1993
What the Butler Saw
by Joe Orton
State Theatre Company
Playhouse
Joe Orton’s plays are not everybody’s cup of tee hee. There is humour that confirms our sense of the world and there is humour which unsettles it and Orton is definitely the latter. His comedy, all elliptical word play and glassy epigrams, has the mannered artificiality of Wilde. But unlike Oscar, Orton is not endearing. His is pitiless, unlikeable comedy and when he makes you laugh it often …
Continue Reading Back to topPetrouchka
Australian Dance Theatre
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Back in the Space with a three item program Leigh Warren’s ADT has been getting on with the business of being a dance company. Contract terminations and leadership changes are part of the process of continuity and change in any company but they cause upheaval and stress nonetheless. It can’t have been an easy environment for either Warren or his dancers to produce new work which makes the present season the …
Continue Reading Back to topDiving for Pearls
by Katherine Thomson
State Theatre Company
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
There is much to admire about Diving for Pearls. Katherine Thomson’s play about the destruction of restructuring gets beyond the programmatic formulae of most current theatre dealing with contemporary issues. The cost of work to the working class in Australia has long been a theme in our naturalistic theatre- not least in Lawler’s The Summer of the Seventeeth Doll. But more recently the pace of industrial …
Continue Reading Back to topMusic and Lyrics by Cole Porter,
adapted by Carolyn Burns.
State Theatre Company ,
The Playhouse Adelaide Festival Centre.
It’s High Society time again. By the MGM musical out of The Philadelphia Story, the State Theatre Company’s joint production (with MTC, RQTC and Sue Farrelly) has not only added nine Cole Porter songs it has restored some of the zip from Philip Barry’s original text.
Carolyn Burns’ adaptation is an interesting one. She has clarified the plotline, given more depth …
Continue Reading Back to topYellow Roses
by Roxxy Bent
Vitalstatistix
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The Festival Centre Trust has called its Space program Brave New Works and Yellow Roses is undoubtedly both new and brave. Roxxy Bent’s writing is familiar to Vitalstatistix’ regular audience- her plays have a nicely loony, acute-angle feel about them. The humour is often a slow-burner, or so slight you miss it- or the actor does. Waiting for Annette and the purpose-built Florence Who? are good examples of the …
Continue Reading Back to topHigh Society
Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter
Adapted by Carolyn Burns
State Theatre Company
Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It began when Philip Barry’s acerbic hit play became the acerbic hit film, The Philadelphia Story. Then some fifteen years later, the play was reworked, ten Cole Porter songs sung to great effect by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Louis Armstrong were added and it became the MGM hit musical, High Society. Now, in the State Theatre Company’s …
Continue Reading Back to top1992
Diving for Pearls
by Katherine Thomson
State Theatre Company
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
There is much to admire about Diving for Pearls. Katherine Thomson’s play about the destruction of restructuring gets beyond the programmatic formulae of most current theatre dealing with contemporary issues. The cost of work to the working class in Australia has long been a theme in our naturalistic theatre- not least in Lawler’s The Summer of the Seventeeth Doll. But more recently the pace of …
Continue Reading Back to topLost in Yonkers
Neil Simon
Sydney Theatre Company
Melbourne Theatre Company
State Theatre Company
and Sue Farrelly
Her Majesty’s
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Neil Simon has been a feature of the American stage for so long he’s almost become invisible. After twenty-seven Broadway productions his name is synonymous with smooth comedies of manners -odd couples, urban prisoners, goodbye girls and sunshine boys. Because his plays invariably become films his work is hugely well-known and actors like Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, …
Continue Reading Back to topMiracle
Tobsha Learner
Vitalstatistix
Waterside
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Miracle, Vitalstatistix’ latest production at the Waterside, marks a further collaboration between writer Tobsha Learner and actor Rose Clemente. After Witchplay comes Miracle, a fantasy set in Triads Supermarket where long-time check out operator, Immaculata Santini hears the voice of God through the cash register. The play is centrally a vehicle for Clemente as Immaculata, a performance which not only propels the show but gives it considerable warmth and charm.
Again …
Continue Reading Back to topHair
By Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt McDermott
Thebarton Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
By the time Hair opened at the Biltmore Theatre in New York in April 1968 many of the major happenings of Hippie history had already… happened. More than a year earlier in January 1967, twenty thousand turned up (and on) for the Human Be-In in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. That was the year of the Summer of Love, photogenically documented with lots of groovy …
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