After the Ball
David Williamson

Queensland Theatre Company
Her Majesty’s

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

After the fiscal wars of Money and Friends and the gender wars of Brilliant Lies, after the media wars of Sanctuary and the culture wars of Dead White Males, after Heretic and Third World Blues. After all this comes After the Ball – and what might be called the family wars.

But David Williamson’s newest play is not about huge sundering feuds. Not your …

The Mourning After
by Verity Laughton
Playbox
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Belle Doyle may be by herself on the beach on Christmas Day but she is not alone. Verity Laughton’s comic weepie The Mourning After, is a monodrama with a cast of dozens. The situation is emotionally raw. Belle’s husband Harry has unexpectedly gone blue and died on the morning of Christmas Eve. In fact he has died in the middle of an argument over whether Belle, a song …

The North
William Yang

Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

When he presented Sadness at the Institute Hall in Kintore Avenue William Yang gave us one of the unexpected highlights of the 1994 Adelaide Festival. Idiosyncratic, intimate and full of wry good humour, Yang’s slide show did much to draw together the otherwise inchoate strands of Christopher Hunt’s program. This modest one- person show provided a regional perspective and dealt with regional ethnicity. But, unlike much of the abstracted, ethnomusicological fare …

Wolf Lullaby
by Hilary Bell

Griffin Theatre Company
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

A large white kitchen chair dominates the minimal set for Hilary Bell’s powerful new play, Wolf Lullaby. Denoting a child’s perspective of the adult world it dwarves the two normal sized chairs set next to it. And when Lizzie, aged nine, climbs into it clutching her dolly, it also amplifies the enormity of the emotions and anxieties this play manages to conjure.

Lizzie lives with her mother, …

Corrugation Road
Jimmy Chi, Kuckles and Pigram Brothers

Black Swan Company
Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

For Black Swan it is another Bran Nue Dae. After the boisterous success of Jimmy Chi’s discursive account of growing up in Broome, the company is now freewheeling down Corrugation Road. As the title suggests, it is a rougher ride this time as Chi -with a lot of help from musical friends, Kuckles and the Pigram Brothers- recounts his painful encounter with schizophrenia, agoraphobia, …

Good Works
Nick Enright
Playbox
in association with Adelaide Festival Centre Trust
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It has been too long since Nick Enright’s writing has featured on the Adelaide stage. Can it be On the Wallaby -back in 1981 ? So far, recent works such as A Property of the Clan and Blackrock have not been seen here, although we will soon be seeing double with State Theatre’s revival of his adaptation of The Venetian Twins coming up …

Summer of the Seventeeth Doll
Ray Lawler

Melbourne Theatre Company
in association with State Theatre
Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

I have to say that I greeted the revival of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll with some trepidation. Its reputation, shall we say its legend, is a kind of tyranny – not least probably, to Ray Lawler himself. The Doll is an acknowledged turning point, a setting for historical watches, a kind of cultural synecdoche. It is also a convenient …

Dead White Males
by David Williamson

Sydney Theatre Company
in association with the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust
Her Majesty’s

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is nothing that David Williamson won’t grab by the tail and swing into the theatrical arena. Whether it is the protocols of the New Rich, the ethical obligations of lawyers and journalists, the complexities of sexual harassment procedures, the truth of anthropological research or-as in Dead White Males- the arcana of cultural and literary theory. It …