Perth drivers warned of road delays ahead of US band's show
A lane closure on Toodyay Road westbound will be in place from 4pm to 12am.
Main Roads has advised drivers to expect delays as traffic management and speed reduction will be in place.
The legendary American band announced their highly-anticipated Australian headline tour in December, with Perth as their first stop.
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Joining Train on the tour is Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall, best known for her smash hit Suddenly I See, and Jason Wade from alternative rock band Lifehouse.
Train formed in 1994 and are known for their chart-topping hits including Drops of Jupiter, Hey Soul Sister and Drive By.
The band have sold more than 10 million albums and 30 million tracks worldwide, which has earned them a devoted and loyal fan base.
Following their Perth show on Sunday night, Train will jet over to Adelaide, then Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane before flying over to Auckland.
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The Age
44 minutes ago
- The Age
‘A risk to society': The next-gen stars tapping into the dark heart of The Talented Mr Ripley
For 70 years, the fictional character of Tom Ripley – a misanthropic, morally ambiguous and shape-shifting antihero – has gripped readers and film-lovers. The creation of American writer Patricia Highsmith, he first appeared in her 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley, beginning as a near-destitute IRS stockroom clerk and con-artist living in New York City but evolving into a serial killer who murders and then takes over the identity of Dickie Greenleaf, a wealthy, not-so-talented painter living in the fictional Italian coastal town of Mongibello with a lovely house, a boat and an American admirer called Marge Sherwood. Ripley's evolution is enthralling and mind-boggling. His plan to murder emerges as suddenly as his coveting of Greenleaf's privileged life. Now, Highsmith's most famous character comes to the stage in playwright Joanna Murray-Smith's adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley. Loading Directed by Sarah Goodes (Julia, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), with Will McDonald (Heartbreak High) as Ripley, Raj Labade (The Office) as Dickie Greenleaf and Claude Scott-Mitchell (The Dry, The Last Anniversary) as Sherwood, the play is a pin-sharp study of a complex man and a nail-biting psychological thriller. 'Oh, absolutely, the whole story is about suspense,' Goodes says: 'That gap between something happening and what your response is to it. In rehearsals, we've kept talking about the actual definition of suspense. You're suspended between two things. In a way, the whole story of The Talented Mr Ripley is about that. 'Joanna's written a piece that swings between being a noir film, like The Third Man, to being like a Wes Anderson work, to being a classic Strangers on a Train -style Hitchcock. And there's also direct address. He's got a relationship with the audience. You find out who that is later but really Ripley's telling us the story.' But who is Ripley? A relative nobody, he is sent on an all-expenses paid trip by Dickie's father to convince his son to come home to New York. Dickie's mother has leukemia and his father wants him to take over the family's shipbuilding business. But when Ripley encounters Dickie – magnetically carefree and living a life of luxury and culture on the Italian coast – he cannot follow through with his mission. His ardour for Greenleaf's identity, and desire to escape his own dismal existence, propels him to kill. And then, through extraordinary sleight of hand, he becomes Dickie Greenleaf. 'At the core of Tom is a void,' McDonald says. 'Emptiness. He's this black hole that kind of swallows up Dickie and Marge and Dickie's parents. That, and the deep-seated shame of who he is, really drives the whole piece.' Goodes agrees. 'It's a moral tale in a way,' she says. 'If you don't know who you are, if you don't anchor yourself or have a moral attachment to the world, then you are a risk to society. That's the story of the outsider. 'If you feel like you owe the world nothing, then you can be like Ripley. You have no remorse or regret. You can move through it with this real sense of surgical precision and determination.' Ripley is often labelled a psychopath, and Highsmith, who wrote 22 novels including The Price of Salt (later republished as Carol) and Strangers on a Train, another tale of murder and emotional blackmail, clearly had a thing for psychopaths. She even wondered if she was one herself, writing a diary entry in 1943, 'Am I a psychopath?' She also referred to Ripley as her alter ego, sometimes signing letters 'Love from Tom'. What stands out with Tom Ripley – a person whose exploits would necessitate punishment if exposed – is that he is a character that many fans of the book, film and TV adaptations (Andrew Scott played him in the 2024 Netflix series Ripley) root for. This is despite his identity theft, financial crimes, emotional manipulations and murdering. It's a duality McDonald relishes. 'There was an interview that Andrew Scott gave about playing the character where he said Tom's not inherently bloodthirsty, he's not this horrendous, evil person who just loves murdering people,' McDonald says. 'He's doing it to survive. He thinks it's something that he has to do to just stay alive.' He says Scott-Mitchell is sometimes rattled by his character's duality. 'She says there are times she is looking at me and going, 'Oh, I feel sorry for you',' he says. 'And then other times she is going, 'Oh my god, he's horrible. I hate him'. I love that sense of confusion about him.' Whether you love or hate him, Ripley is a stayer. Anyone wondering if he evades capture need only clock the four subsequent Ripley novels Highsmith wrote, with the last, Ripley Under Water, published in 1991. But is he happy when he gets what he wants? In the 1999 film adaptation directed by Anthony Minghella, Matt Damon as Ripley reflects mournfully towards the final scenes: 'I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody'. Scott-Mitchell points to strong connections in style and character between Ripley and The Picture of Dorian Gray. 'When you think about it, Dorian and Tom are both characters who are completely consumed by objects and beauty,' she says. 'And they both end up in a very similar place.' McDonald agrees. 'With Dorian, he's beautiful and he's gorgeous, but he is known throughout London as a scoundrel. He's been corrupted,' he says. 'His soul has been destroyed by what he's done and he's alone forever. A similar thing happens to Tom. 'There's this wonderful moment in the book where he realises that, in the process of becoming Dickie Greenleaf and gaining all his things, by murdering him he can never let anyone be close to him ever again. 'He'll have all these beautiful things and live this beautiful life, but what he really wanted and prayed for – love and closeness – he'll never get it. In that sense, he fails in his objective.' He does, however, hold up a mirror to people's secret thoughts. Loading 'Joanna has written the play in a way that talks to the inner demons in all of us,' Scott-Mitchell says. 'We all have something sinister in our minds, whether we want to admit it, or even that we're conscious of it. You have these moments where you're listening to him and you're like, 'Oh, yeah, I see where he's coming from.' Then you step back and go, 'Well, that feels a bit uncomfortable.'' Most of The Talented Mr Ripley's creative team have connections to work about Highsmith. Murray-Smith wrote the play Switzerland, a fictional look at the last years of Highsmith's life, now being turned into a movie starring Helen Mirren. The co-premiere of the production at STC in 2014 was directed by Goodes and designed by Scott-Mitchell's father, Michael Scott-Mitchell. Goodes says one of the reasons Kip Williams commissioned Murray-Smith to adapt the work when he was STC's artistic director was to continue such connections, primarily by giving new roles to the next generation of Australian actors. 'The thing about this piece is that it's about people who are not fully formed yet,' Goodes says. 'They're in their 20s. This is the first time Ripley commits murder. In the other books, he's an established murderer. So the emphasis was to find a group of young, amazing, next-generation actors to play it – to find the next big names on stage and screen. That was a real starting point. 'Theatre companies are under pressure to sell tickets, so they put known people on stage. But you need to be finding the next people that are going to be those known faces in the future.' In that vein, too, The Talented Mr Ripley explores issues confronting the next generation, particularly with social media, surveillance, AI and identity theft. 'There's this whole mirror world of our identity online,' Scott-Mitchell says. 'We might have a social media profile that's a particular way we present ourselves, but then there's us in the flesh. Stripping that whole concept back to theatre is a really wonderful way of looking at it. Who are we? Which one is us? What makes you, you?'
Sydney Morning Herald
44 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘A risk to society': The next-gen stars tapping into the dark heart of The Talented Mr Ripley
For 70 years, the fictional character of Tom Ripley – a misanthropic, morally ambiguous and shape-shifting antihero – has gripped readers and film-lovers. The creation of American writer Patricia Highsmith, he first appeared in her 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley, beginning as a near-destitute IRS stockroom clerk and con-artist living in New York City but evolving into a serial killer who murders and then takes over the identity of Dickie Greenleaf, a wealthy, not-so-talented painter living in the fictional Italian coastal town of Mongibello with a lovely house, a boat and an American admirer called Marge Sherwood. Ripley's evolution is enthralling and mind-boggling. His plan to murder emerges as suddenly as his coveting of Greenleaf's privileged life. Now, Highsmith's most famous character comes to the stage in playwright Joanna Murray-Smith's adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley. Loading Directed by Sarah Goodes (Julia, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), with Will McDonald (Heartbreak High) as Ripley, Raj Labade (The Office) as Dickie Greenleaf and Claude Scott-Mitchell (The Dry, The Last Anniversary) as Sherwood, the play is a pin-sharp study of a complex man and a nail-biting psychological thriller. 'Oh, absolutely, the whole story is about suspense,' Goodes says: 'That gap between something happening and what your response is to it. In rehearsals, we've kept talking about the actual definition of suspense. You're suspended between two things. In a way, the whole story of The Talented Mr Ripley is about that. 'Joanna's written a piece that swings between being a noir film, like The Third Man, to being like a Wes Anderson work, to being a classic Strangers on a Train -style Hitchcock. And there's also direct address. He's got a relationship with the audience. You find out who that is later but really Ripley's telling us the story.' But who is Ripley? A relative nobody, he is sent on an all-expenses paid trip by Dickie's father to convince his son to come home to New York. Dickie's mother has leukemia and his father wants him to take over the family's shipbuilding business. But when Ripley encounters Dickie – magnetically carefree and living a life of luxury and culture on the Italian coast – he cannot follow through with his mission. His ardour for Greenleaf's identity, and desire to escape his own dismal existence, propels him to kill. And then, through extraordinary sleight of hand, he becomes Dickie Greenleaf. 'At the core of Tom is a void,' McDonald says. 'Emptiness. He's this black hole that kind of swallows up Dickie and Marge and Dickie's parents. That, and the deep-seated shame of who he is, really drives the whole piece.' Goodes agrees. 'It's a moral tale in a way,' she says. 'If you don't know who you are, if you don't anchor yourself or have a moral attachment to the world, then you are a risk to society. That's the story of the outsider. 'If you feel like you owe the world nothing, then you can be like Ripley. You have no remorse or regret. You can move through it with this real sense of surgical precision and determination.' Ripley is often labelled a psychopath, and Highsmith, who wrote 22 novels including The Price of Salt (later republished as Carol) and Strangers on a Train, another tale of murder and emotional blackmail, clearly had a thing for psychopaths. She even wondered if she was one herself, writing a diary entry in 1943, 'Am I a psychopath?' She also referred to Ripley as her alter ego, sometimes signing letters 'Love from Tom'. What stands out with Tom Ripley – a person whose exploits would necessitate punishment if exposed – is that he is a character that many fans of the book, film and TV adaptations (Andrew Scott played him in the 2024 Netflix series Ripley) root for. This is despite his identity theft, financial crimes, emotional manipulations and murdering. It's a duality McDonald relishes. 'There was an interview that Andrew Scott gave about playing the character where he said Tom's not inherently bloodthirsty, he's not this horrendous, evil person who just loves murdering people,' McDonald says. 'He's doing it to survive. He thinks it's something that he has to do to just stay alive.' He says Scott-Mitchell is sometimes rattled by his character's duality. 'She says there are times she is looking at me and going, 'Oh, I feel sorry for you',' he says. 'And then other times she is going, 'Oh my god, he's horrible. I hate him'. I love that sense of confusion about him.' Whether you love or hate him, Ripley is a stayer. Anyone wondering if he evades capture need only clock the four subsequent Ripley novels Highsmith wrote, with the last, Ripley Under Water, published in 1991. But is he happy when he gets what he wants? In the 1999 film adaptation directed by Anthony Minghella, Matt Damon as Ripley reflects mournfully towards the final scenes: 'I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody'. Scott-Mitchell points to strong connections in style and character between Ripley and The Picture of Dorian Gray. 'When you think about it, Dorian and Tom are both characters who are completely consumed by objects and beauty,' she says. 'And they both end up in a very similar place.' McDonald agrees. 'With Dorian, he's beautiful and he's gorgeous, but he is known throughout London as a scoundrel. He's been corrupted,' he says. 'His soul has been destroyed by what he's done and he's alone forever. A similar thing happens to Tom. 'There's this wonderful moment in the book where he realises that, in the process of becoming Dickie Greenleaf and gaining all his things, by murdering him he can never let anyone be close to him ever again. 'He'll have all these beautiful things and live this beautiful life, but what he really wanted and prayed for – love and closeness – he'll never get it. In that sense, he fails in his objective.' He does, however, hold up a mirror to people's secret thoughts. Loading 'Joanna has written the play in a way that talks to the inner demons in all of us,' Scott-Mitchell says. 'We all have something sinister in our minds, whether we want to admit it, or even that we're conscious of it. You have these moments where you're listening to him and you're like, 'Oh, yeah, I see where he's coming from.' Then you step back and go, 'Well, that feels a bit uncomfortable.'' Most of The Talented Mr Ripley's creative team have connections to work about Highsmith. Murray-Smith wrote the play Switzerland, a fictional look at the last years of Highsmith's life, now being turned into a movie starring Helen Mirren. The co-premiere of the production at STC in 2014 was directed by Goodes and designed by Scott-Mitchell's father, Michael Scott-Mitchell. Goodes says one of the reasons Kip Williams commissioned Murray-Smith to adapt the work when he was STC's artistic director was to continue such connections, primarily by giving new roles to the next generation of Australian actors. 'The thing about this piece is that it's about people who are not fully formed yet,' Goodes says. 'They're in their 20s. This is the first time Ripley commits murder. In the other books, he's an established murderer. So the emphasis was to find a group of young, amazing, next-generation actors to play it – to find the next big names on stage and screen. That was a real starting point. 'Theatre companies are under pressure to sell tickets, so they put known people on stage. But you need to be finding the next people that are going to be those known faces in the future.' In that vein, too, The Talented Mr Ripley explores issues confronting the next generation, particularly with social media, surveillance, AI and identity theft. 'There's this whole mirror world of our identity online,' Scott-Mitchell says. 'We might have a social media profile that's a particular way we present ourselves, but then there's us in the flesh. Stripping that whole concept back to theatre is a really wonderful way of looking at it. Who are we? Which one is us? What makes you, you?'
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Perth's big, beautiful movie studio is getting ready for its close-up
It was always expected Western Australia's first purpose-built movie studio would be big. It's one of the reasons the state government decided to shift the $233 million screen facility from Victoria Quay in the heart of Fremantle to the southern edge of Whiteman Park in Perth's northern suburbs. But it is not until you get up close and personal to Perth Film Studios, as it has been rebranded, that you fully appreciate the size of the four state-of-the art boxes that in years to come will host large-scale Australian and international productions that will put our city on the filmmaking map — that is, if everything goes to plan. Taken aback by the size of the facility – in particular the sound stage in the most advanced stage of completion – the first question to Perth Film Studios' British-born chief executive Tom Avison must be: 'What level of production could it not accommodate?' 'Not many,' replied Avison, who was head-hunted from London to shepherd the studio into operation and help lure the kind of big-budget film and television productions for which it was designed. 'A James Bond movie or a Mission: Impossible might require something bigger. 'But for most things these four sound stages are comparable to facilities in the UK such as Pinewood, Leavesden or Sky Studio Elstree. 'They're plenty big enough for most of the movies and television series being shot around the world.' The facility boasts 19,232 square metres of production space — including 8361 square metres across four sound stages — and a backlot bigger than the playing field at Optus Stadium. Equally impressive is the overall quality of the build and various facilities that will be used to support the sound stages — production offices, dressing rooms, spaces for costumes and laundry. 'A movie studio is like a reef. It acts like a centre of gravity. It brings the ecosystem to it. You get big fish, you get small fish and everything in between.' Perth Film Studios CEO Tom Avison And in Avison, the WA Labor government and Home Fire Creative Industries – the Perth company that won the much-publicised competition to build and operate the studio – have found a chief executive with recent experience opening a similar facility, Sky Studios Elstree, in London. Sky Studios was a baptism of fire for Avison in his role as director of operations, as the new studio's first production was Wicked, Universal's blockbuster musical that took over eight of the studio's 12 sound stages. 'We had just completed the build when Wicked moved in. Builders out on Friday, production in on Monday,' Avison said. 'It was a challenging time but very exciting and incredibly rewarding. 'It battle-hardens you and your staff and forces you to get up to the highest standards very quickly. 'When a film is green-lit it goes fast. The train is leaving the station and you have to climb on board.' It is doubtful that Perth Film Studios will kick off in the first quarter of next year with a production the size of Wicked. However, if Hollywood wants to shoot a mega-budget musical, or an action fantasy, or a series about the world overrun with the undead, then Avison and his team will be ready. 'We will have conversations with producers who have the biggest projects to those with the smallest,' Avison said. 'And the studio will be a fantastic option for local and national projects. 'A good example are the two recent television series that were filmed in Perth, Ghosts and The Postcard Bandit. We want the Perth Film Studios to become the hub for the Western Australian screen industry.' Avison says that he was lured away from his big job in one of the world centres of film and television production because of the excitement around the WA film industry and the support of the state government, which is backing its investment in the studio with an array of incentives to ensure it doesn't become a 'white elephant'. 'There is an industry here that has been growing organically and successfully and a government that is supporting it,' Avison said. 'And when you factor in organisations like ScreenWest and the crew of highly skilled freelancers you feel that Western Australia is on the cusp of something great. I wanted to be a part of that.' Avison said there was also the understanding that it was not enough to just build a studio: 'You need to build an industry to support it.' Ever since the movie studio was announced by then-premier Mark McGowan during the 2021 state election in a starry press event at Victoria Quay with local stars such as Tim Minchin, Kate Walsh and Ben Elton, the industry has been debating the issue of whether Perth is ready for a movie industry. There are arguments that WA's industry is not mature enough to service a movie studio, and that most of the talent will have to be imported, raising costs and make it less attractive to American studios and other production entities around the globe. Loading Avison disagrees that WA is putting the cart before the horse. 'A movie studio is like a reef,' he said. 'It acts like a centre of gravity. It brings the ecosystem to it. You get big fish, you get small fish and everything in between. 'In the past productions have come here to take advantage of the wonderful locations then go somewhere else for the studio component. They will now be able to do everything here.' He also sees potential for crews returning if they have a good experience in Perth, giving the example of a series production, which could take months. 'That means that the various services that support a production are assured of long-term work,' he said. 'All of this occurs because at the centre of the ecosystem is a movie studio.' The other big challenge is distance. Perth is, as we hear ad nauseum, the most isolated capital city in the world. Loading So, will the production entities in the United States, Europe and, to a lesser extent, Asia be willing to send their projects across multiple time zones to do what could be done on their respective home territories? Adding to the challenge is that, since the rise of streaming services such as Amazon, Netflix and Apple, screen facilities have been popping up across the United States and across the globe, with Sydney recently announcing plans for a second studio. While some aspects of international filmmaking are out WA's control — the rise and fall in the dollar, and Donald Trump's tariffs have added another element of uncertainty — Avison believed the studio would overcome distance by offering a unique, high-quality experience. 'Filmmaking is complex and stressful, with tight deadlines and fixed budgets. So crews need to feel reassured they can do their jobs,' he said. 'We will create an environment that will not just get the job done but will allow filmmakers to flourish. 'We want them to be reassured that they don't have to worry about the basics, and they can put all their energy into their creativity.' While there is pressure on Avison and his team to lure the kind of bigger budget productions that will brush aside the naysayers, he believes it will take time for the studio to build a reputation and drop into the field of view of the global film industry, like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. 'I come from an industry where studios have been there for 100 years,' Avison said. 'That is what we want to build — a facility that is not a flash in the pan something that will serve the local industry for generations to come. We will be ready in the first quarter of next year, but our eyes are also on the future.'
