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March 07, 2019

Adelaide Festival – Hope survives bitter reality of refugee’s life

A Man of Good Hope
Young Vic and Isango Ensemble
Based on the book by Jonny Steinberg
Royalty Theatre. March 5.
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com Tickets: $30- $89.
Duration: 2 hours 30 mins (including interval)
Until March 11.

Asad Abdullahi is an ordinary man with a remarkable life story, re-told to author Jonny Steinberg and published as A Man of Good Hope. In 2016 it was turned into this compelling operatic production from South Africa’s Isango Ensemble, with seasons at London’s …

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March 06, 2019

Adelaide Festival – ‘Experiencing’ cruelty and its consequences through transparent acting

La Reprise. Histoire(s) du theatre (1)
Conceived and directed by Milo Rau
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
March 4. Bookings: adelaidefestival.com
Tickets: $30- $79. Duration: 90 mins (no interval)
Until March 7.

La Reprise, (The Repetition) a Belgian-German collaboration developed by director, Milo Rau, is an anatomy of a murder. It is also a careful dissection of the business and strategies of theatre. This intriguing essay on human transgression wittily explores its own best ways for making us, not …

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November 14, 2018

Daily Review – OzAsia is a Festival to Remember

Daily Review

OzAsia is a Festival to Remember

In recent years OzAsia has become one of the highlights of Adelaide’s festival calendar but never more so than in 2018.
The hugely popular Moon Lantern Parade, cruelly thwarted by uncertain spring weather in recent years and cancelled several times, has benefited now that the festival begins in late October instead of a month earlier. More than 40,000 attended this year’s parade which featured contributions from ethnic community groups, schools, performance companies …

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November 05, 2018

OzAsia Festival 2018

Lines of Communication

Here is the Message You Asked for …Don’t Tell Anyone Else ;-)
Created by en? (What has happened ? How does it come to this ?)
Chunqiu Theatre Company, Dream Can.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 1.
OzAsia concludes November 11.

OzAsia is in its final week in Adelaide and again highlights artistic director, Joseph Mitchell’s flair for finding the new and intriguing in Asian performance art. This time it is 33 year old Chinese director, …

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October 31, 2018

While I Was Waiting

OzAsia Festival
Adelaide.

While I Was Waiting
by Mohammad Al Attar
Directed by Omar Abusaada
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
October 30.

Four and a Half Stars

Murray Bramwell

At the Q&A, held after the first of only two performances of Syrian playwright, Mohammad Al Attar’s While I Was Waiting, someone asked the director, Omar Abusaada what message he wanted audiences to take away from the play. His reply was that he did not want his theatre to be …

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October 25, 2018

More new frontiers for OzAsia in 2018

Daily Review
More new frontiers for OzAsia in 2018

Murray Bramwell talks with OzAsia Artistic Director, Joseph Mitchell about his latest festival program.

Launched in 2006 by Adelaide Festival Centre director Douglas Gautier, OzAsia is now in its twelfth year and is looking more innovative and intriguing than ever. Since its inception the festival has expanded its horizons and become ever more inclusive. Already spanning Asia and South East Asia – China, Japan to Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, as …

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March 16, 2018

Adelaide Festival – Daily Review

Adelaide Festival
Daily Review

Palestinian Voices

Azza
Written and directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi.
ShiberHur Theatre Company.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
March 14. 60 minutes, no interval.
Until March 18.

The Azza is the Palestinian mourning ceremony but, in the ShiberHur Theatre Company’s excellent production, it is very far from doleful. Invigorated by Amir Nizar Zuabi’s warm, well-judged text, Azza is, as funeral organisers like to say, a celebration of life.

Azza is a gathering of men. It consists …

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March 12, 2018

Shakespeare’s war room in theatrical overdrive

Adelaide Festival

Kings of War
by William Shakespeare
Adaptation by Bart Van den Eyde , Peter Van Kraaij.
Translated by Rob Klinkenberg.
Directed by Ivo van Hove.
Toneelgroep Amsterdam.
Festival Theatre, Adelaide
March 10. Tickets $30 -$129.
Bookings : 131 246 or online.
Duration : 4 hours 30 mins (30 min interval)
English surtitles.
Until March 13.

It is four years since Toneelgroep Amsterdam amazed Adelaide Festival audiences with their dazzling Shakespearean triptych Roman Tragedies, a six hour spectacle …

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March 05, 2018

The Far Side of the Moon Theatre Review

Daily Review
Adelaide Festival

Murray Bramwell

Lunar Tunes

The Far Side of the Moon
Written and directed by Robert Lepage
Ex Machina.
Her Majesty’s, Adelaide.
March 3.

It was the Soviet Luna 3 mission in 1959 which first captured photos of the far side of the moon. They discovered mountains and dark regions which the Russians named the Sea of Moscow, the Sea of Desire and the Sea of Ingenuity.

For French Canadian theatre director, Robert Lepage, the far side …

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March 04, 2018

Ambitious staging brings out the dead in bright unbearable reality

Adelaide Festival

Memorial
by Alice Oswald
Brink Productions
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
March 2. Tickets $30 – $79.
Bookings 131 246 or online.
Duration: 90 minutes (no interval)
Until March 6.

Alice Oswald’s long poem, Memorial, published in 2011, is well-named. It is elegiac and unforgettable. She calls it an “excavation” and “a kind of oral cemetery.” It is a list of 215 names, taken from Homer’s Iliad, of soldiers who died in the Trojan War. With clinical …

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