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 …
Continue Reading Back to topIn 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…
Continue Reading Back to topGlengarry Glen Ross
By David Mamet
Flying Penguin Productions
The Bakehouse.
September 11.
Until September 25.
Murray Bramwell
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 …
Continue Reading Back to topOverflowing 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, …
Continue Reading Back to topIndependent 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 …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Festival 2021
Slingsby takes Martin McKenna’s memoir The Boy Who Talked to Dogs back to County Limerick where it began. Featuring an Irish pub band, shadow dog puppets and Bryan Burroughs, brilliant as the talking boy.
“Sometimes you have to learn to be the hero of your own story,” writer Amy Conroy observed – and this is what the celebrated dog whisperer, Martin McKenna achieved. Or mostly so. His book about his wretched childhood on the Garryowen estate in …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell
When, in pre-school child care, Tom pushes a little girl because he doesn’t want to be hugged, he becomes the subject of an Incident Report. “He became That Boy,” his mother recalls, “and I became That Mother.” Writer and performer, Martha Lott powerfully describes the lonely challenges of parenting a turbulent child when everyone else has given up.
**** Four Stars
Sarah has two children – Hannah, and younger brother, Tom. One is easy-going and amenable. …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell
An Australian journalist is in Moscow to secretly investigate evidence of LGBTIQ persecution. He meets a Russian tourist guide who can help but he has his own agenda. Angus Cameron’s wryly engaging thriller takes us through a labyrinth of misrepresentation.
****1/2 Four and a Half Stars
DIRT is an intriguing play which combines serious human rights themes with an almost mischievous sense of shape-shifting plot surprise – making it all the more appealing.
An earnest young …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Fringe
Murray Bramwell
A sea wall is a massive, unexpected chasm under the ocean often deceptively near the shore. In this tightly-scripted monologue, husband and father, Alex (splendidly played by Renato Musolino) explores his own dark abyss after a sudden, freakish accident.
***** Five stars
Asked at short notice in 2008 to write a play for the Bush Theatre in London, Simon Stephens came up with Sea Wall. “I wanted to write a monologue,” he said. “I wanted …
Continue Reading Back to topVengeance and resolution, exorcism and benediction, this excellent new production captures the visceral drama of Angus Cerini’s remarkable play.
Four and a Half Stars . Ngunyawayiti Theatre, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide.
Reviewed December 11, 2020
by Murray Bramwell, published online December 12, 2020.
Amongst the anxiety and havoc of Covid-19, the performing arts in 2020 have been systematically clobbered. So many productions abandoned and cancelled, so much effort and commitment brought to nothing.
Adelaide independent company, Theatre Republic’s …
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