Corse Humours
Richard III
by William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company
Playhouse

It is the job of theatre to invigorate the classical repertoire and for that reason we must occasionally endure productions as ludicrous as the State Theatre Company of South Australia’s Richard III.

It is difficult to fathom the reason for this particular revival. Richard III at any time presents a problem for production and audiences – haw do we regard the central figure: is he evil incarnate or …

Restoration
by Edward Bond
State Theatre Company
Playhouse, August, 1990.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

“I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society.” Edward Bond’s plays have reiterated this theme from the first. But for him violence is not innate, some kind of blight in the DNA, it is the consequence of social structures and symptomatic of class-based injustice. That is what Saved is about, and his powerful re-telling of Shakespeare’s …