Julien Baker cancels tour with Torres to ‘focus on her health'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Age
3 days ago
- The Age
Nicole Car's Rusalka glows with moonlit grace and tragic depth
Andrew Moran and Sian Sharp inject rustic simplicity and humour, Sharp singing with incisive brightness. A different level of comic subversion comes from Ashlyn Tymms as the witch Jezibaba. With shopping trolley and glittering accessories, she pollutes both the human and natural world to feed acquisitive consumption, and Tymms sings her mocking incantations with penetrating brittleness. Renee Mulder's costumes range from pallid fish-like grey for the water dwellers to meretricious colour for Jezibaba. Her Wood Sprites, brightly sung by Fiona Jopson, Jennifer Bonner and Helen Sherman, lumber comically with branches for arms and bad hair. Conductor Johannes Fritzsch mines the symphonic richness of the orchestral textures expressively though he, and the Opera Australia Chorus articulated crisply the distinctly Czech snaps in the rhythm. At the end, Giles has Rusalka ambiguously turn towards Jezibaba, undermining Dvorak's redemptive message with a hint that malignancy is constantly shape-shifting. Annie Baker can make a play out of minimal words and minuscule gestures. The effect borders on shock because we're so used to huge emotions with titanic consequences. You have to readjust, put your antennae on higher alert. Baker wrote two of this century's best plays: The Aliens and, above all, The Flick, about the death throes of a cinema. If Circle Mirror Transformation isn't in that league, it's because her sheer daring doesn't always succeed. On the page, the play sometimes presents the merest sketches of the characters, and at other times, she exercises infinite precision about what happens and, most particularly, what doesn't happen. If the spaces between notes define a rhythm, the spaces between words or events can define the feel as well as the pace of a play. Just as Beckett famously used a metronome when directing a Happy Days production, so one can imagine Baker writing Circle Mirror Transformation with a stopwatch by her side. The setting is a weekly adult acting class in a Vermont community centre, run by Marty, admirably played by Rebecca Gibney after a 20-year hiatus from the stage. Marty doesn't use texts, but rather games and improvisations. Her four students are James, her husband (Cameron Daddo), Schultz, a recently divorced carpenter (Nicholas Brown), Theresa, an ex-actor (Jessie Lawrence), and high school student and wannabe actor Lauren (Ahunim Abebe). We come to know them by the way they engage – or don't – with Marty's games, and by how they interact before, during and after these sessions. Baker manages to squeeze fulfilled and unfulfilled romances into her scenario, but they are merely cross-hatched; we do the colouring-in. Poor Lauren was hoping to do some 'real' acting before auditioning for a West Side Story production, and she speaks for us when she doesn't 'get' some of the perverse and even irritating games. It's in the repetition of these that Baker dares us to stay on board, the experience being akin to one of those elaborate jokes where you pray the pay-off is worth the wait. For me, she stretched our patience. In this Sydney Theatre Company production directed by Dean Bryant, the casting and acting are largely on point, with Gibney and Daddo bringing an easy charisma to bear that suits their likeable characters. Schultz and Lauren suck us in, too, with Abebe's portrayal of the latter replete with her toes pinching each other as she initially feels excruciating discomfort in participating (just as Gibney beautifully 'conducts' her exercises with tiny hand gestures). Theresa is the least interesting character, and Lawrence does well to keep us engaged.
Perth Now
3 days ago
- Perth Now
Paris mural honours legacy of Josephine Baker
Paris is reviving the spirit of US-French entertainer and civil rights activist Josephine Baker with a new mural. Fifty years after her death, Baker now gazes out over a diverse neighbourhood of northeast Paris, thanks to urban artist FKDL and a street art festival aimed at promoting community spirit. Born in St Louis, Missouri, Baker became a megastar in the 1930s, especially in France, where she moved in 1925 as she sought to flee racism and segregation in the United States. In addition to her stage fame, Baker also spied on the Nazis for the French Resistance and marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr in Washington. She died in Paris in 1975. ''I feel moved and I feel happy, because this is part of a memory of my mother," her son Brian Baker told the Associated Press at the unveiling of the mural on Saturday. He was one of 12 children Josephine Baker adopted from around the world that she called her "rainbow tribe" and what her son called ''a little United Nations". The mural of Baker, meant to symbolise freedom and resistance, is among several painted in recent days in the neighbourhood and organised by the association Paris Colors Ourq. The artist FKDL said he focuses on ''bringing women back into the urban landscape". "Josephine Baker has always been, for me, a somewhat iconic figure of that era. Both wild and free-spirited, but also deeply connected to music, musicals, and dance," he said. ''She was an extraordinary character, an incredible woman." Baker was the first black woman inducted into France's Pantheon, joining such luminaries as philosopher Voltaire, scientist Marie Curie and writer Victor Hugo.
News.com.au
11-07-2025
- News.com.au
‘Atrocious': Bride horrified by epic wedding cake fail
There's nothing like a good baking fail that can always manage to make you laugh. There's something about the hope and expectation of the 'before' photo that really sets you up for the inevitable disappointment of the 'after'. A woman took to the internet recently to share how she gave her mum the job of organising her wedding cake, but was left downright shocked when she saw what she had ordered – just moments before the big day. Expectation vs. reality She explained on the baking subreddit: 'My mother volunteered to pay for our wedding cake. 'I tried to find something simple so it wouldn't cost much … She swears she didn't make it but I'm not convinced'. The first photo shows the inspiration she gave her mum – a beautiful, two-tiered cake with white icing and autumn-themed floral decorations. The second photo, however, looked almost certainly homemade. Not only was it nothing like the original, but it was also quite messy, with melting icing, tiers that looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and it even appeared as if it had been dropped. Adding to the eyesore, there were no decorations or flowers in sight – just an empty, sad-looking cake with some parts of sponge not even covered in icing. Commenters weigh in People were just as shocked – with one person saying 'Nothing prepared me for this'. 'Consider my flabbers gasted,' joked another. Someone else mentioned they'd seen hundreds of cake fails over the years, but this one was up there with the worst. Others agreed the cake was definitely homemade. 'Just made something that looked like this a few weeks ago with two boxes of cake mix and a can of icing,' they said. 'I can't believe she went ahead with it. What a monstrosity.' Another joked it was the 'Temu' version of a cake. 'I just spat my drink out,' said a different user, while another called it 'atrocious'. What happened here? After the post went viral, the bride clarified a few things. She insisted it was actually from a bakery, as her sister claimed she was with her mum when they picked it up. Meanwhile, the mum did admit to doing the drizzle herself since it was missing when she collected it. But thankfully, the cake didn't make it to the wedding reception. After seeing it, the sister rushed to another shop to get a cheesecake for the newlyweds to cut and some doughnuts for the guests to eat. 'I am thankful for her quick thinking,' the bride revealed. 'She saved the day'. Far from a bridezilla, she also admitted that she managed to laugh off the situation and didn't let it spoil the day. The price of wedding cakes It's little wonder why some people try and cut costs when it comes to wedding cakes. The average price of a wedding cake in Australia is between $500 and $700, depending on the design and number of guests. For more elaborate cakes from well-known companies, prices can easily exceed $1500.
