murraybramwell.com

March 07, 2021

Agonising trajectory of live-streamed drama

Adelaide Festival

Medea
After Euripides
Written and directed by Simon Stone
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam.
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide.
Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre, Mount Gambier.
March 4. Duration : 1 hr 20 mins.

Eugene Onegin
Selected chapters from the novel in verse
by Alexander Pushkin.
Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre of Russia.
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide
March 5. Duration 3 hrs 20 mins, including interval.

Since inception the Adelaide Festival has been celebrated for its international program. But like so much else, …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 26, 2021

Festival review : The Boy Who Talked to Dogs

Adelaide Festival 2021

Slingsby takes Martin McKenna’s memoir The Boy Who Talked to Dogs back to County Limerick where it began. Featuring an Irish pub band, shadow dog puppets and Bryan Burroughs, brilliant as the talking boy.

“Sometimes you have to learn to be the hero of your own story,” writer Amy Conroy observed – and this is what the celebrated dog whisperer, Martin McKenna achieved. Or mostly so. His book about his wretched childhood on the Garryowen estate in …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 23, 2021

Adelaide Festival 2021 – Robyn Nevin is outstanding

A German Life
by Christopher Hampton
Co-produced by Adelaide Festival
and The Gordon Frost Organisation.
Dunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre.

February 23. Tickets $ 30 – $109.
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au.
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes. No interval.
Until March 14.

“I have forgotten such a lot,” concedes Brunhilde Pomsel, aged 102, “And then …things surge up into my mind. Things I can remember in the minutest detail.”

This happens when you get old, but in the case of Pomsel, the sweeping …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 18, 2021

Fringe review: The Twins

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

Two friends are cast in a school production of The Comedy of Errors. At Geelong Grammar, no less. One is Greg Fleet, the other Ian Darling. One took the high road, the other the low. Forty years later they ponder where life has taken them – and which road was which.

**** Four Stars

The Twins, we are told, is Truer than Fiction. Terry Serio the director describes it as Theatre Verite. Whatever it is, …

Continue Reading Back to top

Fringe review: That Boy

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

When, in pre-school child care, Tom pushes a little girl because he doesn’t want to be hugged, he becomes the subject of an Incident Report. “He became That Boy,” his mother recalls, “and I became That Mother.” Writer and performer, Martha Lott powerfully describes the lonely challenges of parenting a turbulent child when everyone else has given up.

**** Four Stars

Sarah has two children – Hannah, and younger brother, Tom. One is easy-going and amenable. …

Continue Reading Back to top

Fringe review: DIRT

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

An Australian journalist is in Moscow to secretly investigate evidence of LGBTIQ persecution. He meets a Russian tourist guide who can help but he has his own agenda. Angus Cameron’s wryly engaging thriller takes us through a labyrinth of misrepresentation.

****1/2 Four and a Half Stars

DIRT is an intriguing play which combines serious human rights themes with an almost mischievous sense of shape-shifting plot surprise – making it all the more appealing.

An earnest young …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 16, 2021

Fringe review: Sea Wall

Adelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell

A sea wall is a massive, unexpected chasm under the ocean often deceptively near the shore. In this tightly-scripted monologue, husband and father, Alex (splendidly played by Renato Musolino) explores his own dark abyss after a sudden, freakish accident.

***** Five stars

Asked at short notice in 2008 to write a play for the Bush Theatre in London, Simon Stephens came up with Sea Wall. “I wanted to write a monologue,” he said. “I wanted …

Continue Reading Back to top

December 12, 2020

The Bleeding Tree (Theatre Republic)

Vengeance and resolution, exorcism and benediction, this excellent new production captures the visceral drama of Angus Cerini’s remarkable play.

Four and a Half Stars . Ngunyawayiti Theatre, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide.

Reviewed December 11, 2020
by Murray Bramwell, published online December 12, 2020.

Amongst the anxiety and havoc of Covid-19, the performing arts in 2020 have been systematically clobbered. So many productions abandoned and cancelled, so much effort and commitment brought to nothing.

Adelaide independent company, Theatre Republic’s …

Continue Reading Back to top

September 09, 2020

Joyous return of an illuminating stage hit

Gaslight
by Patrick Hamilton
State Theatre Company South Australia
Her Majesty’s, Adelaide.
September 8. Tickets $ 35 – $ 69.
Bookings : 131 246 bass.net.au
Until September 19.

The first night of a show is always an event. But the opening of State Theatre’s Gaslight has put so many things into the spotlight that it is a matter for particular celebration.

When Mitchell Butel announced his 2020 program, his first for State, who could have known that seven scheduled productions …

Continue Reading Back to top

March 10, 2020

Adelaide Festival – Morbid pleasures within theatrical invention

Cold Blood
by Thomas Gunzig.
Michele Anne De Mey, Jaco Van Dormael,
Kiss & Cry Collective.
Ridley Centre, Adelaide Showgrounds.
March 5. Duration: 1 hour 15 mins (no interval)

Mouthpiece
by Kieran Hurley
Traverse Theatre Company
Odeon Theatre.
March 6. Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Tickets: $30 – $69. Duration 1 hour 35 minutes (no interval)
Until March 15.

The Belgian Kiss & Cry Collective, led by choreographer Michele Anne de Mey and filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael have turned Cold Blood into a …

Continue Reading Back to top
« Newer PostsOlder Posts »