murraybramwell.com

February 22, 2026

Adelaide Fringe – Dust The Mill

Dust is presented as one man’s story, but it is a lively tribute to the endurance, courage, and solidarity of generations of British coal miners and their families.

Murray Bramwell

Dust is a glimpse, a distilled chronicle of the arduous, but also exuberant, lives of Northern English working men. A return to the UK for an elderly aunt’s funeral in Yorkshire brought writer and director, Charlaina Thompson unexpectedly close to her family origins.

In particular, it was the exploits of …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 20, 2026

Adelaide Fringe – The Soaking of Vera Shrimp

Vera Shrimp announces that there’s going to be bits about science and bits about her. The combination is both fascinating and heartbreaking.

Murray Bramwell

You might say Vera Shrimp is a weather whisperer. She studies rainfall and its precipitation cycles and is a trove of information. She is fourteen and lives in Northern England, perhaps in Newcastle. She also has a special gift:

“I can feel the rain, the colours, the sensation, the words inside each drop when they land …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 19, 2026

Adelaide Fringe – The Debate Holden Street Theatres

Fearing her daughter won’t make captain of the school debating team an overzealous mother turns to drastic tactics to win the argument.

Murray Bramwell

Is there anything Martha Lott doesn’t do ? As well as hosting an outstanding range of Fringe shows at her Holden Street Theatres (check out the excellent Bob Marley, How Reggae Changed the World and Eat the Rich ) she has written, and features in, her own new play, The Debate.

It is a sharp and …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 20, 2025

Fringe: Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Ar** For England

Adelaide Fringe

Theatre: Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Ar** For England

In a frenetic, perceptive, often brilliant sixty minutes, writer and performer Alex Hill explores the agonies, ecstasies and desperate endgames of a London football fanatic.

Written by Murray Bramwell

Bursting into the confines of the Holden Street Studio comes Billy. Amped up, dressed in his national team’s strip, he is ready for battle – for England, St George, and Harry Maguire. So ready, in fact, that in …

Continue Reading Back to top

Fringe: Shellshocked

Adelaide Fringe

Theatre: Shellshocked

This excellent new English play from the Edinburgh Fringe, written and directed by Philip Stokes and featuring his son Jack Stokes, is an intriguing and disconcerting meeting of damaged minds.

Written by Murray Bramwell

The scene is an artist’s studio. There is a large blank easel in the centre of the stage with paint-spattered tarps suspended behind it. There is a desk with drawers and, beside a well-used drinks cabinet, stands a disheveled man – bearded, …

Continue Reading Back to top

Fringe: Dear Diary

Adelaide Fringe

Theatre: Dear Diary

A diary from a younger self is explored and reinterpreted in storytelling and song. It is a vivid portrait of the artist as a young woman.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“My name is Kay (says Kay Proudlove) and I want to tell you a story.” And it is a beguiling, pensive and candid one. Dear Diary is a history -or rather, a herstory – based on a relic from the turn of the century, her …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 15, 2024

Adelaide Fringe Theatre: The Portable Dorothy Parker

Filed under: 2024,Archive,Fringe

Written by Murray Bramwell

With her acid wit and memorably wicked aphorisms, Dorothy Parker is a rich subject for the stage, and playwright Annie Lux has seized the chance. The Portable Dorothy Parker draws its title from the writer’s first collection, garnered from works published in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and literary magazines.

It is 1943, and an emissary from Viking Press is visiting Parker to hasten the selection process. The setting is her apartment – a chair …

Continue Reading Back to top

Adelaide Fringe Theatre: England & Son

Filed under: 2024,Archive,Fringe

Written by Murray Bramwell

When a play begins with a man screaming in a dumpster we know this is a story of the lower depths. England & Son is a corrosive account of the degradation and insecurity of working people in the UK, escalated by the Thatcher years and even more pervasive today.

We don’t know the man’s first name but his surname is England and so was his father’s. At one point in his childhood, England the younger is …

Continue Reading Back to top

Adelaide Fringe: Grav

Filed under: 2024,Archive,Fringe

Written by Murray Bramwell

You don’t have to know about rugby to enjoy Grav. But if you do, this one-hander, performed memorably by Gareth J Bale, really kicks it out of the park.

Ray Gravell played more than 400 games for his Welsh club Llanelli, earned 23 caps for Wales and played for the British Lions in 1980.

He described himself as “just a minor cog, quite an ordinary player to be honest.” Fellow players, opponents and his loyal …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 20, 2023

Fringe Review: The King of Taking

Five Stars

Rubber-limbed and deadpan, New Zealand mime wizard Thom Monckton makes an hilarious return as the selfish King whose only subject is himself.

Written by Murray Bramwell

He has played the Adelaide Festival as The Artist and, back in 2016, the much-lamented Croquet Club as The Pianist. Now, the inimitable Thom Monckton is The King of Taking. A preposterous figure in none-too splendid isolation, he is the Mr Bean of hopeless monarchs, and delivers a slapstick routine that …

Continue Reading Back to top
Older Posts »