1991

Jonah

Book and Lyrics by John Romeril

Music by Alan John

State Theatre Company

Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is not hard to see why John Romeril would be attracted to Jonah. With its temper democratic; bias offensively Australian, Louis Stone’s naturalistic tale of the Botany Road push, circa 1905, gathers around it many of the elements of Romeril’s own work. It is accessible and generous-hearted, a likeable yarn with a darkly  mythic logic.  The story of Jonah …

1991

King Golgrutha

by Stephen Sewell

State Theatre Company

Playhouse, July 1991.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

What has always distinguished Stephen Sewell is his wish to make theatre do things that most believe it can’t or shouldn’t do. When the collective concentration span is diminishing  he writes plays that run till eleven thirty, when it is prudent to be ironic he offers unabashed earnestness. Sewell breaks rules almost as if he doesn’t realise they exist with the consequence that he …

1991

The State Theatre Company is currently in production with a new Australian play. Murray Bramwell talks with playwright Stephen Sewell about his latest monsterpiece  -King Golgrutha.

A newly  commissioned play is always an event, a new work from Stephen Sewell even more so. For nearly fifteen years Sewell has created very distinctive theatre- beginning with The Father We Loved on a Beach by the Sea, Traitors and Welcome the Bright World and prominently, with plays premiered by the State …

1991

Happy Days

by Samuel Beckett

State Theatre Company

Playhouse., July, 1991

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

“What’s the idea ? he says -stuck up to her diddies in the bleeding ground- What does it mean? he says -What’s it meant to mean ?” Playfully self-referential, Samuel Beckett pre-empts the familiar response to his work. What is he trying to say ? What do his plays represent ? His patient reply was always that his plays mean what they are, if …

1991

The State Theatre production of Beckett’s Happy Days opens in the Playhouse next week. Murray Bramwell talks with director Simon Phillips and actor Ruth Cracknell about the play and its buried meanings.

It is more than forty years since Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot, a play which was so famous that it became synonymous with 20th century theatre. Beckett himself, immortalised by photographers like Jane Bown, became a craggy icon whose very reclusiveness  attracted persistent public attention. …