Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell
Two friends are cast in a school production of The Comedy of Errors. At Geelong Grammar, no less. One is Greg Fleet, the other Ian Darling. One took the high road, the other the low. Forty years later they ponder where life has taken them – and which road was which.
**** Four Stars
The Twins, we are told, is Truer than Fiction. Terry Serio the director describes it as Theatre Verite. Whatever it is, …
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Murray Bramwell
When, in pre-school child care, Tom pushes a little girl because he doesn’t want to be hugged, he becomes the subject of an Incident Report. “He became That Boy,” his mother recalls, “and I became That Mother.” Writer and performer, Martha Lott powerfully describes the lonely challenges of parenting a turbulent child when everyone else has given up.
**** Four Stars
Sarah has two children – Hannah, and younger brother, Tom. One is easy-going and amenable. …
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Murray Bramwell
An Australian journalist is in Moscow to secretly investigate evidence of LGBTIQ persecution. He meets a Russian tourist guide who can help but he has his own agenda. Angus Cameron’s wryly engaging thriller takes us through a labyrinth of misrepresentation.
****1/2 Four and a Half Stars
DIRT is an intriguing play which combines serious human rights themes with an almost mischievous sense of shape-shifting plot surprise – making it all the more appealing.
An earnest young …
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Murray Bramwell
A sea wall is a massive, unexpected chasm under the ocean often deceptively near the shore. In this tightly-scripted monologue, husband and father, Alex (splendidly played by Renato Musolino) explores his own dark abyss after a sudden, freakish accident.
***** Five stars
Asked at short notice in 2008 to write a play for the Bush Theatre in London, Simon Stephens came up with Sea Wall. “I wanted to write a monologue,” he said. “I wanted …
Continue Reading Back to topVengeance and resolution, exorcism and benediction, this excellent new production captures the visceral drama of Angus Cerini’s remarkable play.
Four and a Half Stars . Ngunyawayiti Theatre, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide.
Reviewed December 11, 2020
by Murray Bramwell, published online December 12, 2020.
Amongst the anxiety and havoc of Covid-19, the performing arts in 2020 have been systematically clobbered. So many productions abandoned and cancelled, so much effort and commitment brought to nothing.
Adelaide independent company, Theatre Republic’s …
Continue Reading Back to topGaslight
by Patrick Hamilton
State Theatre Company South Australia
Her Majesty’s, Adelaide.
September 8. Tickets $ 35 – $ 69.
Bookings : 131 246 bass.net.au
Until September 19.
The first night of a show is always an event. But the opening of State Theatre’s Gaslight has put so many things into the spotlight that it is a matter for particular celebration.
When Mitchell Butel announced his 2020 program, his first for State, who could have known that seven scheduled productions …
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 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 …
Continue Reading Back to topAmong many cultural moments this year, two stand out. Both in the theatre. Both test the possibilities and limits of performance and representation. In the Adelaide Festival, director Milo Lau’s Belgian-German collaboration La Reprise (The Repetition) deconstructs a gay-hate murder which took place in 2012, in Liege, Belguim.
Dissecting the business and strategies of theatre, it explores both human transgression and the tricks of acting – the better for us to understand an unfathomable cruelty. Rau proposes a theatre with …
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