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November 18, 2021

Theatre Review: Dry

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australian Texts,Theatre

In Catherine Fitzgerald’s grim comedy of climate crisis, two sisters cling desperately to the remnants of their unsustainable rural heritage.

Murray Bramwell

We have been warned for more than fifty years about climate change. The rapid deterioration of our biosphere is a concept terrifying to consider. Reports of polar melting, sea levels rising, and increasingly chaotic weather patterns have the enormity and unreality of science fiction. So how do we countenance this in ways that might sink in ?

Dry…

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November 16, 2021

Comedy of manners for quarrelsome age

Filed under: 2021,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Eureka Day
by Jonathan Spector
State Theatre South Australia.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 16. Tickets $39 – $79.
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Duration : 130 minutes (including interval)
Until November 27.

Californian playwright, Jonathan Spector could not have known, when his sparklingly witty comedy of ethics opened in Berkeley in April 2018, that Eureka Day would be so alarmingly prescient of the corrosive social divisions in a global pandemic.

Set in the Eureka Day Community school, the play opens on …

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October 21, 2021

Theatre review: White Pearl

Filed under: 2021,Archive,Festival,Theatre

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 …

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September 14, 2021

Fiscal Abuse

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Glengarry Glen Ross
By David Mamet
Flying Penguin Productions
The Bakehouse.
September 11.
Until September 25.

Murray Bramwell


L-R. Nicholas Garsden / Christopher Pitman. Photo: Shane Reid

Talking about the Art of the Deal has certainly lost its lustre thanks to the Shyster-in-Chief, Donald Trump, but the cult of the salesman, the samurai emissary of predatory capitalism, has been on the nose ever since Willy Loman discovered his pitiful net worth in Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s bitter …

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August 18, 2021

Theatre review: Hibernation

Filed under: 2021,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

InDaily
Murray Bramwell

Theatre review: Hibernation

Hibernation, State Theatre’s engaging and theatrically inventive new play, is not only a wake-up call about the climate crisis, it reminds us that to fix the planet we really have to fix ourselves.

Not often does a play seem to have been conjured from the most recent news headlines, but Hibernation is one of them. Writer Finegan Kruckemeyer describes beginning his draft in 2019- “and the writing of that world strangely became the …

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June 09, 2021

Theatre: The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race

Filed under: 2021,Archive,Australian Texts,State Theatre Company,Theatre

State Theatre’s exuberant and entertaining new production is set in a small rural town where nothing changes, but change is overdue. Five women from Appleton chew through some timely questions about fairness, opportunity and gender equity.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“The potato race is a real thing,” writer Melanie Tait tells us in her program note for The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race, “It happens every year in my hometown…” Her town is not called Appleton though, it is Robertson …

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June 04, 2021

Theatre review: Watchlist

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australian Texts,Theatre

Overflowing with wit and mercurial polemic, Watchlist at The Bakehouse is an ambitious comedy with a sharp message.

Murray Bramwell

We often think only of fossil fuels as the prime cause of climate change. In Watchlist, the unlikely hero discovers the true impact of the global livestock industry and leaves us all with food for thought.

Basil Pepper is in his early twenties and lives in a world of his own. His closest associate is his bearded dragon lizard, …

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May 10, 2021

Private Lives

Filed under: 2021,Archive,Australian Texts,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Euphoria
by Emily Steel
A State Theatre South Australia
and Country Arts SA Production.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
May 7. Until May 15.

“The town in Euphoria is not based on any one town,” playwright Emily Steel writes in the program notes for State Theatre’s terrific new production, “but has aspects of many.” When travelling all over regional South Australia researching the play and interviewing locals, Steel asked people what was the best thing about life in their town. …

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April 21, 2021

Theatre review : The Gospel According to Paul

Filed under: 2021,Archive,Australian Texts,Comedy,Theatre

In ninety engaging minutes, writer and performer, Jonathan Biggins’ Gospel brings us, not just a fascinating study of Paul Keating but an account of a transformative time in Australian political history.

Murray Bramwell

You might say, that for satirist Jonathan Biggins, Paul Keating has been his bread and butter for a long time. As part of the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf Revue, along with Phillip Scott, Drew Forsythe and a select group of associates, Biggins has made an art form …

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April 11, 2021

Theatre review : My Three Angels

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Independent Theatre returns with an energetic revival of a comic farce with a heart of kindness – as three wily convicts become Christmas angels for a family facing financial ruin.

Murray Bramwell

Adapted in 1953 by Sam and Bella Spewack, from Albert Husson’s play Les Cuisine des Anges, My Three Angels is set in the French Guiana prison colony in 1910. It is a rambunctious tale of three convicts on work release who offer to repair the roof of …

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