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March 25, 2019

More equal than others

Animal Farm
by George Orwell.
Adaptation by Geordie Brookman.
State Theatre Company South Australia.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
March 22. Tickets: $32- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online
Duration 1 hour 25 minutes (no interval)
Until March 30.

When Animal Farm, George Orwell’s celebrated novella, was first published in 1945 it was blithely sub-titled : “A Fairy Story”. But it was anything but an ethereal fiction. A year later, the author, himself a committed democratic socialist, wrote : …

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November 19, 2018

Revisiting the foreign country of the past

The Gods of Strangers
by Elena Carapetis
State Theatre Company South Australia
Dunstan Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 15. Tickets: $32- $67.
Bookings . Bookings 131 246 or online
Duration: 2 hours 40 mins (including interval)
Until December 2.

“If a stranger knocks, you let them in – they could be a god in disguise.” But the publicity notes for The Gods of Strangers, a tri-lingual commissioned work, by Adelaide playwright Elena Carapetis, do not mention it might also …

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August 30, 2018

Hallelujah to a compelling revival

That Eye, The Sky
A stage adaptation of Tim Winton’s novel
by Justin Monjo and Richard Roxburgh.
State Theatre Company South Australia.
Dunstan Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
August 28. Tickets: $32- $67. Bookings 131 246 or online
Duration: 100 minutes (no interval)
Until September 16.

Tim Winton wrote That Eye, the Sky when he was 25, describing it as the novel where his work turned a corner. In it he embraced a vigorous vernacular, and explored layers of belief, mysticism …

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July 26, 2018

Who’s afraid of August Strindberg?

Creditors
by August Strindberg.
A new version by Duncan Graham
State Theatre Company South Australia.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
July 24. Tickets: $32- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online
Duration 1 hour 45 minutes (no interval)
Until August 5.

Asked why he had a portrait of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg above his writing desk, Henrik Ibsen said : “He is my mortal enemy, he must hang there and observe everything I write.”

Strindberg’s febrile, hallucinatory drama is unfiltered, …

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May 28, 2018

Looking to the heavens for escape

Terrestrial
by Fleur Kilpatrick.
State Theatre Company South Australia.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
May 24. Tickets: $32- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online
Duration 60 minutes (no interval)
Until June 2.

Playwright Fleur Kilpatrick dedicates her newest work, Terrestrial, “to lonely girls, to bored boys, to quiet towns.” Part of State Theatre’s State Ed schools program, it has already toured regional schools and centres, with more to come when this Adelaide season concludes.

In State’s 2018 season brochure, Terrestrial

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April 11, 2018

Nostalgia trips the light fantastic

After Dinner
by Andrew Bovell
State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
April 10. Tickets: $34- $76. Bookings 131 246 or online.
Duration 2 hours (including interval)
Until April 29.

Murray Bramwell

It is thirty years almost to the day since Andrew Bovell’s After Dinner opened at La Mama in Melbourne and while it is a slice of the late 1980s, the revival by Sydney Theatre Company in 2015, and now this watchable and well-judged production by State Theatre …

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March 01, 2018

Compelling footy drama sinks the slipper into unexamined misogyny

Adelaide Festival 2018

In the Club
by Patricia Cornelius
State Theatre Company
Odeon Theatre, Norwood Parade, Adelaide.
February 27. Tickets: $34- $76. Bookings 131 246 or adelaidefestival.com.au.
Duration 90 minutes (no interval)
Until March 18.

Commenting on her play Love, written in 2003, the prolific and fearless playwright, Patricia Cornelius observed: “Love is a given. We all believe we will feel it one day. Most of the time it is represented in a rather crass and ludicrous package, but …

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November 22, 2017

A grim fairytale for grown-ups

Vale
by Nicki Bloom
State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
November 21. Tickets: $33- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online.
Duration 2 hours (including interval)
Until December 3.

“We’re weeds,” declares hotel tycoon Joseph Vale, “people rip us out roots and all /But back we come/tough as before.” Vale, Nicki Bloom’s new play for State Theatre Company, is a raucous, grimly funny portrait of star-crossed young lovers, their dysfunctional families, and the inevitable rise and fall of …

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October 27, 2017

Witty two-hander is a duel

Switzerland
by Joanna Murray-Smith
State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
October 25. Tickets: $33- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online.
Duration: 1 hour 40 minutes. No interval.
Until November 5.

“My imagination functions much better,” the American novelist Patricia Highsmith sardonically observed, “when I don’t have to speak to people.” She much preferred to be alone with words. Misanthropic, prejudiced, witheringly intolerant, Highsmith wrote fiction about crime which was much more than generic crime fiction.

Admired by Graham …

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August 30, 2017

Daggers of the mind laid bare

Macbeth
by William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
August 29. Tickets: $33- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online.
Duration 2 hours. No interval.
Until September 16.

“It will have blood, they say : blood will have blood.” Macbeth’s words aptly describe the grim carnage that is not just his tragedy, but a kingdom ravaged by civil war. And it is this theme which drives State Theatre Company director Geordie Brookman’s terrific new production of the ill-fated …

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