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July 05, 1985

Tapping top talent

Stepping Out (Adelaide, Opera Theatre), directed by Rodney Fisher, is certain to be a success considering the appeal of Rowena Wallace and Colette Mann as television celebrities and the enduring reputation of Carol Raye and Nancye Hayes as stage performers.

They are supported by an able cast including Isabelle Anderson, Ron Challinor and Margot Lee. It is a pity, then, that a more worthwhile play wasn’t found as a vehicle for this formidable Australian talent.

The play, written by Richard …

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June 21, 1985

Ravelling up the Fringe

The Fringe Festival of Cabaret in Adelaide continues the reputation of Fringe festivals which have provided many of the sleepers, surprises and outright hits of the Adelaide Festival season.

Since the Festival itself is having a bye this year the Fringe has been at centre stage in the Living Arts Centre which has turns at being the empty hulk of Fowler’s “Lion” factory and the venue for some of the liveliest cabaret comedy and music ever seen in Adelaide.

The …

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June 07, 1985

The lore of the big top

The Harlequin Shuffle, a new play by Tony Strachan, is the latest Stage Company production in the Space Theatre in Adelaide. This two-hander is an affectionate study of the passing tradition of the family circus in Australia.

Larry Tandy is the last of the family in Tandy’s Circus, a down-at-heel tent show touring country towns. A former high-wire clown, he has fallen from grace to flagons of hock and a hoopla stall.

Steve, a young street-theatre performer and aspiring …

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May 31, 1985

Kids Come Out – firing from the hip

This year’s Come Out Festival in Adelaide has devoted special attention to visual arts and literature. Under the umbrella Dreams of Youth – Apocalypse or Utopia, 60 young artists interpret their world. They range from Rhianon Vernon-Roberts’ Arms Talk, which portrays the lack of communication between East and West to Andrew Dearman’s message-free wire sculpture Boy On A Swing.

The writing section is opened up for scrutiny in Allwrite, a celebration of young people as writers and readers.

Music and …

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May 17, 1985

The Young Playwrights

The Young Playwrights season is Troupe’s contribution to Come Out ’85 in Adelaide. Seven plays were chosen from 140 scripts by young writers aged between 7 and 17. The first six to be performed are a theatrical treat.

The plays range from a zany retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, satiric spoofs of westerns and science fiction to disquieting studies of violence and its effect on the individual whether in war or in the dosed world of the family.

Directors …

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May 03, 1985

Two

Two
By Ron Elisha
The Stage Company
The Space

Two, the Adelaide Stage Company’s latest production, examines the contrary states of the human soul. The play is set in Germany in 1948 and writer Ron Elisha uses two characters – a rabbi, Chaim Levi, and his pupil, Anna, to describe the experience of the Dachau death camp.

Elisha has set himself a formidable task with a subject which inevitably unleashes enough detail and associations to overwhelm players and audience alike.…

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March 28, 1985

Big and Little Looks a Winner

They are baying for blood again in Adelaide. It’s not the first time that an artistic director of the State Theatre Company has been under siege from the disgruntled, the disappointed, the envious and the Charlie’s Aunt brigade, but the present minder of the State Theatre Company, Keith Gallasch, is particularly vulnerable.

The trouble is that much of what aggrieved Advertiser theatre critic, Alan Roberts, and Opposition Shadow Minister for the Arts, Murray Hills, have had to say in criticism …

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