Despite a certain personal discombobulation - finishing a novel will do that to a woman - Ms TN has been having a fine time at the theatre in the past week. And hearing of much more that I'm not seeing, what with the Next Wave Festival flinging open its doors to what many people are saying is a very high quality program that is practically compulsory for theatre nerds. Crazy times, guys.

Last week the MTC and the Malthouse both opened hotly anticipated studio shows - Marius von Mayenburg's The Ugly One at the Lawler Studio and Declan Greene's Moth at the Tower. Both are stunning productions - my very brief Australian review is here, but I hope to get more considered responses up on the blog in the next few days.

Meantime, our Australian representative in Paris, Daniel Keene, has been making waves. The season of his play Scissors, Paper, Rock, which opened at the major Paris theatre La Colline on May 5, has completely sold out, and a couple of days ago it received a rave review in Le Monde. (The link is to a Google translation, which has its own peculiar grammatical pleasures.) Reading through the translatese, critic Fabienne Darge speaks of a "masterly simplicity" created by the "minimalist music" of "this amazing Australian author". Am I a proud spouse? Indeed I am!

And an update: Direct your browsers this instant to George Hunka's fascinating review of David Mamet's new book of essays, on Superfluities Redux.