Tim Byrne

Sweeney Todd (Victorian Opera)

20 July 2015

In the argument over the programming of Broadway musicals by Australia’s opera companies, it is usually assumed that audiences know the difference between the two forms. But even superficial markers can be misleading. Bizet’s Carmen (1875) uses dialogue and song forms that are traditionally associated with the musical, but is classified as an

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Arts Highlights of the Year

by Robyn Archer et al. •

January-February 2015, no. 368

Leading arts critics and professionals nominate some of their favourite performances for 2014.

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Passion (Playhouse Theatre)

by Tim Byrne •

07 November 2014

Stephen Sondheim may be famed for his wit, but many critics over the years have lacerated him for it, finding in it proof of emotional frigidity or even callousness. Reaction to his work largely mirrors that of another revered auteur, Stanley Kubrick, who shares with Sondheim an exacting and interrogative attitude to humanity.

Letters to the Editor - November 2014

by Dennis Altman, Tim Byrne •

November 2014, no. 366

Intimate times

Dear Editor,

Tim Byrne, in his review of Meredith Burgmann’s Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO Files badly misread my complaints about my records. He writes that my [and Gary Foley’s] ‘movements were intimately tracked’. The whole ...

Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO files edited by Meredith Burgmann

by Tim Byrne •

October 2014, no. 365

Tim Byrne reviews 'Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO files' edited by Meredith Burgmann

The German film The Lives of Others (2006) ends with a coda, set after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in which protagonist Georg Dreyman is finally allowed access to the volumes of secret files collected on him by the Stasi. Apart from the sheer number, what strikes Georg most is the utter banality of the information contained within. It is a familiar reaction among the contributors to Dirty Secrets, a collection of essays from prominent Australians on the receipt of their ASIO files.

Meredith Burgmann, who has edited these essays, is refreshingly honest as to her aims. ‘I wanted to look at the effect of spying on those who have been its targets,’ she says in her introduction. Delightedly she adds, ‘We are finally writing about them instead of them writing about us.’ The lingering outrage underpinning the book rarely subsides.

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THE ART OF NICK CAVE: NEW CRITICAL ESSAYS edited by John H. Baker

by Tim Byrne •

April 2014, no. 360

Tim Byrne reviews 'The Art of Nick Cave', edited by John H. Baker

Lecturing in Vienna in 1999, Nick Cave outlined his theory on the nature of the love song. ‘Within the fabric of the Love Song … one must sense an acknowledgement of its capacity for suffering.’ Unless pain and longing simmer beneath the surface of the music, it isn’t a love song at all. What Lorca referred to as ‘duende’ and Cave himself calls ‘an inexplicable sadness’ at the heart of the love song is evidenced in even the most cursory sampling of his oeuvre. From the despairing lilt of ‘Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere’ to the apocalyptic cheer of ‘Straight to You’, the darkness and desperation of love are constants in his work.

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