Then, allow yourself to be lured to the depths of a crazed composer’s mind in Symphonie Fantastique.

The Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici will energise the orchestra with Berlioz’s evocative cocktail of opium and desire and actor Robert Hofmann will set a nightmarish scene.

Between these killer works you’ll hear Ravel’s Tzigane, rapsodie de concert, as Hungarian violinist József Lendvay will hold you in the clutches of this spellbinding solo infused with a gypsy spirit.

Symphony Fantastic – Love, Lust and Madness
17 – 18 May 2024
Concert Hall, QPAC, Brisbane
www.qso.com.au

As You Like It is an adventure of the heart, a journey through a forest of poetry (and lions), and a tale of a love so grand all the rules are broken to win the heart of a boy. Passionate and disarming, As You Like It – one of Shakespeare’s most beloved romantic comedies – will be directed by Bell Shakespeare’s Artistic Director, Peter Evans.

Featuring an inspiring cast, including John Bell as the melancholic Jaques, in his final role with Bell Shakespeare as an Artistic Director, and the exuberant Zahra Newman (twice Helpmann Award nominated) as Rosalind.

Villains. Heroes. Wrestling. Cross dressing. And love at first sight. What’s not to love about As You Like It?

As You Like It – Bell Shakespeare
Sydney – 1-28 March – Sydney Opera House, Playhouse
Canberra – 7-18 April – Caberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse
Melbourne – 23 April – 10 May – Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio
www.bellshakespeare.com.au

A play about a sex blogger and a gifted novelist who collide between love and the digital age.

Their age, their writing style, their attitude toward personal privacy and just about everything else they are opposites, but each holds the key to what the other really wants — and needless to say, within minutes of meeting they’re at it like rabbits.

Veronica Neave as Olivia, is now working with preciousness on her second book but reluctant to let it loose on the cruel modern literary marketplace, she’s joined unexpectedly at her writer’s retreat by Thomas Larkin as Ethan, a blogger whose notoriety rests on his lurid online accounts of a year spent having sex with strangers.

Sex with Strangers faces the anxieties and the compromises by all writers in the digital age where traditional literary values are dying along with the print media, while readers gravitate toward the ephemeral, sensational world of blogging.

“No compromises. No second-guessing. No hopes. No expectations.”

Sex with Strangers
Wednesday 11 – Sunday 22 February, 2015
Brisbane Powerhouse
 www.brisbanepowerhouse.org