murraybramwell.com

December 29, 1993

New Voices for Fiji

Filed under: Archive,International,Interviews,Theatre

Murray Bramwell interviews Sudesh Mishra about his play Ferringhi performed recently in Suva.

In late December the newly revived University of South Pacific Drama Society presented Ferringhi, a play by Sudesh Mishra. Coming originally from Persian and found in the Urdu and Hindi languages as well as Malay, Ferringhi means foreigner or outsider.

“It is usually a perjorative, which is why I use it,” notes Mishra, “but my character Ferringhi is an outsider-insider. He has local experience as well as …

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December 01, 1993

A Head Full of New Ideas

Filed under: Archive,Interviews,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Chris Westwood, newly appointed Executive Producer of South Australia’s State Theatre talks with Murray Bramwell

When, at the end of September, Chris Westwood announced her program for 1994 much else was also heralded for the State Theatre Company. Now to be known simply as State Theatre, the company was, with the departure of current Artistic Director Simon Phillips, seeing the beginning of a new format. Gone is the familiar figure of the AD -names like Colin George, Jim Sharman, Keith …

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Udder Milk Leak

Filed under: Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Under Milk Wood
by Dylan Thomas
State Theatre Company
Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas’s wordtrembling, glottal throttling, Welsh blathering, earbending play for radio, is State’s choice for season’s end and Simon Phillips’ goodbye-to-all-that.

First performed a year after Thomas died of the sauce in 1953 the play tells of a night and a day in the life of a small Welsh coastal town. Dylan Thomas called it Llaregyb, a ferocious joke since a backward glance …

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Unredeemed

Filed under: Archive,International,Theatre

Fallen Angels
by Noel Coward
Hayley Mills and Juliet Mills

Festival Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

When it was suggested to him that his new play Fallen Angels was indecent Noel Coward replied- “The realisation that I am hopelessly depraved, vicious and decadent has for two days ruined my beaker of opium.” I have to say that the recent revival of this trifle from 1925 has ruined mine also.

Possibly someone browsing through the play fastened on the idea that …

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Mind Forged Manacles

Filed under: Archive,Books

Brought to Book; Censorship
and School Libraries in Australia

by Claire Williams and Ken Dillon
Australian Library and Information Association
with D.W.Thorpe
174.pp RRP. $30

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

As the authors of this book drily enquire on their first page – “What the **** is Censorship ?” Well we know that it is a topic which seems to become more vexed as time goes on. It used to be the instrument with which only conservative groups sought to protect …

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November 01, 1993

The Meet Market

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australian Texts,Theatre

Personals
by Roxxy Bent
Vitalstatistix
Waterside

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Although their seasons have included a variety of writers Vitalstatistix’ work has always been characterised by founding members Ollie Black, Margaret Fischer and author of Personals, Roxxy Bent. Bent’s work is consistently self-descriptive. Even early rambles like A Stitch in Time had a daft quality – reinforced in that instance by the writer’s own performance. Waiting for Annette (collected in Around the Edge, the excellent Tantrum Press collection of South …

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Harmonics

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Songs with Mara
Meryl Tankard ADT
Balcony

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Without wanting to offend demarcation protocol with the Special Dance Correspondent I feel compelled to add some paragraphs on Meryl Tankard’s latest work, Songs With Mara, because quite simply it is one of the best theatre pieces we have seen in town for some time. ADT has had an impressive season – the quizzical wit of Court of Flora, the insistent afterimages of Nuti, the energy and invention of …

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October 01, 1993

Sitar Struck

Filed under: Archive,Music

Alan Posselt
and Aneesh Pradhan

Elder Hall

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Derived from the Persian “seh-tar” meaning three stringed, the sitar- multi-stringed, long-necked lute from Northern India- has been a featured instrument of the classical Hindustani tradition since at least the sixteenth century. Apart from musicologists and Indianists, Western audiences only began turning ears to its ineffable cadences in the late 1950s when Ravi Shankar gave his first recitals in London and New York.

By the early sixties folkies like …

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Dirty Diggers

Filed under: Archive,Australian Texts,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Sex Diary of an Infidel
by Michael Gurr
State Theatre Company
Lion Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It has gradually become apparent over the last few years just how many Australians are involved in the South East Asian sex trade. Not only those who fill the planes destined for Bangkok and Manila but those who own and operate the businesses that cater for their various tastes. Michael Gurr’s Sex Diary of an Infidel examines the relationship between the voyeur and …

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Local Works

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australian Texts,Theatre

The Administrator
by Charles Jury
Little Theatre
University of Adelaide

The Grip and
The Grown-Up’s Playroom
by David Paul Jobling
Space

Sweetown
by Melissa Reeves
Red Shed Company
Red Shed

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

“The story/Is of two famous friends, Pythias and Damon,/The love between them, and the effect that had/On Dionysius, tyrant of the city/Syracuse, BC -say three ninety-one,/Or thereabouts- and the enemy of Carthage,/ A barbarous city. Broadly it may be stated,/No archaology and no scholarship/Infect this play. …

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