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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 …

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February 16, 2023

Fringe Review: Jesus, Jane, Mother & Me

Five Stars

In an empty house a young man is waiting to celebrate Mother’s Day but the more he describes her –and their religious devotions and special bonds, the more uncertain his rapture becomes.

Written by Murray Bramwell

After the chintzy palladium orchestra fanfare, it is his cheery manner which captures us first. This young extravagant man, eyes wide, all gestures and beaming smile. Hello, I’m Daniel Valentine.

He is in his mother’s house dressed in a summer dressing gown …

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February 18, 2022

Fringe review: One Hour Photo

Four and a Half Stars
Murray Bramwell

One Hour Photo is a snapshot of one man’s life – captured from thirty hours of interview and a lifetime of turbulent after-images.

Adding to the usual array of theatre spaces at the popular Holden Street Theatre hub is Ruby’s at No.32. In past Fringes we have seen micro theatre performances in this charming but compact venue but this time it is decked out as a little cinema. Ten comfortable chairs with side …

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February 17, 2022

Fringe review: Meet Me at Dawn

Fringe Festival
Murray Bramwell

Two women are cast on to a desolate beach. As they begin to get their bearings the world will never be the same. Nor, perhaps, will yours either.

Five Stars.

The play opens with a thunderous ocean swell, courtesy of sound designer Sascha Budimski, and a darkened stage, courtesy of Mark Oakley’s lighting. Gradually the visibility lifts and we see a young woman drenched to the skin, hair bedraggled, trying to gather herself after being hurled …

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Fringe review: Afghanistan is Not Funny

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell
Fringe review: Afghanistan is Not Funny
Five Stars

A high-profile comedian visits a war zone in Kabul and it not only transforms him, but the things he wants to write about. This often comic memoir looks for answers to serious questions.

Henry Naylor is the master of the dramatic miniature. His plays, rarely more than sixty minutes in duration, are a crowded hour of fact, polemic, suspense, and compressed emotion that take us where other playwrights …

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February 18, 2021

Fringe review: The Twins

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

Two friends are cast in a school production of The Comedy of Errors. At Geelong Grammar, no less. One is Greg Fleet, the other Ian Darling. One took the high road, the other the low. Forty years later they ponder where life has taken them – and which road was which.

**** Four Stars

The Twins, we are told, is Truer than Fiction. Terry Serio the director describes it as Theatre Verite. Whatever it is, …

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Fringe review: That Boy

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

When, in pre-school child care, Tom pushes a little girl because he doesn’t want to be hugged, he becomes the subject of an Incident Report. “He became That Boy,” his mother recalls, “and I became That Mother.” Writer and performer, Martha Lott powerfully describes the lonely challenges of parenting a turbulent child when everyone else has given up.

**** Four Stars

Sarah has two children – Hannah, and younger brother, Tom. One is easy-going and amenable. …

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Fringe review: DIRT

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

An Australian journalist is in Moscow to secretly investigate evidence of LGBTIQ persecution. He meets a Russian tourist guide who can help but he has his own agenda. Angus Cameron’s wryly engaging thriller takes us through a labyrinth of misrepresentation.

****1/2 Four and a Half Stars

DIRT is an intriguing play which combines serious human rights themes with an almost mischievous sense of shape-shifting plot surprise – making it all the more appealing.

An earnest young …

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February 16, 2021

Fringe review: Sea Wall

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

A sea wall is a massive, unexpected chasm under the ocean often deceptively near the shore. In this tightly-scripted monologue, husband and father, Alex (splendidly played by Renato Musolino) explores his own dark abyss after a sudden, freakish accident.

***** Five stars

Asked at short notice in 2008 to write a play for the Bush Theatre in London, Simon Stephens came up with Sea Wall. “I wanted to write a monologue,” he said. “I wanted …

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March 18, 2020

Adelaide Fringe – Truckload of Sky – The Lost Songs of David McComb

Filed under: 2020,Archive,Fringe,Music

Truckload of Sky – The Lost Songs of David McComb
The Friends of David McComb
Level 5, Union House,
The University of Adelaide.
RCC . March 12.

Formed in Perth in 1978, after morphing from a band called Dalsy and (name-for-a-day) Logic, The Triffids produced five studio albums, six EPs, six live recordings/ compilations and nine legendary cassettes including Dungeon and Son. Singles such as Wide Open Road and Bury Me Deep in Love became etched in the Australian …

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