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February 15, 2024

Adelaide Fringe Theatre: The Portable Dorothy Parker

Filed under: Archive,Current,Fringe

Written by Murray Bramwell

With her acid wit and memorably wicked aphorisms, Dorothy Parker is a rich subject for the stage, and playwright Annie Lux has seized the chance. The Portable Dorothy Parker draws its title from the writer’s first collection, garnered from works published in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and literary magazines.

It is 1943, and an emissary from Viking Press is visiting Parker to hasten the selection process. The setting is her apartment – a chair …

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Adelaide Fringe Theatre: England & Son

Filed under: Archive,Current,Fringe

Written by Murray Bramwell

When a play begins with a man screaming in a dumpster we know this is a story of the lower depths. England & Son is a corrosive account of the degradation and insecurity of working people in the UK, escalated by the Thatcher years and even more pervasive today.

We don’t know the man’s first name but his surname is England and so was his father’s. At one point in his childhood, England the younger is …

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Adelaide Fringe: Grav

Filed under: Archive,Current,Fringe

Written by Murray Bramwell

You don’t have to know about rugby to enjoy Grav. But if you do, this one-hander, performed memorably by Gareth J Bale, really kicks it out of the park.

Ray Gravell played more than 400 games for his Welsh club Llanelli, earned 23 caps for Wales and played for the British Lions in 1980.

He described himself as “just a minor cog, quite an ordinary player to be honest.” Fellow players, opponents and his loyal …

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February 20, 2023

Fringe Review: The King of Taking

Five Stars

Rubber-limbed and deadpan, New Zealand mime wizard Thom Monckton makes an hilarious return as the selfish King whose only subject is himself.

Written by Murray Bramwell

He has played the Adelaide Festival as The Artist and, back in 2016, the much-lamented Croquet Club as The Pianist. Now, the inimitable Thom Monckton is The King of Taking. A preposterous figure in none-too splendid isolation, he is the Mr Bean of hopeless monarchs, and delivers a slapstick routine that …

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February 16, 2023

Fringe Review: Jesus, Jane, Mother & Me

Five Stars

In an empty house a young man is waiting to celebrate Mother’s Day but the more he describes her –and their religious devotions and special bonds, the more uncertain his rapture becomes.

Written by Murray Bramwell

After the chintzy palladium orchestra fanfare, it is his cheery manner which captures us first. This young extravagant man, eyes wide, all gestures and beaming smile. Hello, I’m Daniel Valentine.

He is in his mother’s house dressed in a summer dressing gown …

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February 18, 2022

Fringe review: One Hour Photo

Four and a Half Stars
Murray Bramwell

One Hour Photo is a snapshot of one man’s life – captured from thirty hours of interview and a lifetime of turbulent after-images.

Adding to the usual array of theatre spaces at the popular Holden Street Theatre hub is Ruby’s at No.32. In past Fringes we have seen micro theatre performances in this charming but compact venue but this time it is decked out as a little cinema. Ten comfortable chairs with side …

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February 17, 2022

Fringe review: Meet Me at Dawn

Fringe Festival
Murray Bramwell

Two women are cast on to a desolate beach. As they begin to get their bearings the world will never be the same. Nor, perhaps, will yours either.

Five Stars.

The play opens with a thunderous ocean swell, courtesy of sound designer Sascha Budimski, and a darkened stage, courtesy of Mark Oakley’s lighting. Gradually the visibility lifts and we see a young woman drenched to the skin, hair bedraggled, trying to gather herself after being hurled …

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Fringe review: Afghanistan is Not Funny

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell
Fringe review: Afghanistan is Not Funny
Five Stars

A high-profile comedian visits a war zone in Kabul and it not only transforms him, but the things he wants to write about. This often comic memoir looks for answers to serious questions.

Henry Naylor is the master of the dramatic miniature. His plays, rarely more than sixty minutes in duration, are a crowded hour of fact, polemic, suspense, and compressed emotion that take us where other playwrights …

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February 18, 2021

Fringe review: The Twins

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

Two friends are cast in a school production of The Comedy of Errors. At Geelong Grammar, no less. One is Greg Fleet, the other Ian Darling. One took the high road, the other the low. Forty years later they ponder where life has taken them – and which road was which.

**** Four Stars

The Twins, we are told, is Truer than Fiction. Terry Serio the director describes it as Theatre Verite. Whatever it is, …

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Fringe review: That Boy

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

When, in pre-school child care, Tom pushes a little girl because he doesn’t want to be hugged, he becomes the subject of an Incident Report. “He became That Boy,” his mother recalls, “and I became That Mother.” Writer and performer, Martha Lott powerfully describes the lonely challenges of parenting a turbulent child when everyone else has given up.

**** Four Stars

Sarah has two children – Hannah, and younger brother, Tom. One is easy-going and amenable. …

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