murraybramwell.com

January 01, 1989

Another festive season

Filed under: Archive,Festival

The Adelaide Festival Centre Trust is gearing up for a sort-of off-peak festival next month. After all the debate about whether the Adelaide Festival should be an annual or biennial fixture, Trust administrator Rob Brookman is packaging a series of performances plucked from the Sydney and Perth festivals for those sybarites tired of January’s excess and those committed enough to music and dance not to notice the near-molten state of their credit cards.

The three main events being presented are …

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October 01, 1988

The New Dreaming

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

The New Dreaming
Come Out 89

Murray Bramwell talks with Michael Fitzgerald.

Since it began as a row of tents in the Adelaide Parklands in 1974, Come Out has become a major youth arts festival virtually unrivalled in the world. Its reputation for quality, diversity and the sheer scale of its mobilisation is a credit to the energy and commitment of a succession of directors and administrators and an army of teachers and arts workers. Come Out has continued to …

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April 01, 1988

Beauty and the Beast

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Festival,Theatre

Beauty and the Beast
by David Holman
Magpie Theatre Company, South Australia
Directed by Chris Johnson

Design: Julie Lynch. Music: Alan John.
Cast: Annabel Giles, Sharon LeRay, Claudia LaRose,
Michael Habib, Tom Considine, Tim Aris.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

This is the third Adelaide Festival in which the Magpie Theatre
Company has staged a new work by David Holman. It was the celebrated No Worries in 1984, and in 1986 The Small Poppies. But with Beauty and the Beast it …

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March 01, 1988

Shallow

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

1841
by Michael Gow
State Theatre Company
Playhouse

Theatre commissions are a bit like cargo cults. Titles are announced, brochures printed, runways are built and everybody waits for the play to land triumphantly. Except that, more often than not, it either overshoots the tarmac or pancakes unceremoniously in the midst of consternation and disbelief.

When the State Theatre Company secured the services of Michael Gow to write a play for the 1988 Adelaide Festival with additional support from the Bicentennial …

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Maximus

Filed under: Archive,Australian Texts,Festival,Theatre

Circus Oz
Rymill Park

Circus Oz were always more fun than a bucket of frogs and their Tenth Anniversary World Tour performances at the Festival must be the best yet. They have an effortless mix of physical skill, adroit comedy, musical flair and sheer good nature.

Tim Coldwell, a founding member of the company, is a genial sight in his baggy suit and size 13 sneakers and straight away the show establishes an easy rapport with the audience.

A Bicentennial …

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Day for Night

Filed under: Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

The Mahabharata
Adapted by Jean-Claude Carriere
Directed by Peter Brook
Anstey’s Hill Quarry

The Mahabharata is a colossal work. Written in Sanskrit, the first versions date back 400 hundred years BC. Then, for nearly eight centuries this epic poem grew to more than one hundred thousand stanzas. Fifteen times longer than The Bible, it is like the Old and New Testaments, all of Homer and thirty years of Mandrake and the Phantom all rolled into one.

Peter Brook and playwright …

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Maximus

Filed under: Archive,Comedy,Festival

Maximus
Circus Oz
Rymill Park

Circus Oz were always more fun than a bucket of frogs and their Tenth Anniversary World Tour performances at the Festival must be the best yet.

They have an effortless mix of physical skill, adroit comedy, musical flair and sheer good nature. Tim Coldwell, a founding member of the company, is a genial sight in his baggy suit and size 13 sneakers and straight away the show establishes an ยท easy rapport with the audience.…

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June 01, 1987

Looking Back at Come Out

Filed under: Archive,Australian Texts,Festival,Theatre

Come Out 1987 was a testing time for youth theatre. After the sporadic bookings in 1985, directors Malcolm Moore and Kerry Comerford were faced with the task of not only compiling an appealing programme, but also filling theatre seats. They did well on both counts. Also, with ASSITEJ, the international jamboree of youth theatre heavies, being held in Adelaide at the same time, Come Out was on International display.

Director Michael Fitzgerald made it plain that ASSITEJ might turn into …

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April 01, 1987

ASSITEJ Comes Out to Play and Learn

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Festival,Theatre

Come Out

The Come Out Festival started in 1974 because many professionals in the arts and education were peeved that the Adelaide Festival was taking no notice of young people in the performing arts. They set up in various parks in inner Adelaide and the momentum began. It was then decided that Come Out would utilise the Adelaide Festival’s administrative resources in the “off” year between Festivals and plan a full-scale programme of the kind that has been offered now …

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March 28, 1986

Anderson shows the essence of pop amid hi-tech legerdemain

Filed under: Archive,Festival,Music,National Times

Very few performance artists have made the leap to pop with such spectacular success as Laurie Anderson whose concert in Adelaide’s Festival Theatre opened her Australian tour and coincides with the release of her newest album, Home of the Brave.

All of the paradoxes of Anderson’s achievements are evident in her opening monologue, Progress. The eclectic, hi -tech relativism of her work exactly mirrors the processes she rails against as heartless progress. Anderson’s is a triumph of style …

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