2006

Murray Bramwell

Beautiful Words

By Sean Riley

Oddbodies Theatre Company

Higher Ground , Rundle Street, Adelaide.

May 10. Tickets  $ 18- 32.  bookings BASS 131 246

Thursday to Saturday until May 20.

People don’t like other people. That is the frequently repeated observation in Sean Riley’s splendidly engaging play, Beautiful Words – and its implications, in  history and our own communities, are everywhere apparent. We love our own kind, and fear and despise those who are different. Until, of …

2005

Come Out 2005

Murray Bramwell

Come Out, the Australian Festival for Young People has been showcasing new work for more than thirty years and its achievement  is impressive. For much of that time, Come Out was not just the leading festival for young people in Australia, it was the only one – and an important opportunity, through forums, performances and collegial exchange, to take a look at the state of the arts for audiences ranging from pre-school to late …

4:48 Psychosis
by Sarah Kane

Brink Productions
in association with Budgie Lung Theatre
Queen’s Theatre

Murray Bramwell

Sarah Kane didn’t write prefaces for her plays. She said that if they were any good they would stand alone. But in her case it was never going to be that simple. When, in 1998, she committed suicide at the age of 28, she caused the kind of literary sensation that had not been seen since the death of Sylvia Plath nearly forty …

2004

Laughing Wild

by Christopher Durang

The Getaway Bus

by Ingle Knight

Festival of One

Bakehouse Theatre

September, 2004.

Murray Bramwell

After a late scratching from Series Three of Bakehouse Theatre’s Festival of One, comes the welcome addition of Laughing Wild, a thirty minute monologue from American writer Christopher Durang. Taking its title from Samuel Beckett – “Laughing wild amidst severest woe” – it features an unnamed young woman who is repeatedly colliding with the world.

First, it is …

2004

Fluff

Created  by Christine Johnston

Strut and Fret Productions

Artspace, Festival Centre

The Flying Babies

by Jakub Krofta

Drak Theatre

Dunstan Playhouse

Windmill Productions marked a second birthday last month and they continue to live up to their claim as a leading national theatre company for young people. They have not been without their blips – last year’s Robinson Crusoe was undistinguished and The Snow Queen faltered under the sheer weight of its grandiose intentions. But this year’s Moonflee…

2003

The Pitchfork Disney

by Philip Ridley

4 Bux Progressive Arts

The Chapel

Theatre 62

Murray Bramwell

The Pitchfork Disney first played in 1990 and heralded a wave of what might be called punk theatre. In works such as Shopping and Fucking and  Disco Pigs – both of which have performed in Adelaide – and films such as Naked, Praise and Trainspotting, the best minds of a generation drew their subject from a vaguely futuristic underclass of alienated, sexually …

2003

Come Out 2003

Australian Festival for Young People

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Come Out has been reappearing every two years since 1974 which my add-ups tell me is just short of thirty years. This is an extraordinary achievement and a tribute to the continuing commitment of artists, administrators, teachers and funding agencies in establishing and maintaining, not just a festival for young people, but a focus and a forum for the presentation and preservation of youth arts.

In a …

2002

Despoiled Shore

Medeamaterial

Landscape with Argonauts

The Border Project

Queen’s Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The Border Project is a new company committed, you might say, to pushing the boundaries. And with their first venture, based on the texts of German writer Heiner Muller, they have taken on the themes of exile, persecution and betrayal. Muller uses the story of Medea, the sorceress who betrays her father and slaughters her brother in order to help her lover Jason steal …

2001

A Lie of the Mind

by Sam Shepard

Brink Productions

Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The second and final Brink production for the year is also an American play. Sam Shepard’s  A Lie of the Mind makes an interesting pair with the company’s co-production with State Theatre back in June. That was Killer Joe, Tracy Letts’ grim trailer park tragicomedy of love, and death, for sale. Both plays are set in the poor white margins, one in Texas, …