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March 10, 2025

Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare

Adelaide Festival Theatre

Coriolanus, King John, Much Ado About Nothing

This complete rendering of Shakespeare, without actors and speeches, but instead storytellers with a cast of performers from the kitchen cupboard, not only intrigues us but shows us how an audience works.

Written by Murray Bramwell

Led by Tim Etchells, for 41 years the wryly-named Forced Entertainment company from Sheffield UK have made it their business to question and re-frame the business of theatre. Where other companies strive to replicate …

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March 01, 2025

Adelaide Festival: Theatre Krapp’s Last Tape

In a meticulously staged production of a Samuel Beckett classic, Irish actor Stephen Rea gives a touchingly human account of a man in old age slowly revisiting and rewinding a life of disenchantment and missed opportunities.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“A country road. A tree. Evening.” In 1949, Samuel Beckett transformed the post-war theatre with a single play –Waiting for Godot. Clearing the decks of stage naturalism and psychologically detailed characters, he opted for theatrical minimalism. Less was …

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February 20, 2025

Fringe: Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Ar** For England

Adelaide Fringe

Theatre: Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Ar** For England

In a frenetic, perceptive, often brilliant sixty minutes, writer and performer Alex Hill explores the agonies, ecstasies and desperate endgames of a London football fanatic.

Written by Murray Bramwell

Bursting into the confines of the Holden Street Studio comes Billy. Amped up, dressed in his national team’s strip, he is ready for battle – for England, St George, and Harry Maguire. So ready, in fact, that in …

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Fringe: Shellshocked

Adelaide Fringe

Theatre: Shellshocked

This excellent new English play from the Edinburgh Fringe, written and directed by Philip Stokes and featuring his son Jack Stokes, is an intriguing and disconcerting meeting of damaged minds.

Written by Murray Bramwell

The scene is an artist’s studio. There is a large blank easel in the centre of the stage with paint-spattered tarps suspended behind it. There is a desk with drawers and, beside a well-used drinks cabinet, stands a disheveled man – bearded, …

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Fringe: Dear Diary

Adelaide Fringe

Theatre: Dear Diary

A diary from a younger self is explored and reinterpreted in storytelling and song. It is a vivid portrait of the artist as a young woman.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“My name is Kay (says Kay Proudlove) and I want to tell you a story.” And it is a beguiling, pensive and candid one. Dear Diary is a history -or rather, a herstory – based on a relic from the turn of the century, her …

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February 12, 2025

Theatre: Housework

In Housework, a droll new play from State Theatre Company, we are invited behind closed Parliamentary doors to glimpse the best that is aspired to – and, funnily enough, quite a bit that falls well short.

Written by Murray Bramwell

In a recent interview Emily Steel describes her wittily-named parliamentary drama, Housework – “I guess what this play is about is who is getting into these positions of power ? What does it cost them ? How much should …

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October 25, 2024

OzAsia Festival Dance/Theatre : Scored in Silence

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 26, 2024

Theatre: The Almighty Sometimes

While mental illness is often a “sometimes” thing, it is managed with debilitating treatments which are total and often life-diminishing. This memorable production from Theatre Republic powerfully depicts both the human cost and the fleeting triumphs.

Written by Murray Bramwell

In an epigraph to her outstanding stage debut, The Almighty Sometimes , Australian playwright, Kendall Feaver cites a medical textbook on The Bipolar Child which quotes advice from a nine year old, outlining what should be done when a child …

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September 05, 2024

Theatre: Shore Break

This solo work, written and brilliantly performed by Chris Pitman, explores how, in our midst, the lives of many are beached and marooned.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“I have tried to write a version of this story for many years but was never quite able to finish. A solitary figure, unable to connect, abandoned at the edge of the world.”

In Shore Break Chris Pitman has undoubtedly succeeded with this succinct monologue which crests and breaks like the intimidating waves …

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August 09, 2024

Musical Theatre Chicago

Filed under: 2024,Archive,Music,Theatre

Harking back to the Jazz Age of the late 1920s, Chicago is full of fizz and low comedy, great song and dance performances, and has a shrewd edge intended to make us think, even as we enjoy the razzle dazzle.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“This is a story of greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery. All those things we hold near and dear…” Before the curtain even goes up we know there are no red shoes, and this is …

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