Opinion

Council has released its draft budget for consultation, with public feedback open until 29 May. For Lakeside Ward, the verdict is brutal: the budget offers next to nothing in 2026/27.

A local mother reports on how families are grieving the loss of their Snail Queen, even though it is only for a year or so. She’s hoping the upgrade will be an improvement but fears otherwise.

It’s love, ethics and neuroscience in Lucy Prebble’s high-voltage psychological drama The Effect, presented by Theatre Works until Saturday 18 April. Reviewer Olivia Di Grazia grapples with the side-effects of the staging.

As a little bonus for TWiSK subscribers, we’ve got some exclusive TWiSKy Bits you won’t find anywhere else. It’s not quite gossip, and it’s not exactly rumour either… let’s just call it Early Mail.

Theatre Works new staging of Tom Holloway’s Beyond the Neck, an emotionally resonant work based on testimony from those affected by the Port Arthur massacre. Marking 30 years since thirty-five lives were lost, this production assumes new relevance and poignancy in the wake of the tragic Bondi shootings. Review by Olivia Di Grazia.

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, the grand finale of Lawler’s legendary Doll Trilogy, is not just a poignant portrait of illusion and arrested development, but a tragedy tracing the transformation of vitality into mythology, tradition into prison, hope into despair. TWiSK reviews play three in the Trilogy.

Other Times, the second instalment of Ray Lawler’s monumental The Doll Trilogy, functions more as a bridge than a destination. It testifies to the disenchantment that often lies on the other side of adulthood. TWiSK reviews the second part of the Doll trilogy.

Not since 1985 has Ray Lawler’s The Doll Trilogy –the Australian classic Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and its later-written prequels Kid Stakes and Other Times – been staged in its entirety. TWiSK reviews Kid Stakes in the first of a trilogy of reviews.

Reviewed by Olivia Di Grazia for TWiSK. Playing at Theatre Works until 21 February.

Tradition and ambition rally for the win in Australian Open writes Olivia Di Grazia in her review of the latest Theatreworks production. Until 31 January at Theatreworks Acland Street.