A YOUNG director brings an inside view to the torment of his heroine in Elektra.

PYGMALION premiered in 1913, but if you changed it into 21st-century language it could have been written last week.

ROD Stewart began his two-hour set in fine form, but after a brief interval the show in Perth on Saturday was in trouble.

ANTONY Jay and Jonathan Lynn make a fair fist of inserting James Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby into the realpolitik of today.

LIKE a dog-eared copy of Playboy buried in a bottom drawer, Hall and Oates have been something of a guilty pleasure for a generation of pop fans.

OXYGEN masks, walking frames and maids in starched uniforms are not normally associated with Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

THE writer-producer of one of last year's top local films and an American cinematographer have been named as the victims of a NSW helicopter crash.

TWO hundred years after his birth the most famous 19th century English novelist continues to exert his spell, on stage, in books and on screen.

CHARLES Dickens could have no better interpreter of the women in his novels than Miriam Margolyes.

FOR many people, hearing the words "you have a brain tumour" means the end and not the beginning.

WARNING: Don't try to book a room on level 4 of the CTA in Martin Place between March 23 and April 22.

AN Aboriginal opera on the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall stage could be just a few years away if Rhoda Roberts' vision comes to fruition.

MARTHA Wainwright once pointed out to me that in many cultures it's an honourable thing to follow the family trade, even if that trade is music.

THERE'S sure to be more than competitive rivalry between rising young stars nominated for this year's $20,000 Telstra Ballet Dancer Award.

HOW do we remember and forget? And if you want to deliberately do either, could you?

ON the day of her sister's wedding, Scottish actor Cora Bissett got so drunk on Spanish wine she passed out in the outdoor toilet.

ALTHOUGH it has never been as popular as La Boheme, Tosca or Madama Butterfly, it can be said that Puccini's Turandot was his masterpiece.

HE'S back on breakfast radio and back on stage - it's shaping to be a big year for Tim "Rosso" Ross.