White Pearl not only takes a sharp and funny swipe at the Asian cosmetics industry, it reminds us that racism comes in a disturbing variety of forms – and social media is often not helping. OzAsia 2021 has opened with its first highlight.
Murray Bramwell
Clearday is the name of this smart young Singaporean cosmetic company, but there is nothing very clear about the way they do business. Their product is called White Pearl and as playwright, Achuli Felicia King’s …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Festival
Medea
After Euripides
Written and directed by Simon Stone
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam.
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide.
Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre, Mount Gambier.
March 4. Duration : 1 hr 20 mins.
Eugene Onegin
Selected chapters from the novel in verse
by Alexander Pushkin.
Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre of Russia.
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide
March 5. Duration 3 hrs 20 mins, including interval.
Since inception the Adelaide Festival has been celebrated for its international program. But like so much else, …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Festival 2021
Slingsby takes Martin McKenna’s memoir The Boy Who Talked to Dogs back to County Limerick where it began. Featuring an Irish pub band, shadow dog puppets and Bryan Burroughs, brilliant as the talking boy.
“Sometimes you have to learn to be the hero of your own story,” writer Amy Conroy observed – and this is what the celebrated dog whisperer, Martin McKenna achieved. Or mostly so. His book about his wretched childhood on the Garryowen estate in …
Continue Reading Back to topA German Life
by Christopher Hampton
Co-produced by Adelaide Festival
and The Gordon Frost Organisation.
Dunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre.
February 23. Tickets $ 30 – $109.
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au.
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes. No interval.
Until March 14.
“I have forgotten such a lot,” concedes Brunhilde Pomsel, aged 102, “And then …things surge up into my mind. Things I can remember in the minutest detail.”
This happens when you get old, but in the case of Pomsel, the sweeping …
Continue Reading Back to topCold Blood
by Thomas Gunzig.
Michele Anne De Mey, Jaco Van Dormael,
Kiss & Cry Collective.
Ridley Centre, Adelaide Showgrounds.
March 5. Duration: 1 hour 15 mins (no interval)
Mouthpiece
by Kieran Hurley
Traverse Theatre Company
Odeon Theatre.
March 6. Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Tickets: $30 – $69. Duration 1 hour 35 minutes (no interval)
Until March 15.
The Belgian Kiss & Cry Collective, led by choreographer Michele Anne de Mey and filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael have turned Cold Blood into a …
Continue Reading Back to topEight
by Michael van der Aa.
Featuring Kate Miller-Heidke, Livia van den Bercken,
Vakil Eelman
Hetzel Lecture Theatre, Institute Building
State Library of South Australia.
February 27. Until March 15.
When we talk about immersive experience increasingly we mean Virtual Reality. VR is not only the newest frontier, it the most mind-bending kingdom of them all. Netherlands composer and director, Michael van der Aa has gained prominence for his progress in merging music and visual experience to create art works …
Continue Reading Back to top150 Psalms
Leadership (Concert 9)
Pilgrim Church, Flinders St.
March 2.
150 Psalms, a choral presentation of twelve themed concerts performed over four days, is one of the centrepieces of the 2020 Adelaide Festival as it celebrates its 60th year. It is an extensive project, conceived by Tido Visser, managing director of the Netherlands Chamber Choir, and was first performed in 2017 at the Utrecht Festival Oude Muziek.
The Adelaide event is its fourth version, featuring The Netherlands …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Doctor
by Robert Icke
Very freely adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi.
Almeida Theatre, London.
in association with Adelaide Festival.
Dunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre.
February 28. Tickets $ 45 – $129.
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au.
Duration: 2 Hours 40 minutes including interval.
Until March 8.
Robert Icke has energised current UK theatre with his versions of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and George Orwell’s 1984. He describes adaptation as “like using a foreign plug. You are in a …
Continue Reading Back to topDance Nation
by Clare Barron
State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir
In association with Adelaide Festival.
Scott Theatre, University of Adelaide.
February 25. Tickets $ 39 – $ 79. Bookings adelaidefestival.com.au.
Until March 7.
Belvoir season from March 14.
Shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize in 2019, Dance Nation is a funny, ferocious and closely-observed study of a group of pre-teen girls (and one boy) in a dance troupe competing in a series of play-offs to reach national prominence.
Writer …
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Reviewing the Adelaide Festival : Recollections in Grateful Tranquility
March 11, 2020
File under Archive, Current, Festival, Commentary.
Adelaide Festival
Reviewing the Adelaide Festival : Recollections in Grateful Tranquility.
Murray Bramwell
My life in Adelaide has always included the Festival. Less than a month after I arrived, in February 1972, to begin postgraduate study at Flinders Uni, I was in the thick of Writers’ Week. Beat legends Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg were reading in the Town Hall. Ginsberg had invited Indulkana songmen from APY lands to share the …
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