It is 1.30pm on a Saturday afternoon and there is a queue five deep stretching from Union Hall at the University of Adelaide right along the Barr Smith lawn. The crowd is made up of high school students, families with young kids, punks, new romantics, old romantics and persons of the stage all shoving gently but firmly for fear that the tickets will sell out before they get a chance to palm out $5 ($2 concession) for the main event.…
Continue Reading Back to topDecember 01, 1985
September 20, 1985
Jumble of disparate elements
The State Theatre Company production of Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle, directed by Peter King, has opened at the Festival Theatre Playhouse in Adelaide.
Its unscheduled appearance follows a late scratching by the commissioned play The Horizon Papers which, it was announced, will now be held over for the SA Sesquicentenary celebrations next year.
On the Razzle is based on a 19th century Viennese play by Johan Nestroy which was a source also for Thornton Wilder’s The Merchant of Yon…
Continue Reading Back to topAugust 28, 1985
Journey to the future
Too Young for Ghosts, by Janis Balodis, is being performed by Adelaide’s Stage Company in the Festival Centre Space.
This play uses displacement both as theme and technique. It describes seven Latvian emigres following their arrival in Australia in 1945 and interweaves the narrative with a speculative account of Ludwig Leichhardt’s ill-fated expedition from the Gulf of Carpenteria southwest to Perth in 1847.
The play is audacious and assured in its use of flashback and narrative shifts which, though complex, …
Continue Reading Back to topAugust 08, 1985
Of Fire and Satire
The South Australian State Theatre Company’s latest commission, Muse of Fire, by Nigel Krauth, is currently playing in the Playhouse in Adelaide.
Krauth takes the prologue from Henry V as his text – “O for a muse of fire, that would ascend/ the brightest heaven of invention” – and has written a witty, satiric melodrama based on the exploits of George Trafford, an indefatigable theatre manager whose troupe performs at the Empire Theatre in Sydney in 1910.…
Continue Reading Back to topJuly 19, 1985
It wasn’t only a weak end
The Weekenders, by Ray Harding is the Adelaide Stage Company’s latest production in The Space.
Harding has had TV successes including the recent tele-movie, I Can‘t Get Started. Unfortunately he writes less effectively for the more precise requirements of the stage.
The play concerns three couples each of whom believes they have the exclusive use of a shack on the river for the weekend. Complications arise when it transpires that a divorced couple and their new lovers, …
Continue Reading Back to topJuly 05, 1985
Tapping top talent
Stepping Out (Adelaide, Opera Theatre), directed by Rodney Fisher, is certain to be a success considering the appeal of Rowena Wallace and Colette Mann as television celebrities and the enduring reputation of Carol Raye and Nancye Hayes as stage performers.
They are supported by an able cast including Isabelle Anderson, Ron Challinor and Margot Lee. It is a pity, then, that a more worthwhile play wasn’t found as a vehicle for this formidable Australian talent.
The play, written by Richard …
Continue Reading Back to topJune 07, 1985
The lore of the big top
The Harlequin Shuffle, a new play by Tony Strachan, is the latest Stage Company production in the Space Theatre in Adelaide. This two-hander is an affectionate study of the passing tradition of the family circus in Australia.
Larry Tandy is the last of the family in Tandy’s Circus, a down-at-heel tent show touring country towns. A former high-wire clown, he has fallen from grace to flagons of hock and a hoopla stall.
Steve, a young street-theatre performer and aspiring …
Continue Reading Back to topMay 31, 1985
Kids Come Out – firing from the hip
This year’s Come Out Festival in Adelaide has devoted special attention to visual arts and literature. Under the umbrella Dreams of Youth – Apocalypse or Utopia, 60 young artists interpret their world. They range from Rhianon Vernon-Roberts’ Arms Talk, which portrays the lack of communication between East and West to Andrew Dearman’s message-free wire sculpture Boy On A Swing.
The writing section is opened up for scrutiny in Allwrite, a celebration of young people as writers and readers.
Music and …
Continue Reading Back to topMay 17, 1985
The Young Playwrights
The Young Playwrights season is Troupe’s contribution to Come Out ’85 in Adelaide. Seven plays were chosen from 140 scripts by young writers aged between 7 and 17. The first six to be performed are a theatrical treat.
The plays range from a zany retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, satiric spoofs of westerns and science fiction to disquieting studies of violence and its effect on the individual whether in war or in the dosed world of the family.
Directors …
Continue Reading Back to topMay 10, 1985
Youth Year offering approaches the infantile
The State Theatre Company’s Beautland was commissioned to celebrate the International Year of Youth as part of the Come Out 85 Season in Adelaide.
Of his debut as director this season, State’s artistic director Keith Gallasch writes: “Our aim was to develop with Barry Dickins a play for adults about what it was like to be young in this country and … to recover some of the lost values of childhood, and of the past, that they had surrendered to …
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