The Architect’s Walk
Daniel Keene
Red Shed Company
Arts Theatre
Such was his sense of manifest destiny that Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer, drew artist’s impressions of the buildings of the Reich as two thousand year old ruins. Much later, in an interview for European TV, Speer observed, like a naughty schoolboy, that he was glad the Fuhrer was not around any more. He would not be pleased with Speer’s work, it was all built of such inferior concrete that it …
Continue Reading Back to top1998
Magpie 2 – A Future or a Blown Youth ?
Murray Bramwell
Adelaide
It was only in July last year that I reported in these columns the arrival of a new funded company in Adelaide. Well, it was not so much a new company as a makeover of an existing operation. In an effort to rescue the long-term subscriber base for State Theatre, then Executive Director Chris Westwood grasped the nettle and changed the charter for Magpie, the young …
Continue Reading Back to topFeatures of Blown Youth
by Raimondo Cortese
Magpie2
Queens Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
When State Theatre refitted Magpie 2 this year it also gave it a difficult task. Some might have called it a Mission Impossible. No longer a theatre-in-schools project its charter was switched to post secondary audience development. Magpie was now to produce theatre for eighteen to twenty-five year olds- a group that is not really a group at all, a demographic that not even demographers can …
Continue Reading Back to topTheatre/Dance
Adelaide
Barossa Seulle
Meryl Tankard’s Australian Dance Theatre prepares a new work for the Barossa Music Festival.
It is mid-morning on a Wednesday and Meryl Tankard steps out of rehearsal to talk about Seulle, a new work being developed especially for the Barossa Music Festival. Dressed in black leotard, she towels her thick, dark hair and makes a beeline to the spring water dispenser for a cupful.
These Barossa gigs are particular labours of love for Tankard and her …
Continue Reading Back to top1997
Rules of Thumb
by Daniel Keene and Alison Croggan
Red Shed Company
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The Red Shed’s association with Melbourne playwright Daniel Keene has been hugely productive. Collaboration in the best sense, it has created a trust between playwright and directors, designers and actors which has resulted in a series of successful commissions. All Souls was first, then award-winner, Because You Are Mine and last year, the film noir-ish spine-chiller, Terminus.
Rules of Thumb is a …
Continue Reading Back to topQuiver
Leigh Warren and Dancers
Norwood Town Hall
Adelaide
Murray Bramwell
Quiver, the new program from Leigh Warren and Dancers is continuing evidence of the company’s invention and excellence. With last year’s return season of Klinghoffer and now, the unveiling of two contrasting works, Shimmer and Swerve, Leigh Warren’s signatures are becomingly increasingly apparent. His work is disciplined, elegant and has the added intensity which music performed live can bring. With Klinghoffer, he borrowed ethereal choruses from John Adams’s opera, …
Continue Reading Back to topMagpie2 opens at Queen’s Theatre in Adelaide with the double header Future Tense, directed by Benedict Andrews.
Murray Bramwell
Magpie has returned. It now has a series number -like a software package, or an engine. Magpie2. Reconfigured by former State Theatre Company Executive Producer, Chris Westwood, the company has set aside its theatre in schools charter to provide theatre works with the eighteen to twenty-six year old constituency in mind. It is a big move and there are no guarantees. …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Secret Death of Salvador Dali
by Stephen Sewell
The Court of Miracles
Directed by Peter Dunn
Lion Theatre
Adelaide
“The difference between a madman and me”, Salvador Dali once said, “is that I am not mad.” More, you might say, crazy like a fox. The pre-eminent artist celebrity before Andy Warhol, Dali forms the link between the anti-bourgeois Dada comedy of Alfred Jarry and the zany popularity of the Marx Brothers. With his melting watches, lobster telephones and a …
Continue Reading Back to topFast Editing
Simone Clifford
The Space
Adelaide Festival Centre
Murray Bramwell
Adelaide based Simone Clifford’s current program of work, Fast Editing , is part of the Festival Centre Trust’s Made to Move season. Formerly a dancer with ADT during Jonathan Taylor’s artistic directorship in the early Eighties, Clifford went on to work in Jiri Kylian’s Nederlands Dans Theater for five years.
Fast Editing consists of two works- a new piece entitled Reluctant Relics , created in October and November of …
Continue Reading Back to topFuture Tense
Magpie 2
Queen’s Theatre
Adelaide
The Magpie has landed. Magpie 2, that is. For a long time the theatre-in-education wing of the State Theatre Company, it is has now pitched its energies towards the eighteen to twenty-six age group, not exactly a theatre-friendly demographic. Not exactly a demographic at all. So, newly appointed artistic director Benedict Andrews has nailed his doubloon to the mast with a program to his own liking – a double feature of contemporary European …
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