murraybramwell.com

August 01, 2009

Parallel Worlds

The Wizard of Oz
By L.Frank Baum
Windmill
Dunstan Playhouse, June 30.

Mnemonic
Conceived by Simon McBurney and Devised by Complicite
State Theatre Company of South Australia
In association with Adelaide Festival Centre’s inSPACE Program
Space Theatre, July 2 .

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Nothing can quite match The Wizard of Oz. Ever since Judy Garland, as Dorothy, was spun from black and white Kansas into the dazzling lolly- coloured world of Oz in the 1939 MGM film version, …

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July 02, 2009

The iceman cometh memorably into focus

Mnemonic
Conceived by Simon McBurney and Devised by Complicite

State Theatre Company of South Australia
In association with the Adelaide Festival Centre’s inSPACE Program
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
July 2 . Tickets $45 – $60. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until July 18.

What are the traces of an individual life, a culture, a relationship, a family? How are they remembered and, in the end, what do they mean ? UK’s Theatre Complicite’s inventive investigation of memory and meaning, Mnemonic

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June 01, 2009

Phases and Stages

Murray Bramwell surveys theatre during The Adelaide Review’s quarter century.

With the Adelaide Review celebrating 25 years publication earlier this year it is a good time, in the immortal words of Dame Edna Everage, to look back retrospectively. In 1984 the two strands of theatre in Adelaide – amateur and professional – were , and still are , recognisably evident . The Adelaide Rep was the stalwart it remains, as were the Adelaide University Theatre Guild, Therry,
Matt Byrne Productions, …

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May 18, 2009

Adelaide Come Out 2009

Adelaide
Come Out 2009
Theatre

The Dumb Waiter
by Harold Pinter
State Theatre Company of South Australia
The Space, Adelaide Festival Centre. May 20.
The 2-Dimensional Life of Her
Devised by Fleur Elise Noble
Queen’s Theatre. May 18.

For the last two weeks an estimated 120,000 young people from across South Australia have been participating in Come Out, the Australian Festival for Young People, which, for 34 years now, has been presenting a biennial array of events and activities in …

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April 07, 2009

Impeccable cast, staging and music hit all the right notes

Metro Street
Book, music and lyrics by Matthew Robinson
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Arts Asia Pacific and Power Arts.
Dunstan Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
April 7 . Tickets $45 – $65. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until April 25.

Musicals can be about many things – Abba songs on an island, cats, 19th century France, three drag queens on a bus, or wicked witches from the west. But there is also, apparently, an iron rule that says that …

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March 05, 2009

In thrall to the master

Maestro
By Anna Goldsworthy and Peter Goldsworthy
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide.
March 3. Tickets $45 – $60. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until March 11.

“What is the difference between good and great ?” Paul Crabbe, the eager boy pianist from Darwin keeps asking his enigmatic, Viennese trained teacher. “Not much” is his answer – “little bits.” Peter Goldsworthy’s masterful novel Maestro has intrigued readers since it first appeared twenty years ago and now, in …

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November 06, 2008

The Cripple of Inishmaan

2008

The Cripple of Inishmaan
by Martin McDonagh

State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse
November, 2008.

Irish drama is full of untruths, like the stories told by Christy Mahon, late of County Mayo, to the drinkers in Flaherty’s tavern. Those fabulous fibs promoted his reputation as The Playboy of the Western World, the title of JM Synge’s celebrated play from 1907. Ninety years later, Martin McDonagh created Billy Claven, another bare-faced liar looking to get beyond the peat wall and see …

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November 01, 2008

Scripting the Season

Murray Bramwell reports on Adam Cook’s State Theatre Company program for 2009.

One of the things Adam Cook likes to do is spruik his company and never more so than at the time of the new season’s launch. He is good at it, and he pays attention to detail – the graphics, layout, pics and page size of the brochure and, of course, the signature pea-green stylings and snappy slogans. They are all part of the package. This year’s pitch …

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October 17, 2008

Things that go bump in the mind

2008

Ghosts
by Henrik Ibsen
Adaptation by Nicki Bloom

State Theatre Company of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
October 13, 2008. Tickets: $21.70 – $51.70.
Bookings BASS 131 246
Until October 25.

In a letter, in June 1882, Henrik Ibsen declared – “I had to write Ghosts: I couldn’t stop at A Doll’s House: after Nora, I had to create Mrs Alving.” Ibsen, ever the probing questioner of received opinions, showed us Nora leaving her doll house before …

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October 01, 2008

Attempts on Her Life

2008

Architektin
by Robyn Archer

State Theatre Company
Of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse
September 2., 2008

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

By any measure, the life and achievements of Margerete Schutte Lihotsky were extraordinary. Born in Vienna at the beginning of one century and living to see the arrival of the next, her life spanned the history of modernism. An architect when women were not visible in the profession she was a notable part of the revolution in building and design …

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