Last Cab to Darwin
by Reg Cribb

Pork Chop Productions
Dunstan Playhouse
October, 2004

Murray Bramwell

It is not surprising that playwright Reg Cribb saw the story of Max Bell as ready-made for the telling. It has all the elements of a mythic quest with a sturdy, self-deprecating hero meeting a host of different characters as he travels a last time through his native land. Like Alvin Straight, the elderly American who travelled hundreds of miles on a lawn mower …

The Duck Shooter
by Marty Denniss

Brink Productions
and the State Theatre Company
of South Australia

The Space
July, 2004

Murray Bramwell

Brink Productions did a good thing encouraging Marty Denniss to revise for the stage his script of the Australian feature film Erskineville Kings. Cinema’s gain has also been the theatre’s and the result is The Duck Shooter. In this, often harsh play, Denniss follows the fortunes, or otherwise, of a group of young men.

Brothers Barky and Wace …

14 July, 2004
Murray Bramwell

The Duck Shooter
by Marty Denniss

Brink Productions and
State Theatre Company of South Australia
The Space,
Adelaide Festival Centre.
13 July.
Until 17 July. Bookings BASS 131 246
Tickets $ 17-$ 45

One of Adelaide’s brightest companies when they first appeared in 1996, Brink Productions had begun to lose puff and purpose in the last few years. Now, with renewed energy and the recent appointment of Chris Drummond as artistic director, Brink is not …

2007

Hotel Sorrento

By Hannie Rayson

Christine Harris and HIT Productions

Her Majesty’s

Two Weeks with the Queen

Adapted by Mary Morris

from the novel by Morris Gleitzman

Windmill Performing Arts

Dunstan Playhouse

Unspoken

Written and performed by Rebecca Clarke

Vitalstatistix and Performing Lines

Waterside, Port Adelaide

Murray Bramwell

The eventual fate of a successful play can often be sustained obscurity. This is true of other art forms too – but there is nothing more obscure than a play that …

Theatre
Murray Bramwell

Night Letters
by writer Susan Rogers and director Chris Drummond
inspired by the novel by Robert Dessaix

State Theatre Company of South Australia
The Queen’s Theatre
Adelaide
Bookings : BASS 131 246
Tickets $ 58 – $ 20
until 27 March, 2004

Robert, the central figure in StateTheatre’s Festival production, Night Letters, is described as an Australian wrapped up in language. That very aptly describes not only author Robert Dessaix but his aromatic, idiosyncratic novel – part …

Moonfleet
adapted by Catherine Zimdahl
Windmill Performing Arts and
Mainstreet Theatre Company

Carrick Hill

Murray Bramwell

Windmill Performing Arts has a three year arrangement with the Mt Gambier based Mainstreet Theatre Company and, by the look of their first joint venture, the combination is going to be a happy one. Mainstreet director Teresa Bell has taken an adaptation by playwright Catherine Zimdahl of Moonfleet, J.M.Falkner’s lively story of smugglers, ghosts and true destinies, and turned it into an engaging promenade …

Moliere’s Scapin
adapted by Scott Witt

State Theatre Company
with Queensland Theatre Company

Dunstan Playhouse

Murray Bramwell

It is said that Moliere wrote The Rascalities of Scapin to beat the competition. The Italian Commedia dell’Arte troupes were all the rage in Paris in the 1670s and the famous French playwright was looking to win back support for his own theatre. He had borrowed heavily from Commedia in many of his plays, dispensing with masks but keeping much of the formula. …

drowning in my ocean of You
by Fiona Sprott

State Theatre Company
Queen’s Theatre

Murray Bramwell

It must be many years since a red velvet curtain has been seen in the appealingly dilapidated Queen’s Theatre, but it suits the mannered theatrics of Fiona Sprott’s drowning in my ocean of You, a play for voices and crooners set at the edge of a pier and, at times, at the edge of the wits as well. In this commissioned work for State …

In the Time of Distance
Para//elo
Queen’s Theatre
September, 2003

Murray Bramwell

The rehearsal room for Parallelo’s Distance Project has not been in a building but on a website. For several years the company – previously known as Doppio Teatro – has, through the auspices of artistic director, Teresa Crea, brought together a diaspora of artists from Teatro Kismet in Italy, Theatre Athenor in France and the Nottingham Playhouse in the UK. Crea and video artist, Laurent Dupont co-ordinated contributions …

29 September, 2003
Murray Bramwell

The Snow Queen

Windmill Performing Arts and Sydney Theatre Company
Adelaide Festival Centre, Dunstan Playhouse
Until 4 October. Bookings at Bass 131 246
Tickets $ 15 – $ 23. $ 68 Family.

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson is a children’s story but it is a mighty complicated one to stage. For one thing, it is not a single story but a series of episodes – involving quests and danger, magical situations and animal …