2006

Away
by Michael Gow

Queensland Theatre Company
and Griffin Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse
Until September 23, 2006.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There can be few Australian plays as mercurial as Away. Written in the mid-Eighties, but set in the late Sixties, it focuses on three families going “away” for their summer holidays. It is full of affectionate retro-detail of Australian beach culture, but its central themes are of loss and death and the struggle to accept the inevitable and …

Michael Gow talks about his play, Away, twenty years after its first performance.

Murray Bramwell

When the Griffin Theatre production of Away opened at the Stables in Sydney on January 7, 1986, no-one, least of all thirty-one year old playwright, Michael Gow, had any idea what a successful, and much beloved play it would become. Written swiftly between November 1985 and the following January, the play reflected Gow’s preoccupations at that time:

“It was partly turning thirty and asking ‘how …

Life X 3
by Yasmina Reza

State Theatre Company
of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse.
Until 2 September, 2006

Murray Bramwell

When the Finidoris – Hubert and Ines – knock at the door of Henri’s apartment his wife Sonia describes it as a catastrophe. They have either arrived a day too soon for their dinner invitation, or Henri has got the date wrong. In any case, it is a cock-up. There’s no food in the house except chocolate fingers and crispy …

August 16, 2006
Murray Bramwell

Life X 3
by Yasmina Reza
Translated by Christopher Hampton

State Theatre Company of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
August 15, 2006. Tickets $ 15 – 50. Bookings : BASS 131 246
Until September 2.

When dinner guests arrive 24 hours sooner than expected, it is described by the hostess as a catastrophe. Of course, that is an excessive use of the word, or is
it ? In her comedy of micro-manners, Life …

2006

Waiting for Godot
By Samuel Beckett

State Theatre Company
Space, Adelaide Festival Centre
22 July, 2006.

Murray Bramwell

For a play about not getting anywhere, Waiting for Godot has gone a very long way. Written in Paris in 1949, last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of its first performance to somewhat puzzled audiences in London – two years after it had already perplexed the French. But if its metaphor of apparently futile waiting is ambiguous and riddling, the context …