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. …

1991

Spring Awakening

by Frank Wedekind

State Theatre Company

Playhouse, April, 1990.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is almost one hundred years to the day since Spring Awakening was written. It’s author was twenty-six at the time and he was writing as no-one had ever done before about sexual and social development in adolescence. Benjamin Franklin (Frank) Wedekind was conceived in San Francisco, raised in Switzerland, and, in defiance of his cranky, autocratic, marxist father, was to become an altogether …

1991

Spring Awakening

by Frank Wedekind

State Theatre Company

Playhouse, April, 1990.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is almost one hundred years to the day since Spring Awakening was written. It’s author was twenty-six at the time and he was writing as no-one had ever done before about sexual and social development in adolescence. Benjamin Franklin (Frank) Wedekind was conceived in San Francisco, raised in Switzerland, and, in defiance of his cranky, autocratic, marxist father, was to become an altogether …

1991

Julius Caesar

by William Shakespeare

State Theatre Company

Playhouse, February, 1991.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Of all of Shakespeare’s work, Julius Caesar seems to most invite the intervention of modern sensibilities. There is no way that the text can be left to tell itself (if such a thing were ever possible in the theatre).It presents such a spectrum of political shenanigans that any  production has to make choices straight off – whether to favour the Brutus team or take …

Power Play

Julius Caesar

by William Shakespeare

State Theatre Company

Playhouse, February, 1991.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Of all of Shakespeare’s work, Julius Caesar seems to most invite the intervention of modern sensibilities. There is no way that the text can be left to tell itself (if such a thing were ever possible in the theatre).It presents such a spectrum of political shenanigans that any  production has to make choices straight off – whether to favour the Brutus team or …

1991

The State Theatre Company opens its 1991 season next Tuesday night with Julius Caesar. Murray Bramwell talks about the production with director, Simon Phillips and actors, Carmel McGlone and Hugo Weaving.

Although written in 1599, straight after Henry V, Julius Caesar has little of the historical and moral certainty of Henry. Instead, it is an examination of the perils and complications of power. Shakespeare’s audience, well used to cautionary tales from history, would have recognised the pertinence of the …

1990

Tales from the Decameron
State Theatre Company
The Space, November, 1990.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

In their last home-grown project for the year Simon Phillips’ State Theatre Company has turned to Boccaccio’s Decameron. Written between 1348 and 1351 The Decameron perches on the cusp of the new mercantile age. Introducing a colloquial urbanity, it is fresh, erotic, often vulgar, and accessible- everything the upwardly mobile could want. It was keenly sought when it first appeared and copies were highly …