murraybramwell.com

July 01, 1998

Family Ties

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

1998

East of Eden

John Steinbeck

adapted by Rob Croser

Independent Theatre

Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Independent Theatre has had a continuing relationship with the works of John Steinbeck for a while now. Several years ago the company presented Frank Galati’s stage adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath and now, with the benediction of Elaine Steinbeck, the writer’s widow, director Rob Croser has taken East of Eden and staged it in the Playhouse.

It is a hugely ambitious project …

Continue Reading Back to top

Journeys

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

1998

Up the Road

John Harding

Company B Belvoir/Playbox

Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is very rarely that we go to the theatre and experience the immediacy of issues of the day. But that is what it was like to see Company B Belvoir’s production of John Harding’s Up the Road just three days after the Queensland election. Not that the play has been contrived for relevance or, even, that  anyone could have predicted, when it was listed for …

Continue Reading Back to top

June 01, 1998

Soap Opera

Filed under: Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Master Class
by Terrence McNally
State Theatre South Australia/Adelaide Festival Centre
Optima Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Master Class is New York-based playwright, Terrence McNally’s account of sessions Maria Callas held at the Juilliard School of Music between October 1971 and March 1972. These classes, as Rodney Fisher’s informative program notes remind us, took place at a difficult time for La Divina. Her career was, by this time – like her voice – if not in shreds, at least in …

Continue Reading Back to top

May 01, 1998

Adelaide Festival – The Dragon’s Trilogy

Filed under: Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Adelaide Festival

The Dragon’s Trilogy
Theatre Repere de Quebec
Directed by Robert Lepage
Design and Couture : Jean-Francais and Gilles Dube
Music: Robert Caux
Thebarton Theatre .
March 1988.

Every now and then a production appears which is so imaginative that it makes everything else look like radio with mime. Such a play is Theatre Repere of Quebec’s The Dragon’s Trilogy, a Canadian work which was presented in the last week of the Adelaide Festival and inexplicably has been …

Continue Reading Back to top

April 01, 1998

Social Engineering

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

The Department
David Williamson

State Theatre South Australia
The Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Set in 1967, first performed in 1974, David Williamson’s The Department, like other early works such as The Club and Don’s Party , is both generic and prophetic. While bearing some resemblance to Swinburne College of Technology, where Williamson taught in the Engineering faculty in the sixties, The Department is also archetypical of a staff meeting in any educational institution. Or, for that matter, anywhere that …

Continue Reading Back to top

Design Fault

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Festival,Theatre

The Architect’s Walk
Daniel Keene

Red Shed Company
Arts Theatre

Such was his sense of manifest destiny that Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer, drew artist’s impressions of the buildings of the Reich as two thousand year old ruins. Much later, in an interview for European TV, Speer observed, like a naughty schoolboy, that he was glad the Fuhrer was not around any more. He would not be pleased with Speer’s work, it was all built of such inferior concrete that it …

Continue Reading Back to top

March 01, 1998

Adelaide Festival 1998

Filed under: Archive,International,Theatre

Reverberations

The Seven Streams of the River Ota (98 Version)
Devised by Ex Machina
Directed by Robert Lepage

Ex Machina
Thebarton Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

When he first visited Hiroshima, a city, a word, synonymous with thermonuclear destruction, Quebecois director Robert Lepage expected to be dismayed by an enduring grimness. Instead he found “a lively, reconstructed modern city with large parks planted with tall trees: a vibrant night life and some of the most interesting contemporary art galleries in …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 01, 1998

Nein

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Music,Theatre

Nine
Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston,
Book by Arthur Kopit.
Directed by John Diedrich
Festival Theatre

It is now twenty five years since Federico Fellini’s 81/2 was first released. A film about a filmmaker making a film, it is bizarre, narcissistic, sexist and cinematically fearless. 81/2 remains a classic not least for the performances by Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale and Anouk Aimee.

Nine is more than fractionally different from 81/2. …

Continue Reading Back to top

Real Time

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

1998

Magpie 2 – A Future or a Blown Youth ?

Murray Bramwell

Adelaide

It was only in July last year that I reported in these columns the arrival of a new funded company in Adelaide. Well, it was not so much a new company as a makeover of an existing operation. In an effort to rescue the long-term subscriber base for State Theatre, then Executive Director Chris Westwood grasped the nettle and changed the charter for Magpie, the young …

Continue Reading Back to top

January 01, 1998

House Moves

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

Features of Blown Youth
by Raimondo Cortese

Magpie2
Queens Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

When State Theatre refitted Magpie 2 this year it also gave it a difficult task. Some might have called it a Mission Impossible. No longer a theatre-in-schools project its charter was switched to post secondary audience development. Magpie was now to produce theatre for eighteen to twenty-five year olds- a group that is not really a group at all, a demographic that not even demographers can …

Continue Reading Back to top
« Newer Posts — Older Posts »