murraybramwell.com

December 01, 1999

Double Bill

Filed under: Archive,Music

Paul Kelly and Uncle Bill
Governor Hindmarsh
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Paul Kelly is back. And not with something completely different, but not the same old, same old either. Let’s call it a logical extension.  With the announcement of Gawd Aggie, his new imprint since moving to EMI, Kelly has been diversifying. In one direction is the funk project, Professor Ratbaggy with his regular band, The Casuals. In another is Smoke, his collaboration with Melbourne string band wiz Gerry …

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November 01, 1999

Cakes and Ale, Wind and Rain

Filed under: Archive,Theatre

Twelfth Night, or What You Will
William Shakespeare

State Theatre South Australia
Optima Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The season is not yet over for State Theatre but with Twelfth Night Artistic Director Rodney Fisher signs off on his two year residency. Also marking twenty five years of Playhouse activity, this production not only adds a festive note, it is among the best work State has produced for a while. Certainly it is a happier excursion into Shakespeare than last …

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September 01, 1999

Private Lives

Closer
Patrick Marber
State Theatre
Space, August, 1999.
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Playwright Patrick Marber has described Closer as Noel Coward for the Nineties. It is an astute and useful, if not entirely modest, remark identifying the shrewd blend of wit and acerbic social observation that marks it as a comedy of manners. Because, beneath the spray of its contemporary realist profanity, Closer has a highly wrought and elegant structure.

Set in London, Marber’s play follows the lives of four …

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August 01, 1999

Grounded

Filed under: Archive,Music

Dick Gaughan
with Chris Wilson
Governor Hindmarsh

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Dick Gaughan has been in the singing business for thirty years and over that time has produced some classic albums. His burly Edinburgh vocals
have breathed new life into Child Ballads such as Willie O’Winsbury and restored urgency to work songs political anthems as well as his own compositions. Born in Leith in the Forth of Firth he has based his career in Edinburgh where, due to a dislike …

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Grande, or de Trop ?

Saltimbanco
Cirque du Soleil
Ellis Park

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is called the Grand Chapiteau and massive it certainly is. With its turrets, minarets and domes the massive $18m travelling venue for Cirque du Soleil is a show in itself. Almost phosphorescently white it is a formidable feat of engineering. And it can hardly be accidental that it resembles Fantasyland, which as all mouseketeers would know, is the happiest land of them all.

With seven different entertainments currently on …

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July 01, 1999

Heartbreak Hotels

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

The Judas Kiss
David Hare

Company B Belvoir
Optima Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is only one thing worse than being talked about, observed Oscar Wilde, and that is not being talked about. He and his shade can have little fear of that. Especially as the Nineties offer us so many centenaries. Of his successes – publications, lecture tours and opening nights. And of the dark days, of trial, imprisonment and – hardly before the century he influenced had …

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Pulp Theatre

Criminal Genius
George F. Walker

Bakehouse Theatre
Angas Street

Mojo
Jez Butterworth

Brink Productions
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Bakehouse Theatre’s Peter Green is to be commended for bringing us Criminal Genius , a recent work from Canadian playwright George F. Walker. It is a bleakly comic little piece about crime and more crime and the rippling effect of retribution. In its mix of hostility and farce it owes much, as many works now seem to, to the bravura writing …

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June 01, 1999

New Sounds and Old

Filed under: Archive,Music

CDs reviewed by Murray Bramwell

As their inspired name suggests, Melbourne band Weddings, Parties Anything have always been a rough and tumble live act. With a sound driven by Mick Thomas’s gruff vocals, and a battery of accordions, fiddles and guitar, WPA have the same post-punk approach to traditional music as the Pogues, Billy Bragg and Dick Gaughan. But they are also very much of their time and place – best described, such as life, as temper democratic, bias offensively …

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Dark Truths

Carrying Light
Verity Laughton

State Theatre South Australia
and Vitalstatistix
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is something fundamentally threatening about closed religious societies. We call them cults and no matter how benign their objectives they are demonised. The settlement of the United States was propelled by groups going that further thirty miles just to get away. And whether Shakers, Amish, Mormons or Mennonites they solemnly believed that they embodied the extended family in Christ.

The appeal of the lifestyle …

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New Sounds and Old

Filed under: Archive,Music

CDs reviewed by Murray Bramwell

As their inspired name suggests, Melbourne band Weddings, Parties Anything have always been a rough and tumble live act. With a sound driven by Mick Thomas’s gruff vocals, and a battery of accordions, fiddles and guitar, WPA have the same post-punk approach to traditional music as the Pogues, Billy Bragg and Dick Gaughan. But they are also very much of their time and place – best described, such as life, as temper democratic, bias offensively …

Continue Reading Back to top
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