murraybramwell.com

November 02, 2025

Theatre/Music OzAsia Milestone

William Yang returns to OzAsia with his latest monologue-with-pictures. It is called Milestone and it is a reminder of how many of them he has had.

Murray Bramwell

Occasioned by his 80th birthday in 2023, Milestone is William Yang’s most complete retrospective to date. First presented at this year’s Sydney Festival and, after Adelaide, immediately headed for a major arts festival in Seoul, this work is Yang’s most extensive, inclusive, and, perhaps, most personal. It is the William Omnibus …

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October 26, 2025

Theatre : American Song

Filed under: Archive,Current,Theatre

In Flying Penguin Productions terrific new work, a monologue written by Joanna Murray-Smith and featuring Renato Musolino, a father finds himself in a relentless, but seemingly invisible, chain of events leading to an American tragedy.

Murray Bramwell

What is it that makes us who we are ? After Freud and the decoding of DNA, after Rousseau and Charles Darwin, we strongly suspect it’s that pesky combination, that cosmic arm wrestle between nature and nurture. What causes things to turn out …

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October 08, 2025

Interview – David Mealor and Flying Penguin Productions

His newest production for the State Theatre Company, American Song marks 20 years of David Mealor’s Flying Penguin Productions. He looks back on his beginnings as a director, his collaborators, theatrical accomplishments, and might-have-beens.

David Mealor remembers a conversation, with an actor friend in Sydney, way back at the beginning of the century. It was when he first said out loud to someone that he would like to take up directing.

“It was because I would see myself as an …

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May 12, 2025

South Australia’s History Festival

Don’s Party
An Audience with Don Dunstan
by Neil Cole.
Directed by Alicia Ben-Lawler.
Ayers House, North Terrace.
May 11. Until May 17.

Amongst the impressively diverse month-long program of the History Festival is a theatre cabaret work featuring one of South Australia’s most outstanding political leaders. Don Dunstan, who served as Member of the House of Assembly from 1953 to 1979, the last nine years as Premier , remains the most transformative single parliamentarian in South Australian history.

So …

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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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