Culture

  • Howard loses more than an election

    SYDNEY — It is generally taken for granted that plays with a political message are as dull as dishwater. This generalisation could not be further from the truth when dealing with the works of Dario Fo, Italy's Nobel Prize-winning playwright. In

  • Balzac: an unwitting revolutionary

    Balzac: A BiographyBy Graham RobbPicador, 2000521pp., $20.78 (pb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON For Honore de Balzac, a self-proclaimed defender of "throne and altar", to have had all his works placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by the Pope in 1864

  • At the rough edges of society

    Borderlines: three short playsGriffin Theatre CompanyStables Theatre, SydneyUntil 21 AprilRiverina Playhouse, Wagga WaggaMay 3-12 REVIEW BY BRENDAN DOYLE There were a lot of young people — always a good sign — in the audience crammed into the

  • Le Carre comes in from the cold

    REVIEW BY ALISON DELLIT The Constant GardenerBy John Le CarreHodder & Stoughton, 2001508pp., $49.95 (hb) "The subject of The Constant Gardener is the dilemma of decent people struggling against the ever-swelling tide of heedless corporate greed,

  • Arab film festival to challenge stereotypes

    SYDNEY — The first Sydney Arab Film Festival will showcase international and local contemporary films, as well as experimental and documentary films. The festival will include classic Arab films loved and watched by

  • Williamson resorts to dildos

    REVIEW BY MARK STOYICH Up For GrabsBy David WilliamsonSydney Theatre CompanyDrama Theatre, Sydney Opera HouseUntil April 21 Up For Grabs is ostensibly about the art market, but it is full of the usual gossip about the Sydney social types that

  • Depleted uranium: the invisible war

    Invisible War: Depleted Uranium and the politics of radiationSBS, April 3, 8.30pm REVIEW BY JIM GREEN Invisible War, produced by the French company Canal Plus and released in February last year, investigates the use of depleted uranium (DU)

  • A shameful crime

    The Laramie ProjectBy Moises KaufmanBelvoir Street Theatre, SydneyUntil April 15 REVIEW BY MARK STOYICH In 1998, near the town of Laramie in the US state of Wyoming, two young men tortured a young gay man, Matt Shepard, and left him for dead. The

  • The Allies' role in the Holocaust

    Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans KnewBy Richard BreitmanPenguin, 2000325pp., $21 (pb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON It was "the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world",

  • Correction

    The article on the Guerrilla Girls in the last issue of Green Left Weekly mistakenly stated that Guerrilla Girls' spokesperson "Frida Kahlo" had been interviewed while in Sydney. In fact, Kahlo was in New York. She spoke to Green Left Weekly's Zanny

  • Guerrilla Girls: coming to a cinema near you

    The Guerrilla Girls were formed in 1985 after the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a blockbuster exhibition of 169 of the world's "most significant contemporary artists". All the artists whose work was on display were white, and

  • Australia and the atomic empire

    Australia's Bid for the Atomic BombBy Wayne Reynolds Melbourne University Press, 2000218pp, $32.95(pb) REVIEW BY JIM GREEN It has been known for many years that Australian governments considered, and pursued, the development of nuclear weapons