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March 08, 2022

Adelaide Festival – Photographic Memory

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Current,Festival,Theatre

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

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

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

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australia Plays,Theatre

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

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australian Texts,Theatre

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

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

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

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australian Texts,Theatre

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

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

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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February 26, 2021

Festival review : The Boy Who Talked to Dogs

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Festival,Theatre

Adelaide 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 …

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February 18, 2021

Fringe review: That Boy

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Fringe,Theatre

Adelaide 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. …

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Fringe review: DIRT

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Fringe,Theatre

Adelaide 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 …

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