murraybramwell.com

February 01, 2008

On Target and On Song

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Assassins

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by John Weidman

Flying Penguin Productions

and Adelaide Festival Centre iNspace Program

The Space, Adelaide Festival Centre, South Australia

December 7-15, 2007.

Directed by David Mealor

Music Director Matthew Carey

There have been four Australian productions of Assassins since it first opened Off-Broadway in 1990 and was remounted in London in 1992. And, of those, only two have been professional productions – the Melbourne Theatre Company version in 1995 and this, most …

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Boy Story

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

2008

The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy

Written by Finegan Kruckemeyer, conceived by Andy Packer

Slingsby Productions

The Space, Adelaide Festival Centre

January 24.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The summer season of young people’s theatre at the Festival Centre has provided a fine opportunity for Slingsby Productions to show their wares. Artistic Director Andy Packer sees his company’s brief as providing “emotionally complex and original stories” with high production values. He refers to Slingsby’s work as “theatrickery” – which is an …

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December 07, 2007

Heart of Glass

Filed under: Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

2007

The Real Thing
By Tom Stoppard

State Theatre Company
Of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse
November 20, 2007. Until December 8.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is no doubting Tom Stoppard’s brilliance and he has written a number of modern classics – Travesties and Jumpers in the early Seventies, more recently the marvelous Arcadia, as well as (a neat program match for this year’s Hamlet perhaps ?) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The Real Thing, however, is not in the …

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Heart of Glass

Filed under: Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

The Real Thing
By Tom Stoppard

State Theatre Company
Of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse
November 20. Until December 8.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

As Adam Cook’s 2007 State Theatre season draws to a close, it cannot be said that it has been his best. To seize the word back from Summer Heights parlance, it has been a random experience. While Cook has never made claims for any themes and threads – in fact, quite the reverse – the jump from …

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November 23, 2007

Re-inventing Sizwe

Filed under: Archive,International,Theatre

2007

Sizwe Banzi is Dead
by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona
French adaptation by Marie-Helene Estienne

The CICT/Theatre des Bouffes du Nord
The Space, Adelaide Festival Centre
November 7. 2007.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Some productions create great expectations and there can be few greater than for director Peter Brook. His work has the status of legend in this city – especially for those who rate such productions as The Conference of the Birds, The Mahabharata and the …

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November 22, 2007

Brittle narcissism delivers little

Filed under: Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

2007 The Australian

The Real Thing
by Tom Stoppard

State Theatre Company
Of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse
Adelaide Festival Centre
November 20, 2007. Until December 8.
Tickets $17 – $55. Bookings BASS 131 246

The scene is a living room – lounges, low tables, a carpet square – and Max is drinking wine, waiting for Charlotte to return from abroad. There is light, bright banter when she enters but Max knows that she has left her passport hidden among the …

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November 09, 2007

Siswe Banzi finds a New Identity

Filed under: Archive,International,Theatre

2007
Murray Bramwell previews the current production of a South African drama classic directed by theatre legend Peter Brook.

Siswe Banzi is Dead opens at the Space on November 7 but it is not for the first time in Adelaide. Athol Fugard’s play, written in collaboration with actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, was scheduled, along with its companion work The Island, at the 1976 Adelaide Festival. The two plays with their vivid and disturbing accounts of life in South …

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Sky Writing

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

2007

Dogfall

By Caleb Lewis

TheimaGen

The Bakehouse

Until  November 17

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

We talk about it raining cats and dogs – and lately we wish it would more. But in Dogfall, an intriguing new work presented at The Bakehouse by TheimaGen, dramatist Caleb Lewis has taken the image to a disturbing other level. In this ambitious, epic play which begins at The Somme and continues to the present post 9/11 geo-political mayhem, Lewis examines the debates, …

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October 19, 2007

Theatre Adelaide

Filed under: Archive,Australian Texts,Theatre

2007

LyreBird : Tales of Helpmann

by Tyler Coppin

State Theatre Company

Of South Australia

Space Theatre

Adelaide Festival Centre

October 16. Until November 3.

Tickets $17 – $55.  Bookings BASS 131 246

It was in 1964, in The Display, the first fully home-grown work by the Australian Ballet, that choreographer Robert Helpmann introduced the dance of the lyrebird as a metaphor for Australian male attitudes. Now, in a welcome return, nine years after it premiered at the 1998 …

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October 12, 2007

Family First

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

2007

The Homecoming

by Harold Pinter

Floogle

Holden Street Theatres

Directors’ Choice 2007

October 3. Until October 20.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

They have been called comedies of menace and the term is apt. There is something claustrophobic about the settings of Harold Pinter’s domestic dramas, whether it is the crummy Brighton boarding digs of The Birthday Party, the derelict house in The Caretaker or the dingy North London location of The Homecoming. Each is a closed little …

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