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March 01, 1992

Adelaide Festival – Sadness and Merry Whistling

Uncle Vanya
by Anton Chekhov
State Theatre of Lithuania
Scott Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Accustomed as we are to mixed styles and hybrid forms, their presence in the plays of Anton Chekhov can still surprise, even alarm us. Few playwrights have had their work subjected to such a variety of interpretations. There have been faithfully naturalistic readings of Chekhov, melancholy, languid ones, giddy comic ones, proto-revolutionary versions, even determinedly erotic ones. Chekhov himself was forever signalling that his intentions …

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February 16, 1992

The Germanic Players

Die Verwandlung
by Franz Kafka

Tandanya Theatre
Until February 28.

Kafka’s Metamorphosis is a creepy fable of modern angst. Gregor Samsa wakes up to find he has turned into an insect, his boss fires him and his family grow resentful that he’s no longer bringing home the bacon. The story shows the cruelty of the outside world mirrored within the toxic confines of the family.

The Germanic Players are from the University of Melbourne and their German language production, Die …

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February 01, 1992

Velo Theatre

Enveloppes et Deballage
Cottage Theatre

Velot Theatre consists of director Tania Castaing and actor Charlot Lemoine and between them they construct tales of whimsy and imagination. In Enveloppes et Deballages- wrappings and unwrappings- they create what they call a `theatre of objects.’

Lemoine is a dreamy postman with a bicycle loaded with parcels. Amidst a hubbub of bird twitterings, cat yowls and what have you, he discovers smoke coming from a huge cardboard container. When he opens it he reveals …

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December 01, 1991

Snap

Snap
devised by Magpie Theatre SA
Director: Steven Gration
Designer: Kathryn Sproul, Choreographer: Deb Batton ,
Music: Andrea Rieniets, Stage Manager: Shelley Lush
Cast: Fille Dusseljee, Francis Greenslade, Nick Hope, Kate Roberts, Mandi
Sandilands

Snap is a group devised project from Magpie hatched in consultation with children from Sturt Street Primary School in Adelaide. The aim was to create a work involving visual arts, drama, dance and music which, among other things, examined the theme of separation. Deliberately avoiding a …

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Righting History

Sweetown
by Melissa Reeves
Red Shed Company
Red Shed, Cardwell St.
November, 1991.

The Red Shed’s latest – Sweetown, a new commission from Melissa Reeves – is their strongest show since Road. Their output has been rather patchy of late and, with their commitment to produce original work, they set a hard pace for themselves. This production marks not just a return to form, but a consolidation of their claim to being one of the leading alternative theatre …

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Lieder of the Pack

1991

Cabaret

State Theatre Company

in association with the Australian Dance Theatre

Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The full credits for Cabaret are quite a mouthful – Book by Joe Masteroff, based on a play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood, Music by John Kander, Lyrics by Fred Ebb, Originally Produced and Directed on the New York Stage by Harold Prince. State’s Christmas knees-up production, in conjuction with ADT, has a cast of eight, a chorus of …

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November 16, 1991

Setting the Scene

1991

Shaun Gurton talks with Murray Bramwell about his designs for the Adelaide Festival and the State Theatre Company’s  final show for the 1991 season- Cabaret.

It has been a busy year for Shaun Gurton. Apart from designing five of this season’s productions, the Associate Director of the State Theatre Company went on a six week exchange to China. He also designed Mer de Glace, Richard Meale’s new work for the Australian Opera. His most recent projects have been designing …

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November 01, 1991

Sewing Discontent

Offshore
by P.P. Cranney
Junction Theatre Company
Thebarton

Offshore, the latest from Junction and the old firm of Cranney and Crowhurst, is another in the Art and Working Life series. This time, though, there is a shift of focus from the Australian workplace to the little known phenomenon of the Export Processing Zone. EPZs are found throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and The Philippines all have them. There have also been investigations of …

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Edible theatre

The Cooked and the Raw
By Nick Gill
Adelaide Performing Theatre
Astor Hotel

The idea of the theatre restaurant is hardly new. Patrons have often sat at dramatic soirees rattling their cutlery while thespians cavort incongruously around them. But Nick Gill and the Adelaide Performing Theatre have given the notion quite a few more half turns with their “Exquisite Ceremony of Appetite and Desire.” The Cooked and the Raw is theatrical scratch-and-sniff, a four course play with a four course …

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Farce Forward

1991

A Flea in her Ear

by Georges Feydeau

State Theatre Company

Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

In Feydeau it only needs one person to get a bee in his bonnet or a flea in her ear and it’s all va from then on. Like Labiche and Courteline, Feydeau’s farce is extra-marital, extra-mural and distinctly extra-curricular. But as with Keats’s mad pursuit and maidens loth, things are in a fairly permanent state of interruptus and the delinquent bourgeois, demented by …

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