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March 06, 2024

Adelaide Festival – I Hide in Bathrooms

I Hide in Bathrooms
Astrid Pill and Collaborators
Vitalstatistix
Waterside.

I Hide in Bathrooms, we are told, by an offstage voice, is “based loosely on a true-ish story” but it is also “made-uppish”. We know from the program notes that this excellent theatre work had its beginnings when devisor and performer Astrid Pill became preoccupied with the notion of the death of a life partner, in response to the experiences of people in her intimate circle.

But it is …

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October 13, 2023

Theatre: The Garden

Written by Murray Bramwell

With thrift and wit and unnerving candour, Theatre Republic’s intriguing new play examines in microcosm the inescapable reality of discrepant worlds and insufficient good intentions.

“This play has never been comfortable,“ Emily Steel writes in her program notes for The Garden. “It was uncomfortable to write and if I’ve done it properly it will be uncomfortable to watch.”

And she has done it properly. In a compact sixty minutes she has produced a crowded hour …

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March 06, 2023

Theatre: Hans & Gret

Adelaide Festival

Theatre: Hans & Gret

An old fairy story is revisited with a new kind of witch, a futuristic dystopia obsessed with staying young, and Gret, not Hans, as the prime investigator.

Windmill Theatre has specialised in taking a story we think we know and, while keeping it recognisable, also turning it into something refreshingly rich and strange. They did it with The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio and Rumpelstiltskin and they are back with an angsty take on …

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March 08, 2022

Adelaide Festival – Photographic Memory

The Photo Box
Created and performed by Emma Beech
Vitalstatistix and Brink Productions
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
March 3. Until March 7.

When left with nothing after bushfires and (as right now) extreme flooding, the first thing Australian families report is their relief that they saved their pets. And the very next thing is that they rescued their photo albums. Family photos are the Dead Sea Scrolls of our domestic history. They reinforce legend, prompt (and sometimes falsify) memory, …

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December 10, 2021

UnSeen

UnSeen
by Kelly Vincent & Alirio Zavarce
and the True Ability Ensemble.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
December 1.

Seeing and Believing

“There are a lot of things that are really hard about being disabled,” writer and advocate Kelly Vincent said in a recent interview in CityMag. “But most of them are not because [of the disability]. It’s because of the barriers that society puts up for disabled people – from barriers to socialising and attending events and parties, to …

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November 19, 2021

How Not to Make it in America

How Not to Make it in America
by Emily Steel
Theatre Republic.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 18. Until November 20.
Murray Bramwell

“Hi I’m Matt. I’m here to audition for the role of Juliet”. These are the opening lines of Emily Steel’s excellent new play How Not to Make it in America . Those who followed the Act Now/ State Theatre’s Decameron 2.0 Project online last year would have already met Matt, and his performer James Smith, but …

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November 18, 2021

Theatre Review: Dry

In Catherine Fitzgerald’s grim comedy of climate crisis, two sisters cling desperately to the remnants of their unsustainable rural heritage.

Murray Bramwell

We have been warned for more than fifty years about climate change. The rapid deterioration of our biosphere is a concept terrifying to consider. Reports of polar melting, sea levels rising, and increasingly chaotic weather patterns have the enormity and unreality of science fiction. So how do we countenance this in ways that might sink in ?

Dry

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September 14, 2021

Fiscal Abuse

Glengarry Glen Ross
By David Mamet
Flying Penguin Productions
The Bakehouse.
September 11.
Until September 25.

Murray Bramwell


L-R. Nicholas Garsden / Christopher Pitman. Photo: Shane Reid

Talking about the Art of the Deal has certainly lost its lustre thanks to the Shyster-in-Chief, Donald Trump, but the cult of the salesman, the samurai emissary of predatory capitalism, has been on the nose ever since Willy Loman discovered his pitiful net worth in Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s bitter …

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June 04, 2021

Theatre review: Watchlist

Overflowing with wit and mercurial polemic, Watchlist at The Bakehouse is an ambitious comedy with a sharp message.

Murray Bramwell

We often think only of fossil fuels as the prime cause of climate change. In Watchlist, the unlikely hero discovers the true impact of the global livestock industry and leaves us all with food for thought.

Basil Pepper is in his early twenties and lives in a world of his own. His closest associate is his bearded dragon lizard, …

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April 11, 2021

Theatre review : My Three Angels

Independent Theatre returns with an energetic revival of a comic farce with a heart of kindness – as three wily convicts become Christmas angels for a family facing financial ruin.

Murray Bramwell

Adapted in 1953 by Sam and Bella Spewack, from Albert Husson’s play Les Cuisine des Anges, My Three Angels is set in the French Guiana prison colony in 1910. It is a rambunctious tale of three convicts on work release who offer to repair the roof of …

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