Three Dog Night
by Peter Goldsworthy
Adapted by Petra Kalive
Two Blue Cherries
Space Theatre

31 March

Metro Street
by Matthew Robinson
State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse

April 7

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

We have seen Peter Goldsworthy’s work on stage in brisk succession recently. First, with his own adaptation of Maestro (in collaboration with Anna Goldsworthy) and now with Melbourne company, Two Blue Cherries’ version of Three Dog Night. As the more than quarter of a million readers …

2007

LyreBird : Tales of Helpmann

by Tyler Coppin

State Theatre Company

Of South Australia

Space Theatre

Adelaide Festival Centre

October 16. Until November 3.

Tickets $17 – $55.  Bookings BASS 131 246

It was in 1964, in The Display, the first fully home-grown work by the Australian Ballet, that choreographer Robert Helpmann introduced the dance of the lyrebird as a metaphor for Australian male attitudes. Now, in a welcome return, nine years after it premiered at the 1998 …

Two
by Jim Cartwright

Wheatsheaf Hotel
12 October, 2006

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Anyone who remembers Road, given a memorable ride by Adelaide’s Red Shed Company in its heyday, will be alert to the name Jim Cartwright. Just as Road was like a profane and poetic underclass Milk Wood, so Two, directed by Toni Main and featuring a cast of newly emerging local actors, is also based around a motley collection of desperate characters struggling with adversity, sometimes of their …

Away
by Michael Gow

Queensland Theatre Company
and Griffin Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse
Until September 23, 2006

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There can be few Australian plays as mercurial as Away. Written in the mid-Eighties, but set in the late Sixties, it focuses on three families going “away” for their summer holidays. It is full of affectionate retro-detail of Australian beach culture, but its central themes are of loss and death and the struggle to accept the inevitable and irrevocable. …

August 10, 2006
Murray Bramwell

Tough Girls
Written by Melissa Reeves
Composed by Irine Vela
Vitalstatistix and Deckchair Theatre

Waterside, 11 Nile Street, Port Adelaide
August 9. Tickets $ 15 – 25. Bookings : 8447 6211
Until August 19.
WA Season Deckchair Theatre,
Victoria Hall, Fremantle
August 23 to September 2.

Tough Girls, the new chamber musical from Adelaide’s Vitalstatistix (in co-production with WA’s Deckchair Theatre) asks some interesting questions about the criminal underworld. Such as, when the blokes are …

July 6, 2006
Murray Bramwell

Unspoken
Written and performed by Rebecca Clark
Vitalstatistix and Performing Lines

Waterside, 11 Nile Street, Port Adelaide
July 5. Tickets $ 15 – 20. Bookings : 8447 6211
Until July 8.
Tower Theatre CUB Malthouse, Melbourne July 11-22
The Loft, QUT (Brisbane Festival) July 26 –August 5
(Bookings: QUT Gardens Theatre – (07) 3864 4455. Tickets: $18 -28.
Mackay Entertainment Centre, Mackay. Aug 8 -9
Riverway Arts Centre, Thuringowa August 11-12
Gladstone Playhouse, Entertainment Centre, …

July 2, 2006
Murray Bramwell

Two Weeks with the Queen
Adapted by Mary Morris
from the novel by Morris Gleitzman.
Windmill Performing Arts
In association with State Theatre Company of South Australia.

Dunstan Playhouse
Adelaide Festival Centre.
July 1. Tickets $ 19 – 27. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until July 15.
Riverside Theatre, Sydney
July 19 – 22.

For their school holiday season Windmill Productions have revived a favourite from the recent past. Two Weeks with the Queen – Mary …

Murray Bramwell

Beautiful Words
By Sean Riley
Oddbodies Theatre Company
Higher Ground , Rundle Street, Adelaide.
May 10. Tickets $ 18- 32. bookings BASS 131 246
Thursday to Saturday until May 20, 2006

People don’t like other people. That is the frequently repeated observation in Sean Riley’s splendidly engaging play, Beautiful Words – and its implications, in history and our own communities, are everywhere apparent. We love our own kind, and fear and despise those who are different. Until, of …