Return to Perth

  I’ve never really appreciated F. Scott Fitzgerald’s  The Great Gatsby as “the best American novel ever written” but I was willing to take a chance on hearing a spoken word version of it in the Adelaide Festival. All 8 hours of it (starting at 2pm and finishing at 10.15pm with some breaks). Gatz was developed by the New York based Elevator Repair Company in 2006 and has been touring, with many of the same cast, on and off ever since. I went with no particular expectations having given myself permission to leave at any time if I was finding it tedious. And I didn’t. I stayed. I’m not in the same five star category as the Guardian reviewer but I did find it an absorbing work. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/mar/15/gatz-review-the-great-gatsby-performed-in-eight-and-a-half-hours-of-attentive-immersive-joy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other The most impressive element of the work was the performance by the lead actor Scott Shepherd playing the office worker who starts reading “The G...

Because Rottnest is so popular, you have to book 9 months in advance without really knowing what you're going to be doing then let alone what the weather might be like. We managed to get a three bedroom bungalow looking out over Geordie Bay in the hope that it would be warm and that Sebastian might be able to join us. He was far to busy with work and box-lacrosse referring in Melbourne and so we offered the spare room to our friend, Barry. He goes to the island whenever he gets a chance and so was a good guide to places and beaches that we hadn't explored in the past.  The weather forecast was rather dismal with temperatures in the low 20s and windy conditions but it was never enough to put us off either swimming or drying off lying on the sand afterwords. Geordie is one of Barry's favourite spots and I can see why. Walking distance to four good beaches, balconies looking out to the water, a shuttle bus to the main settlement, and a little supermarket and a cafe nearby. We ...

Luckily, I'm still on a few Opening Night lists although these days, because I don't expect to be, by the time the invitation arrives, I've already bought my ticket. But this wasn't the case with Disney's Anastasia presented at the Crown Casino theatre. I confess, it's not a musical I would have chosen to go to but when the opportunity presents itself, why not.  We started the night with some very glittery cocktails, alcoholic and non, crafted specifically for the show with the rich purple created by the addition of butterfly pea flower. And this helped us get through the night. It's not that there was a problem with the cast which featured the amazing octogenarian Nancy Hayes, the long limbed comedienne Rhonda Burchmore, and some younger folk with great voices. It's just that the music is rather bland. On the way home, we listed to a "best of" musical soundtrack on Spotify and I was reminded that what makes a great musical is the specificity o...

One of the films in this year's Perth Festival collection at the Somerville Auditorium was a documentary about Marianne Faithfull. I've dipped in and out of a being a Faithfull fan. I was too young to appreciate her early work in the mid-1960s, but discovered her with the album Broken English in 1979 which is full of strong, bold songs that still resonate with power 45 years later. After that, every so often I'd dip and out of her repertoire being fascinated by her album of the Romantic Poets, She Walks in Beauty (2021) and being in love with her reading of the letter at the heart of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's epistolary novel from 1782, Les Liaison Dangereuses. I've managed to track down what I suspect is an illegal recording of her reading it:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chhYlqRoJVs The book it comes from is an absorbing work which I read, day after day, on the beach during a Perth Summer holiday years ago. It's inspired all sorts of responses including...

On the one hand, I have no interest what so every about the lives of the rich and famous who thought that mixing with Jeffrey Epstein was a good thing. On the other hand, it's hard to avoid all the press coverage about this ongoing story. So what's the best balance?  I decided that reading Virginia Roberts Giufree's autobiography Nobodies Child  would give me one important perspective. And it did. Although written with help, her voice reaches out with such clarity after years of abuse and then years of standing up to her abusers. A tough read but if you're up to it, I recommend it. After that, I needed to find a good analyst recommended by believable sources to make sense of her story. Hamish Macdonald, one of the hosts of Radio National's Global Roaming  suggested an interview on the Ezra Klein Show and as I've always found Klein's choice of interviewees interesting, that's where I went. He interviewed Anand Giridharadas a journalist/sociologist of Amer...

  After writing a post about the Iranian war yesterday, I was feeling up to watching what I knew was going to be a difficult documentary. Some people weep through it. Some people object to it's manipulation of the death of young girl. And others, like me, say you must watch The Vocie of Hind Rajab. It's the story, the real story, of the death of 5 year old Palestinian girl in January 2024 and the attempts by Red Crescent staff based in the West Bank (because there's nowhere safe for them to be in Gaza) to negotiate safe access for an ambulance, that's only 8 minutes away, to rescue her. You may have seen commentary on social media at the time. The genius of the Tunisian film maker,  Kaouther Ben Hania, is that she uses the recorded voice of the child and even some of the original recording in the Red Cresecent phone room. A child who is hiding in a car with 6 dead relatives. A child who is in kindegarden. A child who is afraid of the dark. A child whose voice finally go...