Hamlet
The Tempest
by William Shakespeare

Company B
Belvoir
The Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is more than thirty years since the Polish writer Jan Kott declared Shakespeare not only our contemporary but the playwright for all of Europe. The idea liberated Peter Brook’s King Lear and gave acrobatic freedom to his version of the Dream but then it lapsed again. Shakespearean performance from the UK has, with notable exceptions -Cheek by Jowl, some of Michael Bogdanivich’s work with …

1995

Arcadia
by Tom Stoppard
State Theatre in association with
The Sydney Theatre Company
Playhouse, September, 1995.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Arcadia, like its setting, Sidley Park, is a major property. Probably Stoppard’s best work since the plays from the Seventies such as Jumpers and Travesties, it marks an impressive return to form. It is maddeningly over-written and plagued with tropes he should be able to resist by now. But it is also propelled by ideas and energies which, in …

Picasso at the Lapin Agile
by Steve Martin
Playbox Theatre
Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is the beginning of the twentieth century, the Noughts, as Steve Martin waggishly calls them. Freddy’s place, the Lapin Agile in Montmartre, is hopping with activity. Here is Cafe Society- the chic, the famous, the brainy, the belle, and tous les hangers on. Robert Hughes compared European cafes to magazines- bright vortices of plumage and pleasure. The idea has persisted. We bourgeois have disinvented …

1994

Bodyslam
Rock’n’Roll Circus
Space, November, 1994.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The Rock’n’Roll Circus follows a distinguished succession of new circus acts in Australia. Circus Oz has remained one of our most enduring and innovative stage companies and the taste for acrobatics, illusion, comedy and satire has been fuelled by acts as diverse as the Compagnie Philippe Genty, Archaos, Desoxy, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and Ra Ra Zoo. The Rock’n’Roll show, Bodyslam, owes more than a little to all …

1994

Angels in America
Part I: Millennium Approaches
by Tony Kushner

State Theatre in Association with
the Melbourne Theatre Company
Playhouse, October, 1994.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There are no spirits, no ghosts, no angels in America. So says one of the characters in Tony Kushner’s extraordinary play about sexual identity, politics, puritanism, AIDS and the millenium. In what he calls A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Kushner ambitiously intersects the wheels of American history and religion with the twin …

1994

Viva la Vida
Frida Kahlo
Handspan Theatre
Space, September, 1994.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Maybe it was all those calendars of Frida. Those querulous looks from heavy brows and hooded eyes. Each month, the iconography of pain and gore, flesh perforated with thorns and nails, a few small nips and Diego on my mind. The rediscovery of Frida Kahlo has charted a steep curve from obscurity to greeting cards. Her works have been seen in festivals and her biography …

Van Gogh:
His Sources, Genius and Influence
National Gallery of Victoria

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is not only in Aprill with his shoures soote. Even on the twelfth day of Christmas are folk likely to climb on night buses and goon on pilgrimages. But sacred journeys have always been a bit of a punt. Will the weather hold and the travel be safe ? Will the pitch be in good order after the Madonna concert ? Will the blisful …