Reviewed by Samantha Fordham

Tony Burgess’s Pontypool Changes Everything charts the disturbing terrain of Ontario as a deadly virus takes hold, turning people into slavering zombie shells of what they once were. The novel, in two sections, follows a number of characters as they witness the horror of the apparently unstoppable virus take hold around them and, then, finally, find themselves overcome. Burgess’s novel has been re-released some eleven years after it first hit the shelves in order to coincide with the release of the film Pontypool—a loose adaptation scripted by Burgess himself.

reviewed by Kimberly Chandler 

Clinton Caward is a fresh, contemporary Australian voice whose first novel, Love Machine, is a voyeuristic trip into the day-to-day lives of the people of King’s Cross. We meet prostitutes, drug addicts, schizophrenics, perverts, petty criminals and Spencer, the main character and graveyard shift worker of a standard King’s Cross sex shop.

reviewed by Danielle Mulholland 

In Below the Styx, Martin Frobisher is on remand in prison for bludgeoning his wife, Coralie, on the head with an epergne, a table ornament used to suspend delicacies or fruit.  Whilst in jail, Frobisher becomes obsessed with the life and writings of Marcus Clarke, a writer who died over a century previously.  Frobisher’s musings over Clarke’s writings and his ongoing references to the weapon of choice, the epergne, throughout the novel, are a philosophical reflection of the evolution of violence.  Fundamentally, he muses on whether he is actually guilty or innocent, despite his acknowledgement that he inflicted the blow, as it was a cathartic act fated to happen.  Marcus Clarke’s works are the instruments he uses to convince the reader.

reviewed by Luise Toma 

Everything with this review went wrong. It is hideously late and only because I somehow managed to misplace a pretty large, bright pink book in my overcrowded book piles. Although I felt like a complete donkey at first, the misplacement and re-discovery of Scarygirl seems strangely appropriate in retrospect.

reviewed by Kimberly Chandler

The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman’s debut novel, is a nicely woven exploration into the worlds and private lives of the staff and owners of an international newspaper based in Rome.

Reviewed by Di Morris

Have you ever heard that song by Charlene which goes ‘I’ve been to paradise......But I’ve never been to me.’? Certainly there is travel in Exposure: A Journey, wonderful descriptions of far places, extreme climates and exciting tales of risky ventures, but it seems to me that the longest journey in this book for Joel Magarey, journalist and writer, is to the centre of himself.

Reviewed by Alison Clifton

What I always look forward to in a verse novel is the beauty and depth of poetry mixed with the range, plot and drama of the novel. The blurb of Ken Bolton’s The Circus seems to promise this, claiming that the verse novel creates 'a contemporary idyll of troubled beauty and humour'. Unfortunately, I find both lacking in this mundane picture of a run-of-the-mill circus.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Emanuel

A dressy crowd showed up midweek to catch THAT Production Company’s current show, The Vagina Monologues on at Brisbane’s Twelfth Night Theatre (a charming theatre space perched on the fringe of the city at Bowen Hills). Arriving early, I was pleased to join the throng of patrons enjoying a relaxed pre-show drink in the outside courtyard. How civilised.

It gave me time to recall a different show a long time ago that brought a completely different part of human anatomy to my attention. I was about thirteen when my mother took my sisters and I to the city, to see a production of Hair, just after it had opened. I’m not sure whether my severely Catholic mother knew there were ‘rude’ bits in it, but when the cast divested their clothing and pranced naked into the audience I did notice that her lips had taken on that peculiar pursed look that one might have after sucking on a lemon. The nuns had warned us against the evils of men and sex, but that night I was singularly unimpressed. On seeing a man’s penis for the first time, flopping uselessly about, out of time to the music, my only thought was, ‘What on earth could they do with that?’

17 April to 23 May.

Followed by tour to the Canberra Theatre Centre from 9 June 2010.

Sydney Theatre Company presents Honour, Joanna Murray-Smith’s acclaimed dissection of a marriage, which since its premiere in 1995 has become something of a modern Australian classic winning over audiences in London’s West End and on Broadway. Lee Lewis directs a stellar cast comprised of Paula Arundell, Wendy Hughes, Yael Stone and William Zappa at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House from 17 April (opening 22 April).

After thirty-two years of happy marriage, Honor (Wendy Hughes) and George (William Zappa) have achieved it all; a successful marriage, a loving daughter (Yael Stone), a beautiful home. However, the family is to learn of the appalling fragility of love when a beautiful young journalist (Paula Arundell) enters their lives.

17 APRIL - 30 MAY 2010

Written by: DAVID HARE / Directed by: SAM STRONG
 
Capitalism works when greed and fear are in the correct balance. This time they got out of balance.

Too much greed, not enough fear.

David Hare's latest play The Power of Yes puts the giants of finance on stage in their own words, for a terrifying and wickedly funny account of the global financial crisis. Sam Strong makes his Company B Belvoir directorial debut, with this witty explanation of where it all went wrong.
 
Written in London in 2009 as a timely response to the crisis, this isn't so much a play as a jaw-dropping account of how, as the banks went bust, capitalism was replaced by a socialism that bailed out the rich alone.