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October 25, 2024

OzAsia Festival Dance/Theatre : Scored in Silence

Filed under: Archive,Current,Festival,Theatre

The title is a paradox –Scored in Silence. There is no music, in fact, at crucial moments no sound at all. But its message is loud and clear. OzAsia opens with a visually intriguing theatrical experience that reminds us to hearken to the lessons of history.

Written by Murray Bramwell

This solo performance by Japanese performer/choreographer, Chisato Minamimura (who is herself deaf) is a description of the dropping of the A-Bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, as experienced by …

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September 15, 2024

Adelaide Guitar Festival: Rolling Stones Revue

Filed under: Archive,Current,Festival,Music

The Rolling Stones Revue gathers some of Australia’s best and fairest singers and instrumentalists for the celebration of a classic album and a non-stop, knees-up eisteddfod of Greatest Hits.

Written by Murray Bramwell

Last year’s Adelaide Guitar Festival featured an excellent tribute to the incomparable Jeff Beck. This time around it is the pre-eminent rock and roll guitar band, The Rolling Stones. Sixty years on, and they are still out there on the (gold paved) road, filling stadiums like there …

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June 08, 2024

Adelaide Cabaret Festival – The 2024 Variety Gala

Filed under: Archive,Cabaret,Current,Festival

Presided over by exuberant Artistic Director, Virginia Gay, this year’s Variety Gala – featuring an array of amazing women (and also some excellent blokes) – is one of the briskest and best we have seen for a while.

Written by Murray Bramwell

It’s that time again. A week into June, just when winter starts to bite, and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival convenes for the 24th year. And, as old as the festival itself, is the Variety Gala. They are …

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March 09, 2024

Adelaide Festival – Qui a tue mon pere (Who killed my father)

Filed under: Archive,Current,Festival,Theatre

Adelaide Festival
Theatre : Qui a tue mon pere (Who killed my father)

In his compelling monologue Edouard Louis meticulously describes a childhood ruined by poverty, abuse, and alienation. He blames his father but comes to realise there are also much larger social and structural cruelties in play.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

In the preface to his harrowing 2018 memoir Qui a tue mon pere, Edouard Louis hypothesises.

“If this were a text for the theatre, here is how it …

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March 08, 2024

Adelaide Festival – The Threepenny Opera

Filed under: Archive,Current,Festival,Music

Adelaide Festival
Music Theatre: The Threepenny Opera

Barrie Kosky’s version of The Threepenny Opera has had a haircut and a makeover but the satire is still in there, along with the comedy, and Kurt Weill’s splendid music.

Written by Murray Bramwell

The Threepenny Opera is just four years short of its hundredth birthday and it has had a long history of popular successes and mixed receptions. In Berlin, in 1928, it did poorly when it opened and then became popular …

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March 06, 2024

Adelaide Festival – I Hide in Bathrooms

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

I Hide in Bathrooms
Astrid Pill and Collaborators
Vitalstatistix
Waterside.

I Hide in Bathrooms, we are told, by an offstage voice, is “based loosely on a true-ish story” but it is also “made-uppish”. We know from the program notes that this excellent theatre work had its beginnings when devisor and performer Astrid Pill became preoccupied with the notion of the death of a life partner, in response to the experiences of people in her intimate circle.

But it is …

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March 01, 2024

Goodbye Lindita

Filed under: Archive,Current,Festival,International,Theatre

Described as a visual meditation on mourning, Goodbye Lindita eloquently, and sometimes convulsively, expresses feeling and wonder about the mystery of death – without uttering a single word.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“I feel like mourning has a silent, almost suffocating quality,“ Mario Banushi writes in the program notes, “This is why it is a performance without words.”

Conceived and directed by Banushi, Goodbye Lindita may be wordless but it has plenty to say. Inspired, or perhaps provoked, by the …

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October 20, 2023

2024 Adelaide Festival program launched

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Festival

The program for the 2024 Adelaide Festival has been unveiled and it is a first for incoming Artistic Director Ruth McKenzie and general manager Kath Mainland. It promises excellence, continuity and a showcase for emerging works that may prove to be future classics.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“We were both here for the 2023 festival, “says Ruth McKenzie, “but that was the last one for Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield – which went incredibly well, as all of their festivals …

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July 14, 2023

Adelaide Guitar Festival – The Milk Carton Kids (with special guest Vera Sola)

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Festival,Music

Whatever you want to call it – Americana, Old Timey Music, Indie Folk, The Milk Carton Kids do it. And they do it very well. Their opening night concert for the Adelaide Guitar Festival is the full bottle.

Murray Bramwell

Formed in 2011, when solo performer Joey Ryan went to a concert by Kenneth Pattengale in their home town of Eagle Rock, California and suggested they join forces, The Milk Carton Kids duo (named from a lyric of one their …

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March 16, 2023

Herd Mentality

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Adelaide Festival
The Sheep Song
by Jonas Vermeulen, Stef Aerts, Joe Agemans, Thomas Verstraeten, Marie Vinck, Matteo Simoni with Bart Hollanders, Titus De Voogdt, Yorrith De Bakker.
FC Bergman
Toneelhuis, Antwerp.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
March 16. Until March 19.


Titus De Voogdt

In the final weekend of the Adelaide Festival’s theatre program comes the most intriguing- the FC Bergman company’s The Sheep Song. Described in their program notes as “a visual story without words, an epic solely …

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