVE STORIES

 

Love Stories by Trent Dalton. Adapted for the stage by Tim McGarry. Directed by Sam Strong

A QPAC Brisbane Festival Production. Canberra Theatre Canberra Theatre Centre September 24-27 2025. Bookings: 62752700.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

                                 

At a time of global conflict Trent Dalton’s Love Stories provides a welcome panacea. Dalton's collection of uplifting accounts of the extraordinary lives and loves of ordinary people offers a salutary affirmation of the healing power of Love and the promise of Love’s triumph over the struggles and the challenges that life presents. In bringing Dalton’s stories to the stage, the Queensland Theatre Company and Brisbane Festival with writer Tim McGarry and director Sam Strong have staged a joyous celebration of Love’s enduring triumph over adversity and suffering.

                                                                                      

In his search for a meaning for Love, Dalton, equipped with the gift of an old Olivetti typewriter sat on a corner in Brisbane’s CBD and invited passersby to stop and tell him a story about the role love played in their lives. The result was astounding. Dalton’s simple request to be told a love story released a flood of emotions. Some warmed the heart. Some were told through a stream of tears. Some were filled with regret, some with hope. Some faced hardship and pain but with a courage to overcome life’s hardship.

What emerges is the resilience of the human heart and in the labyrinth of human experience the many meanings of Love and the conquering spirit of Love that can bring joy, bring hurt, fill the heart with unbridled joy, reveal the truth and heal the spirit. Each life is extraordinary ,each experience unique; each expression of love revealed in different ways. Dalton’s characters are real people. Their understanding of Love is defined by their experience. The way in which love shapes their life is real and different. It is the fear felt by a parent who must let his daughter lead her own life. It is the love that gives strength to a woman to rebuild her life after the devastating floods. It is the love of a grandmother for a grandson or the painful love of separation to allow an actress to follow her dreams. In McGarry’s sensitive and loving adaptation it is also the love that must prevail in his private life. It is the love that every member of the audience will recognize, though each experience will be their own. It is this power of identification that makes Dalton’s novel, McGarry’s adaptation, Strong’s direction and the company’s performances so successful. The use of videos to project in close up the people on the rear screen of the Canberra Theatre gives a deeply personal effect to each character’s story.

One is moved to tears by Josh Creamer’s account of the impact of the Stolen Generation and domestic violence on his people. Now a barrister, his story inspires with the account of his mother’s survival and admittance by her son to the Supreme Court after attaining a law degree. This and the story of Rochelle’s triumph over her heroin addiction lend deeper meaning to the power of Love. A pelvic huig session has the audiemce in hysterics. Love is in the tears that fall and the laughter that rings out acrposs the air. The late John O’Hagan’s esteemed science career could find no specific definition for Love. As the song says “Love is in the air, everywhere you look around.”  

At the beginning of the performance the audience is reflected on the large screen and people’s definitions appear on the screen. They have been collected from a range of people in the ACT, Bungendore, Googong and interstate. At the end of the show, in an unashamedly sentimental act, the drummer, who serves as a narrator/philosopher opens a door onto a scene of Lake Burley Griffin. Love is where the home is. And it is Love that must heal the rift between Dalton and his wife, brought about by his obsession. And it is Love that will make that healing possible.

 

The production closes with a dance of celebration to the wonder of  Love. Love Stories is a testament to Dalton’s talent to touch the human heart and reveal Love’s many meanings. It is a triumphant celebration of resilience and optimism in the face of adversity. Strong’s effervescent production fills the heart with profound joy and an enthusiastic cast play out  Dalton’s scenarios with fervour and relish.

Directed by Sam Strong. Additional Writer Fiona Franzmann Associate Director & Ensemble Member Ngoc Phan Choreographer & Movement Director Nerida Matthaei Composer & Sound  Designer Stephen Francis Lighting Designer Ben Hughes Set & Costume Designer Renee Mulde Video Design & Cinematographer Craig Wilkinson Intimacy Coordination Nerida Matthaei and Michala Banas   

 

CAST

 

Rashidi Edward – Jean Benoit

Jason Klarwein – Husband

Anna McGahan – Wife

Valerie Bader – Ensemble

Hsin-Ju Ely – Ensemble

Joss McWilliam – Ensemble

Ngoc Phan – Ensemble

Bryan Probets – Ensemble

Will Tran – Ensemble

Jacob Watton – Ensemble

Antony Dyer – Camera Operator

  Production shots David Kelly

 NOTE: I reviewed this production of Love Stories at the Adelaide Festival in March 2025. This review is of the Canberra production on the Canberra Theatre stage.

TRENT DALTON'S LOVE STORIES

 

Additional Writing and Story: Trent Dalton and Fiona Franzmann

Directed by Sam Strong

General Management by Alex Woodward and Sophie Watkins for Woodward Productions on behalf of Brisbane Festival and QPAC

Canberra Theatre, Canberra Theatre Centre to 27 September

 

Reviewed by Len Power 25 September 2025

 

‘Can you please tell me a love story?’ Journalist, Trent Dalton, spent two months in 2021 gathering stories on his sky-blue 1960s Olivetti typewriter, on a prominent street corner in Brisbane’s CBD. Speaking to Australians from all walks of life, he asked them that one simple thing. Published in 2022, his collected ‘Love Stories’ has become a much-loved best-seller.

Produced by the Brisbane Festival and QPAC, the book is now on stage in a highly imaginative and unique production with a cast of 11.

Before the play begins, the theatre auditorium’s seats are seen in a live onstage projection. It’s a bit disconcerting suddenly seeing yourself larger than life sitting there. It’s a clever idea, reminding us that the play’s content has come from members of the public.

For lovers of the book, the content of multiple love stories comes as no surprise. All aspects of love are presented, many joyful and happy as expected, but there is sadness and heartbreak, too. Beautifully played by the cast, there is an extraordinary depth in their performances. In many cases, it’s gestures not words that are moving.

Jason Klarwein and Anna McGahan give fine performances as the journalist and his wife. The project of gathering love stories causes them to examine their own relationship. Rashidi Edward is Jean Benoit, a delightfully cheeky character who slips in and out of the action unfolding on the stage.

The 8 member ensemble play multiple characters of the stories.  Some we get to know very well as the stories unfold. With no program or photographs, it is not possible to single out individual actors who deserved praise. All were effective in their roles.

As well as the fine acting, the strength of this production is in the staging by director, Sam Strong. The use of video and projection, both live and pre-recorded, is fresh and imaginative. You quickly forget that it’s performed mostly on a bare stage with minimal props.

With it’s striving to present the voices naturalistically, there were times where the dialogue was too quick to catch what was being said and at other times the actors spoke so softly that they could not be heard at all, even though they were miked. Maybe this aspect would be better in a smaller auditorium that the Canberra Theatre.

As the 16^th century French writer, Rabelais, once said, ‘Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.’ This charming production showed that his words still hold true today.

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

 

PETER/WENDY

 

Peter/Wendy by Jeremy Bloom. Based on JM Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy.

Directed by Rachel Pengilly. Composer and sound designer. Shannon Parnell. Movement director and Stage Manager. Hannah Pengilly. Set and costume designer Helen Wojtas. Lighting designer Jacob Aquilina. Fight director Wajanoah Donohoe. Intimacy coordinator  Chipz. Ribix Productions and Lexi Sekuless Productions. The Mill Theatre. September 3-27.2025. Bookings:info@ribixproductions.com.au. www.milltheatreatdairyroad.com

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

If you believe in the magic of theatre then clap your hands loudly for Ribix Productions’ cast and creatives of Peter/Wendy. For the production is indeed magical. From the moment we step into the theatre, we find ourselves in a wonderland, a cabinet of curiosities, in a world of Victoriana. Members of the cast approach asking for happy thoughts that can then be written on the wall. The whole theatre comes alive with the wonder of the imagination. Wendy lies Ophelia like on a bed, covered with a floral designed quilt. Designer Helen Wojtas has turned the theatre into a tapestry of wonderment. Shannon Parnell’s music complements with the whimsy and charm of her composition.

 

Mark Lee (Smee), Heidi Silberman (Hook)
Veronica Baroulina (Wendy)

I left the theatre with the happy thought that Jeremy Bloom has opened my eyes with his adaptation of the iconic Peter Pan tale of the boy who never grew up. Where I might have once regarded the story of Peter Pan, Wendy and the Lost Boys of Neverland as a childhood fantasy story in Rachel Pengilly’s production at the intimate Mill Theatre I became transported to a darker, deeper world of complex emotions. Bloom has stripped back J.M.Barrie’s adventure to key moments that plunge us into a shadowy world of dreams and desires. The beloved characters are still there. Peter (Joshua James), Wendy (Veronica Baroulina), Mr. and Mrs. Darling (Mark Lee and Heidi Silberman), Tinkerbell(Chipz),Tiger Lily (Sarah Hartley) the Lost Boy( Phoebe Fielden), Smee (Mark Lee)  and Captain Hook, comically sporting a coat-hanger for a hook (Heidi Silberman). There are still the thrills of flight, Wendy’s kidnap, Peter’s battle with the dastardly Hook and his bungling mate Smee and Tinkerbell’s death by poison until an audience, believing wholeheartedly in fairies, clap their hands at Peter’s bequest to bring the loyal, yet jealous Tinkerbell back to life.

 

Sarah Hartley (Tiger Lily) and 
Lost Boy (Phoebe Fielden)

What makes Bloom’s adaptation more evocative is the perceptive insight into human frailty. Pengilly’s direction is mercurial, capturing Peter’s perplexed defiance, Wendy’s naive innocence, Tiger Lily’s bravado, Tinker Bell’s fear of rejection and Mrs. Darling’s motherly despair. The action moves quickly, too quickly at times. There are moments when the magic needs to linger still a little longer, transporting us through fairy lights to the stars, imbuing us with the haunting other-worldliness of Neverland. 

Pengilly’s mission is to provide opportunities for young emerging actors to work with more experienced performers on projects that will encourage a pathway to the profession. In this Australian premiere, professional and amateur merge seamlessly in Bloom’s reimagined version of Barrie’s Peter Pan. Here the cast convincingly suit the action to the emotion and the emotion to the action as the audience is transported into the world of memory and experience to reflect on the nature of childhood, the bond between a parent and child, the wonder of imagination and the peril of fear. And then there is the eternal conflict between good and evil where good must always triumph. More than ever I am reminded in Bloom’s version of the import of JM Barrie’s classic children’s story and Pengilly’s lucid theatrical interpretation wonderfully captures the feeling that the story of Peter Pan, Wendy and the Lost Boys of Neverland is a timeless cautionary tale for every generation.

Wendy (Veronica Baroulina), Tinkerbell (Chipz) and
Peter Pan (Joshua James) in Jeremy Bloom's Peter/Wendy

Director Pengilly and her cast and creatives have transformed the Mill Theatre into an immersive  fable. From whimsy to excitement, from adventure to reflection, from suspense to enlightenment, Ribix Productions Peter/Wendy is a feast of entertaining delight.

Photography: Darkhorse Creative

True West - Ensemble Theatre

True West by Sam Shepard.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, September 8 – October 11, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 21

Playwright: Sam Shepard
Director: Iain Sinclair; Assistant Director: Anna Houston

    Cast
Mom - Vanessa Downing
Austin - Darcy Kent
Saul Kimmer - James Lugton
Lee - Simon Maiden

Set & Costume Designer: Simone Romaniuk
Lighting Designer: Brockman; Sound Designer: Daryl Wallis
Dialect Coach: Linda Nicholls-Gidley; Fight Director: Scott Witt
Stage Manager: Christopher Starnawski                                Asst Stage Manager: Bella Wellstead  Costume Supervisor: Renata Beslik

By arrangement with Music Theatre International (Australasia)

95mins (no interval)    Recommended for ages 14+
 

 Photos by Prudence Upton

Mom - Vanessa Downing, arrives home unexpectedly

Saul Kimmer - James Lugton,  Lee - Simon Maiden confront Austin - Darcy Kent
about doing a movie script-writing deal

______________________________________________________________

Donald Trump said today, in what should have been a solemn commemoration of the life and shooting death of Charlie Kirk, that he disagreed with Kirk on one point – that Charlie never hated those who opposed him. “He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them,” Trump said of Kirk. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry,” Trump added. “I am sorry, Erika”, speaking to Kirk’s grief-stricken wife. [independent.co.uk]

What’s worse is that Trump sounded as if he was making a joke of the core American default state of mind – violence in word and deed.

Sam Shepard understood it was not a joke when he wrote True West in 1980 – nearly half a century ago.  Though the play is famous, I’m embarrassed to say that I had known nothing about it before seeing Ensemble’s presentation.  For the final fifteen minutes and for long after leaving the theatre, I was literally in a state of shock.  

The performances by Darcy Kent and Simon Maiden, directed with such accurate precision by Iain Sinclair (whose work I saw in his younger days in his Elbow Theatre, here in Canberra) was quite extraordinary, achieving all, perhaps even more, than Shepard could ever have wished for.
 

 

Lee confronts Austin with the toast made in toasters Austin has stolen
to satisfy Lee's earlier challenge that the intellectual Austin couldn't do practical things.

Lee teases Austin with the keys of Austin's car

 

 

Which, on reflection, makes his play as important today, here in Australia, as it was in his America.  Shepard said [ http://www.sam-shepard.com/truewest.html ] "I wanted to write a play about double nature, one that wouldn't be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels like to be two-sided. It's a real thing, double nature. I think we're split in a much more devastating way than psychology can ever reveal. It's not so cute. Not some little thing we can get over. It's something we've got to live with."

But what Donald Trump and this frightening production shows is that True West is powerfully symbolic and metaphorical precisely because it is more than a mere taste of what it feels like to be two-sided.  The most awful feeling in the play is at the moment when the two brothers are at the point of killing each other as their Mom arrives home unexpectedly from what she had hoped would be a holiday.

She doesn’t seem really surprised to find her house almost destroyed in their drunken mayhem. It’s just something she’s got to live with, apparently.  Just like we have to live with Trump’s hatred which will tear the whole world apart.

 

Austin has lost his sense of propriety, and now behaves like his profligate brother Lee
shortly before their Mom arrives home.

 

As I searched for others’ views, I couldn’t do better than this, from Misha Berson written in 1997:

"'True West' isn't just a combustive slam dance of warring brothers. It also animates the psychic struggle of self and shadow self, and it makes vivid the unbridgeable split in the American West mythos between unfettered individualism and mainstream success, wide open space and subdivided wilderness. The play is inconclusive. It offers no healing of such divisions, no integration. It just lays out its contradictions with high-voltage dramatic force. It rocks, and reverbs."   ...Misha Berson, Seattle Times theater critic.

30 years later, we – in Australia – on social media and in the face of destructive climate change which we have caused ourselves;  do we not see that contradiction between unfettered individualism (in Lee) and the insistence on mainstream success (in movie producer Saul Kimmer), and between the wide open space of the natural world and the subdividing of the wilderness?

The shooting of Charlie Kirk has filled our news with arguments about political violence and gun control, as the Minister for the Environment struggles to control the expansion of the gas industry which has already awfully damaged the ancient heritage of Murujuga in Western Australia.

While a “sovereign citizen” has gone bush after killing police in Victoria – the Australian version of Sam Shepard’s characters (and apparently his own father) going to the desert to escape social responsibility.

Ensemble’s True West is quite simply a fantastic production, but be prepared for its powerful emotional effect on a personal level, and for the truth of its story on the wider social level.

Definitely not to be missed.  This is theatre art at its best.