“This hour-long promenade performance has its audience free to roam like wide-eyed shoppers. Scenes take place around and among us. The eye-catching percussionist Claire Edwardes and bass clarinet player Jason Noble play a mashed-up score of real, toy and cleverly invented instruments – interspersed with in-store announcements.”
Jason Blake, Sydney Morning Herald (Bargain Garden)
“Personal favourites this year? Tim Watts’s irresistible The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Underwater Explorer; the Abbey Theatre’s pitch-black shaggy dog story Terminus; Theatre Kantanka’s satirical happening, Bargain Garden; Kevin Spacey’s tricky Dicky III (it got better after interval, Bob Carr, it really did); the STC education arm’s Ruby Moon; the company’s stirring The White Guard.”
SMH Theatre Highlights by Jason Blake
“As I left with an uncanny desire to bake spiced cookies, I thanked these musicians for creating a space for this music to be heard, inhaled, versed, warped, wet, born, aired…Who needs drugs anyway? Just as Ensemble Offspring had assured us in its pre-concert hype, I’ve been changed by this music. New music isn’t what it used to be.”
Felicity Clarke, RealTime (Professor Bad Trip)
“Played complacently, these ferociously difficult works would probably have sounded excruciating. Under Roland Peelman’s focused direction, Ensemble Offspring’s razor-sharp precision, textural clarity, incisive attack and thrilling virtuosity created one of the most stimulating and challenging concerts I’ve heard in recent years.”
Murray Black, The Australian (Professor Bad Trip)
“The intimacy of the space and the relaxed commentary provided by the various performers combined to alleviate the formality that can sometimes squeeze the air out of similarly cerebral musical undertakings. Ensemble Offspring’s refreshing approach to a repertoire that is seldom heard in Canberra has much to recommend it.”
Daniel Sanderson, Canberra Times (Why Patterns)
