2001

Wit

By Margaret Edson.

Bluetongue Theatre

The BakehouseTheatre,  Adelaide,

ends 28 July.

Murray Bramwell

The building on the corner of Angas and Cardwell Streets has been a familiar address for Adelaide’s more intrepid theatre audiences. It was once the home of the Red Shed Company, noted, among other things, for a succession of Daniel Keene premieres. Long before that, it was a venue for Troupe Theatre in its first incarnation. And now, for the past four years, the space …

Criminal Genius
George F. Walker

Bakehouse Theatre
Angas Street

Mojo
Jez Butterworth

Brink Productions
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Bakehouse Theatre’s Peter Green is to be commended for bringing us Criminal Genius , a recent work from Canadian playwright George F. Walker. It is a bleakly comic little piece about crime and more crime and the rippling effect of retribution. In its mix of hostility and farce it owes much, as many works now seem to, to the bravura writing …

Roberto Zucco
Bernard-Marie Koltes

Brink Productions
Balcony Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Roberto Zucco is a modern Lizzie Borden. First he gave his father forty whacks. Then he gave his mother forty two. After that, he kills a policeman and a child. Freud may be able to explain the first three but only the Devil can account for the last. Based on the actual exploits of an Italian hoodlum, French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltes’ creation is a grimly funny portrait of …

1998

Adelaide

Theatre

The Europeans by Howard Barker.

Director: Tim Maddock. Designed by Mary Moore. Lighting: Geoff Cobham. Sound design Jeremy Rowney. Brink Productions.

Balcony Theatre. November 10, 1998.

Murray Bramwell

In London there is an outfit called The Wrestling School which is devoted to the works of playwright Howard Barker. Brink Productions, newly commissioned in Adelaide this year, could well qualify as its southern campus. Over the past three years or so, the Brink team has grappled with such …

1998

Making it New

Murray Bramwell reports on what’s been doing in theatre in Adelaide

It is now more than a year since the Day of the Long Knives. Well, it seemed like that when, in mid-October 1997, it was announced that the Australia Council was withdrawing triennial funding for a number of Adelaide’s long established theatre companies. Carouselle, the talented puppet group was one, Junction Theatre another, Magpie2, the newly badged youth wing of State Theatre got clipped after …

1998

My Vicious Angel

Christine Evans

Vitalstatistix

Waterside

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

With its charter as a National Women’s Theatre, Vitalstatistix has set itself a large task. But with Christine Evans’ new play My Vicious Angel the claim has taken tangible form. This fine work has been brought to life- given wings, as the playwright puts it- by an able cast and production team.

Imogen Thomas has created a simple, and portable, set consisting of a vertical steel climbing frame …

1998

East of Eden

John Steinbeck

adapted by Rob Croser

Independent Theatre

Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Independent Theatre has had a continuing relationship with the works of John Steinbeck for a while now. Several years ago the company presented Frank Galati’s stage adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath and now, with the benediction of Elaine Steinbeck, the writer’s widow, director Rob Croser has taken East of Eden and staged it in the Playhouse.

It is a hugely ambitious project …