murraybramwell.com

May 01, 2000

Away from Home

Filed under: Archive,Australian Texts,Interstate,Theatre

Stolen
by Jane Harrison

Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Theatre Co-Operative and Playbox Theatre
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is always the hope of theatre that it has currency. But rarely does a work touch the moment like Jane Harrison’s play Stolen. The Ilbijerri Company’s Adelaide season, part of a national and international tour which includes the UK and Asia, opens in the very week when, as the result of a leaked Government submission, Aboriginal Affairs Minister John …

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March 15, 2000

Big hArt Works

Filed under: Archive,Festival,Interstate,Theatre

Big hArt Works
Director: Scott Rankin

Care Park, Moore Street
Adelaide until 17 March

The Theft of Sita

Director : Nigel Jamieson, Music: Paul Grabowsky and I Wayan Gde Yudane, Puppetry: I Made Sidia and Peter Wilson, Design: Julian Crouch and Reg Mombassa

Botanic Park, Adelaide
until 17 March.

The cavernous warehouse venue is lit up with activity. Painting easels surround the walls, a dozen young people hold up their portraits for viewing, a large expanse of red earth is …

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March 05, 2000

Theatre – Adelaide Festival

Filed under: Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Murray Bramwell

Mizumachi
Ishinha Theatre Company.
Written and directed by Yukichi Matsumoto. Designed by Yuji Hayashida. Music and sound by Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Kazuyuki Matsamura. Lighting by Kiyokazu Kakizaki
Torrens Parade Ground
Adelaide, until 17 March.

Mizumachi is the water city, a floating shanty town in the emerging industrial city of Osaka in1905. Here poor rural migrants come from the Southern Islands of Ryukyu to find work, ekeing out a living along the canals, pilfering iron and collecting junk. Orphaned, …

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November 01, 1999

Cakes and Ale, Wind and Rain

Filed under: Archive,Theatre

Twelfth Night, or What You Will
William Shakespeare

State Theatre South Australia
Optima Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The season is not yet over for State Theatre but with Twelfth Night Artistic Director Rodney Fisher signs off on his two year residency. Also marking twenty five years of Playhouse activity, this production not only adds a festive note, it is among the best work State has produced for a while. Certainly it is a happier excursion into Shakespeare than last …

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September 01, 1999

Private Lives

Filed under: Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Closer
Patrick Marber
State Theatre
Space, August, 1999.
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Playwright Patrick Marber has described Closer as Noel Coward for the Nineties. It is an astute and useful, if not entirely modest, remark identifying the shrewd blend of wit and acerbic social observation that marks it as a comedy of manners. Because, beneath the spray of its contemporary realist profanity, Closer has a highly wrought and elegant structure.

Set in London, Marber’s play follows the lives of four …

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August 01, 1999

Grande, or de Trop ?

Filed under: Archive,International,Theatre

Saltimbanco
Cirque du Soleil
Ellis Park

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is called the Grand Chapiteau and massive it certainly is. With its turrets, minarets and domes the massive $18m travelling venue for Cirque du Soleil is a show in itself. Almost phosphorescently white it is a formidable feat of engineering. And it can hardly be accidental that it resembles Fantasyland, which as all mouseketeers would know, is the happiest land of them all.

With seven different entertainments currently on …

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July 01, 1999

Heartbreak Hotels

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

The Judas Kiss
David Hare

Company B Belvoir
Optima Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is only one thing worse than being talked about, observed Oscar Wilde, and that is not being talked about. He and his shade can have little fear of that. Especially as the Nineties offer us so many centenaries. Of his successes – publications, lecture tours and opening nights. And of the dark days, of trial, imprisonment and – hardly before the century he influenced had …

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Pulp Theatre

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Criminal Genius
George F. Walker

Bakehouse Theatre
Angas Street

Mojo
Jez Butterworth

Brink Productions
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Bakehouse Theatre’s Peter Green is to be commended for bringing us Criminal Genius , a recent work from Canadian playwright George F. Walker. It is a bleakly comic little piece about crime and more crime and the rippling effect of retribution. In its mix of hostility and farce it owes much, as many works now seem to, to the bravura writing …

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June 01, 1999

Dark Truths

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Carrying Light
Verity Laughton

State Theatre South Australia
and Vitalstatistix
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is something fundamentally threatening about closed religious societies. We call them cults and no matter how benign their objectives they are demonised. The settlement of the United States was propelled by groups going that further thirty miles just to get away. And whether Shakers, Amish, Mormons or Mennonites they solemnly believed that they embodied the extended family in Christ.

The appeal of the lifestyle …

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May 01, 1999

City of Dreadful Night

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Roberto Zucco
Bernard-Marie Koltes

Brink Productions
Balcony Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Roberto Zucco is a modern Lizzie Borden. First he gave his father forty whacks. Then he gave his mother forty two. After that, he kills a policeman and a child. Freud may be able to explain the first three but only the Devil can account for the last. Based on the actual exploits of an Italian hoodlum, French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltes’ creation is a grimly funny portrait of …

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