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, …
Continue Reading Back to top2001
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 …
Continue Reading Back to topCriminal 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 …
Continue Reading Back to topCarrying Light
Verity Laughton
State Theatre South Australia
and Vitalstatistix
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
There is something fundamentally threatening about closed religious societies. We call them cults and no matter how benign their objectives they are demonised. The settlement of the United States was propelled by groups going that further thirty miles just to get away. And whether Shakers, Amish, Mormons or Mennonites they solemnly believed that they embodied the extended family in Christ.
The appeal of the lifestyle …
Continue Reading Back to topRoberto 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 …
Continue Reading Back to top1998
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 …
Continue Reading Back to top1998
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 …
Continue Reading Back to topMorde
by Paul Rees
Theatre Praxis
Lion Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Sometimes an event occurs which is so extraordinary and complete in its symbolic value that it seems definitively dramatic. The story of Mordechai Vanunu must have seemed so to Adelaide based writer Paul Rees. The Israeli defence worker who photographed evidence of his country’s nuclear capability and then, while hiding out in a wayside chapel in King’s Cross in Sydney, made arrangements to expose the information in The …
Continue Reading Back to top1998
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 …
Continue Reading Back to top1998
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 …
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