murraybramwell.com

November 16, 2021

Comedy of manners for quarrelsome age

Eureka Day
by Jonathan Spector
State Theatre South Australia.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 16. Tickets $39 – $79.
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Duration : 130 minutes (including interval)
Until November 27.

Californian playwright, Jonathan Spector could not have known, when his sparklingly witty comedy of ethics opened in Berkeley in April 2018, that Eureka Day would be so alarmingly prescient of the corrosive social divisions in a global pandemic.

Set in the Eureka Day Community school, the play opens on …

Continue Reading Back to top

August 18, 2021

Theatre review: Hibernation

InDaily
Murray Bramwell

Theatre review: Hibernation

Hibernation, State Theatre’s engaging and theatrically inventive new play, is not only a wake-up call about the climate crisis, it reminds us that to fix the planet we really have to fix ourselves.

Not often does a play seem to have been conjured from the most recent news headlines, but Hibernation is one of them. Writer Finegan Kruckemeyer describes beginning his draft in 2019- “and the writing of that world strangely became the …

Continue Reading Back to top

June 09, 2021

Theatre: The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race

State Theatre’s exuberant and entertaining new production is set in a small rural town where nothing changes, but change is overdue. Five women from Appleton chew through some timely questions about fairness, opportunity and gender equity.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“The potato race is a real thing,” writer Melanie Tait tells us in her program note for The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race, “It happens every year in my hometown…” Her town is not called Appleton though, it is Robertson …

Continue Reading Back to top

May 10, 2021

Private Lives

Euphoria
by Emily Steel
A State Theatre South Australia
and Country Arts SA Production.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
May 7. Until May 15.

“The town in Euphoria is not based on any one town,” playwright Emily Steel writes in the program notes for State Theatre’s terrific new production, “but has aspects of many.” When travelling all over regional South Australia researching the play and interviewing locals, Steel asked people what was the best thing about life in their town. …

Continue Reading Back to top

September 09, 2020

Joyous return of an illuminating stage hit

Gaslight
by Patrick Hamilton
State Theatre Company South Australia
Her Majesty’s, Adelaide.
September 8. Tickets $ 35 – $ 69.
Bookings : 131 246 bass.net.au
Until September 19.

The first night of a show is always an event. But the opening of State Theatre’s Gaslight has put so many things into the spotlight that it is a matter for particular celebration.

When Mitchell Butel announced his 2020 program, his first for State, who could have known that seven scheduled productions …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 26, 2020

Adelaide Festival – The energetic tango of youth, one step at a time

Dance Nation
by Clare Barron
State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir
In association with Adelaide Festival.
Scott Theatre, University of Adelaide.
February 25. Tickets $ 39 – $ 79. Bookings adelaidefestival.com.au.
Until March 7.
Belvoir season from March 14.

Shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize in 2019, Dance Nation is a funny, ferocious and closely-observed study of a group of pre-teen girls (and one boy) in a dance troupe competing in a series of play-offs to reach national prominence.

Writer …

Continue Reading Back to top

August 22, 2019

Excellent cast does justice to a great Aussie gothic yarn

Jasper Jones
Based on the novel by Craig Silvey
Adapted by Kate Mulvany.
State Theatre Company South Australia.
Dunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre.
August 20. Tickets: $32- $67. Bookings 131 246 or online.
Duration 2 hours 30 minutes (including interval)
Until September 7.

When 13 year old Charlie Bucktin is woken in his bedroom sleep-out by a knock on the window, little does he knows this marks the end of his childhood. Called by his new friend Jasper Jones, an …

Continue Reading Back to top

July 17, 2019

Excellent acting as Miller tells his tale

A View from the Bridge
by Arthur Miller
State Theatre Company South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre.
July 16. Tickets: $32- $67. Bookings 131 246 or online.
Duration 2 hours 27 minutes (including interval)
Until August 3.

Arthur Miller once said that his plays were the story of how the birds come home to the roost. They would fly about imagining they were free, but sooner or later they were destined to return to the branch. He called it …

Continue Reading Back to top

June 05, 2019

Vivid and brave portrayal of tragic diva’s fall

End of the Rainbow
by Peter Quilter
State Theatre Company South Australia
in association with the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
Royalty Theatre, Angas Street.
June 4. Tickets: $32- $67. Bookings 131 246 or online
Duration 2 hours (including interval)
Until June 16.

In about two weeks, June 22 will mark 50 years since the death of Judy Garland in Belgravia, London, aged 47. Her legend (and its miseries) epitomises Golden Hollywood stardom. With a career beginning at the age of two, …

Continue Reading Back to top

April 11, 2019

Three women storm a male bastion to revel in ocker posturing and gender satire

The Club
by David Williamson
State Theatre Company and Kojo presents an isthisyours? and Insite Arts production.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
April 9. Tickets: $32- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online
Duration 2 hours 20 minutes (including interval)
Until April 20.

First performed in 1977, The Club ranks among the best of David Williamson’s extensive dramatic repertoire. Set in an unnamed AFL football club, its brisk farce and pungent satire captures the niggle, back-biting and shameless hypocrisy of male …

Continue Reading Back to top
« Newer PostsOlder Posts »