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December 01, 1997

State’s 1998 Season

State’s 1998 Season

Murray Bramwell

Perhaps it was the threatening storm clouds, perhaps it was the funeral-chic black worn by many of those in attendance. Maybe it was because it has been such a long time coming. Whatever the reason, the announcement of the 1998 State Theatre season, now formally in conjunction with the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust, seemed a skittery and desultory affair.

Arrayed on the lawns adjacent to the Back Stage Bar and Grill, a mixed crowd of …

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State Theatre 1998 Season

1997

Murray Bramwell

Perhaps it was the threatening storm clouds, perhaps it was the  funeral-chic black worn by many of those in attendance. Maybe it was because it has been such a long time coming. Whatever the reason, the announcement of the 1998 State Theatre season, now formally in conjunction with the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust, seemed a skittery and desultory affair.

Arrayed on the lawns adjacent to the Back Stage Bar and Grill, a mixed crowd of theatre workers, …

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Fiscal Violence

1997

Shopping and Fucking

Mark Ravenhill

Out of Joint Company

Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

That old F word just goes on causing problems. Take the case of Mark Ravenhill’s very recent play Shopping and Fucking. A publicist’s nightmare, it has caused a flurry of asterisks and strategic figleaves. In Adelaide it received a self-imposed R rating. In New Zealand there were rumours it wouldn’t play at all.

On tour around the country the play has remained enmeshed in …

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November 01, 1997

Forced Landings

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

The Tempest
William Shakespeare

Bell Shakespeare Company
Her Majesty’s

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Just when I was beginning to think that the single-concept approach to Shakespeare had become a needlessly limited orthodoxy, along comes a production that is so giddy with signs and portents that it runs aground. The trouble with Jim Sharman’s reading of The Tempest is that it has at least four or five different brainstorms all tossed into the same teacup. When, in the program notes, dramaturg …

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October 04, 1997

Barossa Seulle

Theatre/Dance
Adelaide

Barossa Seulle

Meryl Tankard’s Australian Dance Theatre prepares a new work for the Barossa Music Festival.

It is mid-morning on a Wednesday and Meryl Tankard steps out of rehearsal to talk about Seulle, a new work being developed especially for the Barossa Music Festival. Dressed in black leotard, she towels her thick, dark hair and makes a beeline to the spring water dispenser for a cupful.

These Barossa gigs are particular labours of love for Tankard and her …

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October 01, 1997

Dead Reckonings

After the Ball
David Williamson

Queensland Theatre Company
Her Majesty’s

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

After the fiscal wars of Money and Friends and the gender wars of Brilliant Lies, after the media wars of Sanctuary and the culture wars of Dead White Males, after Heretic and Third World Blues. After all this comes After the Ball – and what might be called the family wars.

But David Williamson’s newest play is not about huge sundering feuds. Not your …

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September 01, 1997

Birdy

Gulls
by Robert Hewett
State Theatre
Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

As State Theatre’s Australian Playhouse staggers to an unceremonious conclusion with the recent announcement that Away has been scratched from the 1997 card, it is something of an irony that Don’s Party and now Gulls have actually given us two very good reasons for reviving works from our national repertoire. Unlike earlier choices such as The Torrents and The Shifting Heart, which held more historical than dramatic interest, Gulls, …

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Sea Change

The Mourning After
by Verity Laughton
Playbox
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Belle Doyle may be by herself on the beach on Christmas Day but she is not alone. Verity Laughton’s comic weepie The Mourning After, is a monodrama with a cast of dozens. The situation is emotionally raw. Belle’s husband Harry has unexpectedly gone blue and died on the morning of Christmas Eve. In fact he has died in the middle of an argument over whether Belle, a song …

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August 01, 1997

Transparency

The North
William Yang

Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

When he presented Sadness at the Institute Hall in Kintore Avenue William Yang gave us one of the unexpected highlights of the 1994 Adelaide Festival. Idiosyncratic, intimate and full of wry good humour, Yang’s slide show did much to draw together the otherwise inchoate strands of Christopher Hunt’s program. This modest one- person show provided a regional perspective and dealt with regional ethnicity. But, unlike much of the abstracted, ethnomusicological fare …

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The Usual Suspects

1997

Rules of Thumb

by Daniel Keene and Alison Croggan

Red Shed Company

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The Red Shed’s association with Melbourne playwright Daniel Keene has been hugely productive. Collaboration in the best sense, it has created a trust between playwright and directors, designers and actors which has resulted in a series of successful commissions. All Souls was first, then award-winner, Because You Are Mine and last year, the film noir-ish spine-chiller, Terminus.

Rules of Thumb is a …

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