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This year, dating apps died. What's next doesn't have to be scary

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

Sydney Morning Herald

This year, dating apps died. What's next doesn't have to be scary

When Selani Adikari's 10-year-long relationship with her school sweetheart came to an end, it was more difficult than she had anticipated. But that's less about saying goodbye to her first love and more to do with unexpectedly having to navigate Australia's brutal dating scene for the first time at 27. 'It was a very different world,' says Adikari, who had already met her former partner when Tinder was launched in late 2012, revolutionising how a whole generation embarked on relationships. 'We were friends first before we started dating when we were so young … I never went through a dating phase of trying to meet people outside my circles.' What Adikari has discovered as a bachelorette is something shareholders of Match Group – owner of Tinder, Hinge and Bumble, which dropped from $US3.75 billion in revenue in 2015 to $US2.08 billion in 2024 – are fretting over. Singles, due to unsatisfactory algorithms, safety concerns, a 'gamified' swipe-based match process, general fatigue or otherwise, are feeling the need to break up with dating apps. But the exodus offline is not the be-all and end-all solution. Rather, it's exposed another obstacle the modern lovelorn have to climb in their quest to settle down. 'People are hesitant to walk up to someone new and strike up a conversation – you kind of just stick to who you know,' says Adikari. The Sydney-based project manager finds dating apps time-consuming and impersonal, but with her friends already spoken for and a general lack of spontaneous face-to-face socialisation, there haven't been many opportunities to organically expand her pool of prospects. 'It's so much easier to hide behind your phone now than go up to somebody in person and take a risk.' Loading The lost art of the approach Heterosexual courtship in Australia has taken many different forms, but what remained consistent across Regency-era promenades, Blue Light discos, radio classifieds and beyond was public performance. Until the age of the internet. 'It's a very modern thing to think of courtship as something that happens privately between people,' says Dr Esmé Louise James, the sex historian, author and content creator behind Kinky History. 'Courtship has always been something that family, friends, the public community will know about. If a man is courting a woman in any sense, whether it was 200 years ago… or more recently… if you're at RSLs, it's very likely that a community is involved in and knows about the courtship and its stages.' Social events, including regional and rural Australia's B&S balls (now with ute musters), are still held, and those with means are taking to hiring matchmakers and dating coaches. The opportunity to meet people in real life – perhaps aside from the pandemic – has not wavered, but what's become apparent is that with every swipe right on a potential partner came a swipe left on practicing the panache, and resilience in the face of rejection, that's pivotal to successfully seizing the moment. Little by little, the art of the approach has been eroded. Dating coach Damien Diecke, who founded School of Attraction in 2009 for 'men with integrity', says he's noticed an increased aversion to social risk since the advent of mobile phones. Loading 'We get to be socially isolated, but more connected than ever,' says Diecke. 'But we can take risks [online] we don't dare to take [in real life].' Diecke says he's seen a dramatic surge in men struggling with their dating lives reaching out to him, and a corresponding rise in the number of men who fear retribution, such as being called out on social media and its consequences, should they approach women. He blames Andrew Tate's Manosphere and its misandrist counterpart, The Femosphere, both of which prioritise clickbait content for engagement over fact. 'What's real to us is what we see. And if all you see is women degrading guys who do anything, even if it's relatively harmless, then you will feel like that's real,' says Diecke. 'But when you start having the real-life experiences, it overrides it.' Diecke generally does not see the social media narrative that publicly shames men's looks, wealth and status, or promises retribution for their approach, play out in real life. In his experience, it's the opposite: women want men to approach them more than they are. And if they're delivering a rejection, it's polite. 'My guys aren't being rude either – they're being gracious, they're being friendly and they're being non-threatening,' says Diecke. He teaches his clients to approach only if it's contextually appropriate, go in alone, stay out of their personal space and walk away at the first sign of discomfort. Loading 'But I never see it. I never see women go 'how disgusting, how could you ever talk to me?' ... No, it's 'sorry, I've got a boyfriend,' or 'hey, we're having a girls night'... they're not upset.' Relationship and intimacy coach Susie Kim has also noticed an increase in people who are concerned about being seen as a predator, but, she says, 'the funny thing is, the guys who are actually worried about that are … actually not the creeps, and … the guys who are still out there being creepy, they're not worried about it.' Kim says the rise of social media and dating apps, as with anything, is a double-edged sword. It may help the 'queer kid from Shepparton' find community, but it's also created younger generations who are more image-conscious than their predecessors. Mix in the depersonalisation of constant swiping, she says, and you have the perfect base to bury the inclination for vulnerability under – and to build a propensity to dismiss a book for its cover on top. Dr Lisa Portolan, whose PhD at Western Sydney University examined dating apps and intimacy in the digital landscape, agrees. 'The fact that people feel like they have to sift through so many people, and it becomes a second job for them, certainly does put up a lot of boundaries for people in terms of actually meeting someone for intimacy,' says Portolan. 'A lot of people within my research would indicate that they had become more judgmental on dating apps, and this would extend to a real-world environment because they felt like they were swiping so quickly and making split-second decisions.' Separately, Connect Social founder Lisa, who wants to be known only by her first name, launched the NSW Central Coast singles event service five years after the end of her marriage. Lisa does not post photos from the events she hosts on social media to avoid creating 'an expectation of who and what will be there'. Loading 'I think a lot of times with internet dating, it's a case of… you build these expectations of what you think someone will be in-person based off a couple of photos and some messages or texts,' Lisa says. 'Then when you actually meet them, there's a disappointment because it's not what you thought it would be. Whereas in-person events, you're avoiding all of that because you're meeting them straight away.' That's if you can psych yourself up to get through the door. Does anyone know how to flirt any more? You'd think singles events would be the perfect environment to apply the art of the approach and finesse flirting, but with so many obstacles to forming a meaningful connection outside of them – social risk aversion, image-consciousness, judgmental singles and a lack of vulnerability – they can become quite high-stakes events, and that's daunting. 'You feel the pressure of, 'oh my gosh, I should meet somebody because everybody's single,'' says Adikari, who, after three years of dating apps, created Pitch Perfect Match, a dating service in Sydney in which friends create a presentation and pitch their single friends to a room of fellow singles, who are also with their friends. 'When you're around people that you're comfortable with, you feel more relaxed to be yourself rather than get all in your head and nervous,' says Adikari. 'Hopefully [Pitch Perfect Match is] not as intense as going alone or being intimidated by the fact that everybody's single.' So is the solution truly going back to the good old days and having face-to-face conversations with mutual friends? Maybe. But of course, it's not that simple. Is going back to pre-technology days the way forward? The problem with that dialogue, says James, is that it 'so quickly slips into this more insidious, conservative dialogue that is idolising traditional times.' While it is true that feminism has blurred the line between each gender's widely accepted role in courtship (which Diecke says contributes to his clients' hesitancy to approach women), James says the 'traditional times that we think about never actually existed in the way we thought they did'. Loading The idea of women and men conforming to gender roles in a specific time period, James says, is a 'made-up fantasy'. And although women not being allowed out courting without a chaperone – a la Bridgerton – was designed to keep them safe, James says there was also 'a very dark side of that when it comes to policing genders and performance of what it means to be a woman itself.' Regency-era courting in general, James says, was 'not the romantic ideal that you thought it was'. 'You may have spoken to the man of your dreams, but yes, you then had to go behind a corner of the ballroom and pee into a chamber pot,' James laughs. 'It wasn't all that great. And he probably smelt foul.' It's not all doom and gloom Modern hygiene practices are not the only reason why this new era of dating could be 'very exciting', according to James, who says we have the benefit of going back to face-to-face connection but 'with the understanding of safety and consent and education that we've also developed over the last two decades [since online dating].' One group that is thriving dating-wise is the LGBTQIA+ community, which James, who is queer, attributes to the fact it has already 'done the groundwork in building community' out of necessity. Now a point of empowerment, those third spaces – get-togethers, celebrations, dances 'just for the sake of being in a room and seeing one another' – started because they were excluded from traditional courtship, and is now being emulated by heteronormative Australians (see: Sydney Swans' Match Day Mingle or the run club resurgence). What comes next is adapting to the evolving dating culture, an important part of which, says clinical sexologist Daz Alexandera Tendler of the Australian Institute of Sexology and Sexual Medicine, is communicating clearly and being 'up front with what you want'. Loading 'Everyone has very different concepts of what dating actually means,' says Tendler, noting the importance of being compassionate when expressing your desires and asking your partner how they define dating and what they're looking for. Although it seems like everything has changed, in a way, nothing has changed at all. Tendler, after all, advises leading with 'intentionality, boundaries, [and] respect' when seeking a partner. Diecke, meanwhile, calls for empathy, and Kim highlights the importance of embracing emotional intimacy. Those traits are as timeless as the need for the art of the approach itself. 'You're just starting up a conversation,' says Kim. 'I think that's the thing about approaching and flirting in real life. You're just being curious and getting to know this person and seeing if you enjoy speaking to them. There's nothing really else that needs to happen ... And if it goes nowhere, you just had a nice conversation and that's it.'

The Age

2 days ago

The Age

This year, dating apps died. What's next doesn't have to be scary

When Selani Adikari's 10-year-long relationship with her school sweetheart came to an end, it was more difficult than she had anticipated. But that's less about saying goodbye to her first love and more to do with unexpectedly having to navigate Australia's brutal dating scene for the first time at 27. 'It was a very different world,' says Adikari, who had already met her former partner when Tinder was launched in late 2012, revolutionising how a whole generation embarked on relationships. 'We were friends first before we started dating when we were so young … I never went through a dating phase of trying to meet people outside my circles.' What Adikari has discovered as a bachelorette is something shareholders of Match Group – owner of Tinder, Hinge and Bumble, which dropped from $US3.75 billion in revenue in 2015 to $US2.08 billion in 2024 – are fretting over. Singles, due to unsatisfactory algorithms, safety concerns, a 'gamified' swipe-based match process, general fatigue or otherwise, are feeling the need to break up with dating apps. But the exodus offline is not the be-all and end-all solution. Rather, it's exposed another obstacle the modern lovelorn have to climb in their quest to settle down. 'People are hesitant to walk up to someone new and strike up a conversation – you kind of just stick to who you know,' says Adikari. The Sydney-based project manager finds dating apps time-consuming and impersonal, but with her friends already spoken for and a general lack of spontaneous face-to-face socialisation, there haven't been many opportunities to organically expand her pool of prospects. 'It's so much easier to hide behind your phone now than go up to somebody in person and take a risk.' Loading The lost art of the approach Heterosexual courtship in Australia has taken many different forms, but what remained consistent across Regency-era promenades, Blue Light discos, radio classifieds and beyond was public performance. Until the age of the internet. 'It's a very modern thing to think of courtship as something that happens privately between people,' says Dr Esmé Louise James, the sex historian, author and content creator behind Kinky History. 'Courtship has always been something that family, friends, the public community will know about. If a man is courting a woman in any sense, whether it was 200 years ago… or more recently… if you're at RSLs, it's very likely that a community is involved in and knows about the courtship and its stages.' Social events, including regional and rural Australia's B&S balls (now with ute musters), are still held, and those with means are taking to hiring matchmakers and dating coaches. The opportunity to meet people in real life – perhaps aside from the pandemic – has not wavered, but what's become apparent is that with every swipe right on a potential partner came a swipe left on practicing the panache, and resilience in the face of rejection, that's pivotal to successfully seizing the moment. Little by little, the art of the approach has been eroded. Dating coach Damien Diecke, who founded School of Attraction in 2009 for 'men with integrity', says he's noticed an increased aversion to social risk since the advent of mobile phones. Loading 'We get to be socially isolated, but more connected than ever,' says Diecke. 'But we can take risks [online] we don't dare to take [in real life].' Diecke says he's seen a dramatic surge in men struggling with their dating lives reaching out to him, and a corresponding rise in the number of men who fear retribution, such as being called out on social media and its consequences, should they approach women. He blames Andrew Tate's Manosphere and its misandrist counterpart, The Femosphere, both of which prioritise clickbait content for engagement over fact. 'What's real to us is what we see. And if all you see is women degrading guys who do anything, even if it's relatively harmless, then you will feel like that's real,' says Diecke. 'But when you start having the real-life experiences, it overrides it.' Diecke generally does not see the social media narrative that publicly shames men's looks, wealth and status, or promises retribution for their approach, play out in real life. In his experience, it's the opposite: women want men to approach them more than they are. And if they're delivering a rejection, it's polite. 'My guys aren't being rude either – they're being gracious, they're being friendly and they're being non-threatening,' says Diecke. He teaches his clients to approach only if it's contextually appropriate, go in alone, stay out of their personal space and walk away at the first sign of discomfort. Loading 'But I never see it. I never see women go 'how disgusting, how could you ever talk to me?' ... No, it's 'sorry, I've got a boyfriend,' or 'hey, we're having a girls night'... they're not upset.' Relationship and intimacy coach Susie Kim has also noticed an increase in people who are concerned about being seen as a predator, but, she says, 'the funny thing is, the guys who are actually worried about that are … actually not the creeps, and … the guys who are still out there being creepy, they're not worried about it.' Kim says the rise of social media and dating apps, as with anything, is a double-edged sword. It may help the 'queer kid from Shepparton' find community, but it's also created younger generations who are more image-conscious than their predecessors. Mix in the depersonalisation of constant swiping, she says, and you have the perfect base to bury the inclination for vulnerability under – and to build a propensity to dismiss a book for its cover on top. Dr Lisa Portolan, whose PhD at Western Sydney University examined dating apps and intimacy in the digital landscape, agrees. 'The fact that people feel like they have to sift through so many people, and it becomes a second job for them, certainly does put up a lot of boundaries for people in terms of actually meeting someone for intimacy,' says Portolan. 'A lot of people within my research would indicate that they had become more judgmental on dating apps, and this would extend to a real-world environment because they felt like they were swiping so quickly and making split-second decisions.' Separately, Connect Social founder Lisa, who wants to be known only by her first name, launched the NSW Central Coast singles event service five years after the end of her marriage. Lisa does not post photos from the events she hosts on social media to avoid creating 'an expectation of who and what will be there'. Loading 'I think a lot of times with internet dating, it's a case of… you build these expectations of what you think someone will be in-person based off a couple of photos and some messages or texts,' Lisa says. 'Then when you actually meet them, there's a disappointment because it's not what you thought it would be. Whereas in-person events, you're avoiding all of that because you're meeting them straight away.' That's if you can psych yourself up to get through the door. Does anyone know how to flirt any more? You'd think singles events would be the perfect environment to apply the art of the approach and finesse flirting, but with so many obstacles to forming a meaningful connection outside of them – social risk aversion, image-consciousness, judgmental singles and a lack of vulnerability – they can become quite high-stakes events, and that's daunting. 'You feel the pressure of, 'oh my gosh, I should meet somebody because everybody's single,'' says Adikari, who, after three years of dating apps, created Pitch Perfect Match, a dating service in Sydney in which friends create a presentation and pitch their single friends to a room of fellow singles, who are also with their friends. 'When you're around people that you're comfortable with, you feel more relaxed to be yourself rather than get all in your head and nervous,' says Adikari. 'Hopefully [Pitch Perfect Match is] not as intense as going alone or being intimidated by the fact that everybody's single.' So is the solution truly going back to the good old days and having face-to-face conversations with mutual friends? Maybe. But of course, it's not that simple. Is going back to pre-technology days the way forward? The problem with that dialogue, says James, is that it 'so quickly slips into this more insidious, conservative dialogue that is idolising traditional times.' While it is true that feminism has blurred the line between each gender's widely accepted role in courtship (which Diecke says contributes to his clients' hesitancy to approach women), James says the 'traditional times that we think about never actually existed in the way we thought they did'. Loading The idea of women and men conforming to gender roles in a specific time period, James says, is a 'made-up fantasy'. And although women not being allowed out courting without a chaperone – a la Bridgerton – was designed to keep them safe, James says there was also 'a very dark side of that when it comes to policing genders and performance of what it means to be a woman itself.' Regency-era courting in general, James says, was 'not the romantic ideal that you thought it was'. 'You may have spoken to the man of your dreams, but yes, you then had to go behind a corner of the ballroom and pee into a chamber pot,' James laughs. 'It wasn't all that great. And he probably smelt foul.' It's not all doom and gloom Modern hygiene practices are not the only reason why this new era of dating could be 'very exciting', according to James, who says we have the benefit of going back to face-to-face connection but 'with the understanding of safety and consent and education that we've also developed over the last two decades [since online dating].' One group that is thriving dating-wise is the LGBTQIA+ community, which James, who is queer, attributes to the fact it has already 'done the groundwork in building community' out of necessity. Now a point of empowerment, those third spaces – get-togethers, celebrations, dances 'just for the sake of being in a room and seeing one another' – started because they were excluded from traditional courtship, and is now being emulated by heteronormative Australians (see: Sydney Swans' Match Day Mingle or the run club resurgence). What comes next is adapting to the evolving dating culture, an important part of which, says clinical sexologist Daz Alexandera Tendler of the Australian Institute of Sexology and Sexual Medicine, is communicating clearly and being 'up front with what you want'. Loading 'Everyone has very different concepts of what dating actually means,' says Tendler, noting the importance of being compassionate when expressing your desires and asking your partner how they define dating and what they're looking for. Although it seems like everything has changed, in a way, nothing has changed at all. Tendler, after all, advises leading with 'intentionality, boundaries, [and] respect' when seeking a partner. Diecke, meanwhile, calls for empathy, and Kim highlights the importance of embracing emotional intimacy. Those traits are as timeless as the need for the art of the approach itself. 'You're just starting up a conversation,' says Kim. 'I think that's the thing about approaching and flirting in real life. You're just being curious and getting to know this person and seeing if you enjoy speaking to them. There's nothing really else that needs to happen ... And if it goes nowhere, you just had a nice conversation and that's it.'

I'd give this stunning show a galaxy of stars if I could

Sydney Morning Herald

6 days ago

Sydney Morning Herald

I'd give this stunning show a galaxy of stars if I could

The text is largely unchanged from Porter's book, which has a present-tense immediacy and inherent theatricality. Phillips and his team have enriched these qualities with striking black-and-white animations, courtesy of video designer Craig Wilkinson and illustrator Jon Weber, and via the wonder of music. Cellist Freya Schack-Arnott performs live her own score, which variously enunciates grief, the febrile workings of Crow's tiny mind, the little joys of the Boys or echoes of their dead mother. If you miss this, you might peck yourself to death. THEATRE THE BOOK OF MORMON Capitol Theatre, July 24 Until December 31 Reviewed by JOYCE MORGAN ★★★★ Assume the missionary position – it's the Mormons' second coming. Holey-moley, the return of this all-singing, all-dancing musical about naive young Mormon missionaries attempting to save souls in Africa is puerile and potty-mouthed, offensive, witty and satirical. And yet it's surprisingly joyful. It is easy to make fun of this conservative all-American religion, replete with golden plates and sacred underwear. But the tone of the musical is more affectionate than sneering. Created by South Park' s Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Avenue Q 's Robert Lopez, this is a slightly tweaked version of the production that debuted in the US in 2011 and in Australia in 2017. The musical, which faced criticism that its depiction of Africans was racist, was revised after calls from black cast members following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The changes were designed to give more agency to the Ugandan characters. From its cracking opening number, Hello!, the show sets a high musical and choreographic bar as the ensemble of fresh-faced missionaries – all crisp white shirts and matching teeth – sing, dance and doorknock their way around the stage. Among them are narcissistic Elder Price, who dreams of a mission to Orlando, and gormless sidekick Elder Cunningham, who simply wants to fit in. The pair is swiftly dispatched to Uganda. There, amid an AIDS epidemic, gun-toting warlords and genital mutilation, they quickly realise they're not in Salt Lake City any more, Toto. This is essentially a fish-out-of-water tale, but one replete with a blond Jesus, a General Butt F---ing Naked and an overworked gag about maggots in the scrotum. The production is musically strong, and the choreography by Casey Nicholaw (who also co-directs with Parker) is tight and extremely funny. Highlights include Man Up; Spooky Mormon Hell Dream, Joseph Smith American Moses – as the Ugandans perform their version of the Mormon story – and the stirring I Am Africa. This revival is finely cast, including in the two leads. Nick Cox as Elder Cunningham has a Rowan Atkinson-like awkwardness and superb comic timing as he converts the villagers with his wildly idiosyncratic version of his faith. Sean Johnston as cocksure Elder Price gets the smugness knocked out of him. Paris Leveque made a strong professional debut as villager Nabulungi, whose character is stronger after the rewrite. Leveque demonstrated a mix of vocal sweetness and strength, as well as the fury to dispatch the warlord. Tom Struik was hilarious as the closeted Elder McKinley, especially in the song of sexual repression Turn It Off. Augie Tchantcho brought blustery menace to the gun-toting warlord who terrorises the village. The Book of Mormon is the third big-budget musical to return to Sydney in as many months. It is certainly the funniest, even if, inevitably, it doesn't have the shock value of first time around. It pays homage to the Broadway musical, with nods to such works as The Sound of Music and The King and I among others. It does so with hand on heart and tongue in cheek. Mozart's Clarinet Musica Viva City Recital Hall, July 28. Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM ★★★★ Clarinettist Nicola Boud, cellist Simon Cobcroft and forte-pianist Erin Helyard played Mozart and early Beethoven with transparency, style and musicality, using period instruments and unmannered ornamentation to reimagine the music as the composers themselves might have heard it. And despite his later deafness, Beethoven did actually hear and play the latest work by him on the program, the Sonata for Fortepiano and Horn, Opus 17 (1800) transcribed for basset horn (a baritone clarinet) by his associate Joseph Friedlowsky. The golden mellowness of the basset horn was used to telling effect by both Mozart and Beethoven (and later by Richard Strauss). A notable feature of Boud and Helyard's performance was clarity of balance. Boud's tone glowed warmly, the low notes of the fortepiano were crisp and the upper register sang with translucent lightness. Neither instrument overwhelmed the other, as can happen when this work is played on a modern piano and French horn. After a bright hunting call opening and brilliant passage work, the second theme suddenly turns to darker introspection (Beethoven marked it calando – 'dying away'). Boud drew the tempo and tone back hauntingly and Helyard tapered it further almost to nothing. By 1800 Beethoven had started to notice hearing problems but hadn't told anyone. Was he imagining a world without sound? Whatever the case in that work it certainly wasn't evident in the imaginative treatment he gave to a theme by Mozart in the program's next work, 12 Variations on Ein Madchen oder Weibchen from The Magic Flute (1796), which Cobcroft and Helyard played with discreet liveliness. To end the first half, Mozart's Trio in E flat major, K. 498, (the so-called Kegelstatt or 'bowling alley' trio apparently alluding to Mozart's fondness for mixing composing and bowling) brought the three players together, and they handed around the ornamented main theme of the first movement to create an intimately conversational performance of genial musicality. Intimate good humour was also a feature of the Aria con Variazioni from Beethoven's Three Duos WoO 27, played here on cello (rather than bassoon) and clarinet. An amused murmur of recognition spread around the hall as Helyard, after explaining the distinctive features of the eighteenth century fortepiano (in this case a modern copy by Paul McNulty of a Viennese fortepiano by Anton Walter), began Mozart's Piano Sonata in C, K. 545. Mozart wrote this for a student and it is still often heard in the lounge rooms of precocious pianophiles. Helyard phrased the lines with deft sophistication, adding ornamental improvisation to repeated sections with unpretentious elegance. The themes of Beethoven's Piano Trio in B flat, Opus 11 were more assertively energised than in the Mozart trio earlier, in keeping with the composers' different personalities, but the performance retained the same pellucid texture and intimacy, allowing one to hear every detail as Beethoven would have done – for a while. THEATRE 1984 Riverside Theatre, July 25 Reviewed by JOHN SHAND ★★★★½ This is the one that's worth watching – while Big Brother watches you. A 2017 version at Roslyn Packer Theatre and the 2014 iteration of this Shake & Stir Theatre Co production both did scant justice to George Orwell's masterpiece. Now Shake & Stir's director Michael Futcher has hit upon a cast that brings Nelle Lee and Nick Skubij's adaptation to chilling life. Scarily, 1984 becomes more relevant with each passing year. Who'd have thought 'fake news' would now so closely mirror the Orwellian concept of 'doublethink'? Meanwhile, we continue to watch rogue nations embodying Orwell's idea that power is not a means; it's an end. Josh Macintosh's set, a bleak, grey amalgam of industrial landscape and subterranean ruin, admirably serves as Winston Smith's flat, workplace and torture chamber. The room above Charrington's antique shop – Winston and Julia's love nest – ingeniously opens upon the stage from a side wall, and Orwell's all-seeing, all-pervasive telescreens are rendered in a giant screen showing videos devised by Craig Wilkinson. But Orwell was not writing science fiction, and the most imaginative visuals in the world will not bring the book to life. That requires a brilliant script to render 350 pages down to 100 minutes without losing any essences (which Lee and Skubij have done), and compelling actors playing Winston, Julia and O'Brien (the Inner Party kingpin). Michael Whalley is supremely convincing as Winston. He not only encapsulates the intelligence (that makes O'Brien take interest), nerdiness and loneliness, but makes real the poetic longing for a fabled world that preceded Big Brother's rule. Whalley gives us a Winston with the cunning and bravery to flout the rules, and one capable of returning Julia's passion. Chloe Bayliss excels as Julia. She makes it credible that Julia can play-act perfectly in the daily Two Minutes Hate, hurling invective at the telescreen, and yet delight in sex for sex's sake, and fall madly and unquestioningly in love. Although a role with less scope than Whalley's, Bayliss pours herself into it to the brim. I always imagined Charles Dance would have made an admirable O'Brien, with his authoritative voice and ability to meld elegance and iciness, and here Tony Cogin hits upon exactly those qualities. Cruelty is so much more chilling when the perpetrator is vocally restrained and highly civilised, and Cogin is the suave and brutal incarnation of Big Brother's right-hand man. The cast is completed by Abhilash Kaimal (who's good as Syme, less so as Charrington) and Steven Rooke, who superbly depicts poor Parsons, the numbskull busybody who's denounced for 'thoughtcrime' by his little daughter. One weak link is the mimed workplace typing scene, which could be tightened, but the torture scenes are so strong they're hard to take, and the gentleman beside me seemed to wonder what he'd done wrong to have to sit through it all. Nothing. It's the innocents who are most endangered by creeping totalitarianism. There are bands that play their songs live, and there are bands that put on a show. Sweden's the Hives belong firmly in the second category. They are a group that lean hard into the theatricality and absurdity – but most importantly, the fun – of playing loud songs in a rock'n'roll band. From the country-and-western-style matching black-and-white suits to their stage names – vocalist Howlin' Pelle Almqvist, lead guitarist Nicholaus Arson, rhythm guitarist Vigilante Carlstroem, bassist The Johan and Only and drummer Chris Dangerous – it's clear the Hives don't take themselves terribly seriously (see also: two stagehands dressed as ninjas, one who plays the tambourine throughout). What they do take seriously is whipping the crowd into a frenzied pack of devout rock'n'roll worshippers, all achieved via a killer live show and a livewire frontman. Addressing the audience like a feverish preacher from middle America is Almqvist, who wastes no time in showing off his mastery of the genre's tropes – spinning microphones, high kicks and shouting the kind of hyperbolic boasts that would make the Gallagher brothers blush ('Doesn't it feel good to be in the presence of the Hives?'). None of it would work without the songs to back up the bold presentation, but the Hives have more than enough belters from across their near-three-decade career to warrant the chest beating. Main Offender and Hate to Say I Told You So, the singles that put the Hives on the map in the early Noughties, sound just as electric 25 years on, the latter a highlight when a young fan is invited on stage to play bass, and nails it. A return to the stage for an encore is introduced with more self-referential humour ('Surprise! Who knew? Us!' says a wild-eyed Almqvist), with the final song, Tick Tick Boom, the perfect encapsulation of what makes the Hives great: endlessly listenable primal rock tunes designed for the simple purpose of getting hips to shake ('It's not rocket surgery,' Almqvist observes). 'Do you wanna hear some rock'n'roll?' Almqvist asks earlier in the show. 'We are well equipped, and we're f---ing good at it.' It's no idle boast, and saying it has felt good to be in the presence of the Hives is an understatement. As the band walk off to Carly Simon's Nobody Does It Better, it's hard to disagree. At the opening of the Ensemble Theatre's new production of David Williamson's classic play Emerald City, vibrant Ken Done illustrations of a sparkling Sydney Harbour appear in a filmstrip frame on the back wall of Dan Potra's set. It's art as time machine: we're heading back to 1987. We meet Colin (Tom O'Sullivan), a screenwriter who moves from Melbourne to Sydney at the urging of his producer (Danielle Carter) to step up his career. His wife, Kate (Rachel Gordon), is reluctant to make the move; she's convinced Sydney is all style and no substance. But Sydney will win you over. Charmed by the water, the jacarandas and the flame trees, and flattered by climbers at cocktail parties, Colin finds himself compromising his values of making meaningful Australian stories to play at constructing commercial successes for the American market with no local accents in sight. Mike McCord (Matt Minto) is the 'harlot' who seduces Colin over to this dark side, a network-building soap opera script editor with a hunger for fame. What will happen to Colin's integrity? Will Kate also resist the siren call of status and success in her publishing world? Will their marriage weather their warring minds and careers? And will Colin, in his hunger for more, ignore his attraction to Mike's partner, Helen (Aisha Aidara)? Williamson's play has plenty to say about Sydney that's still relevant today, making plenty of on-point jokes about the city's glittery image-consciousness, private-school social networks and obsession with climbing the property ladder. But it's a social satire that's also deeply concerned with how little – culturally and institutionally – we value Australian stories. This is still a going concern: more than 30 years from this play's inception, Screen Australia's latest drama report shows already conservative spending on local film and TV has fallen by almost 30 per cent. Sharing our stories helps us build a better sense of who we are and who we can be, and this play is horrified – on paper and on stage – that we still cede so much screen time to Hollywood. Director Mark Kilmurry has taken that message to heart, and has Colin deliver the play's most sincere lines about Australian storytelling direct to the audience. These pleas come at a sacrifice: the production's heart is in the right place, Potra's costumes enjoyably period, but the play's humour wilts in the presence of such blunted and didactic scene-building. The play feels creaky, too. The actors are clearly still developing their performances, with stumbled lines and wooden choices that feel more rote than felt. There are also some decades-old playwriting sensibilities, like the play's direct and establishing first scene, and old ideas about gender and relationships, that feel less effective now. And Williamson's characters, in their winking asides to the audience, don't feel as fun as they could – though Carter and Minto have some pleasing sparkiness to their Sydneysider personalities.

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