murraybramwell.com

September 01, 1993

Hot Tap

Filed under: Archive,Australian Texts,Interstate,Theatre

Hot Shoe Shuffle
David Atkins Enterprises
Her Majesty’s

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

One of the disappointments about show business at the moment is that almost everything is retro. It is as though we are so lost in a thrall of nostalgia that we have forgotten that when Forty Second Street first appeared in 1933 people walked into the movie theatres and saw images from the streets around them. Similarly, when South Pacific opened in 1949 the war was scarcely over. …

Continue Reading Back to top

July 01, 1993

Crime and Punishment

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Death and the Maiden
by Ariel Dorfman
Sydney Theatre Company
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Since Ariel Dorfman’s ethico-political thriller Death and the Maiden has emerged as one of the most admired new works performed in London for some time, the inclusion of the Sydney Theatre Company version in State’s current season provides a welcome opportunity to see the play- if not, perhaps, in the production it best deserves.

Whodunnit, sexual dialectic, theatrical nailbiter and timely reminder, Death and the …

Continue Reading Back to top

April 01, 1993

Summer Pudding

Filed under: Archive,International,Interstate,Theatre

Summer Festival
Adelaide Festival Centre Trust

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The Summer Season, our solace in the off-year between festivals continues to give comfort. In fact, combined with Womadelaide, we can hardly complain about the available fare in these early months when holidays are over, daylight saving fades and the tomato plants have died off. It began with Julian Clary, who has in short time won hearts and minds as the love-child of Kenneth Williams. And continued with John Waters.…

Continue Reading Back to top

September 01, 1992

Vanilla Soda

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

Lost in Yonkers
Neil Simon

Sydney Theatre Company
Melbourne Theatre Company
State Theatre Company
and Sue Farrelly
Her Majesty’s

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Neil Simon has been a feature of the American stage for so long he’s almost become invisible. After twenty-seven Broadway productions his name is synonymous with smooth comedies of manners -odd couples, urban prisoners, goodbye girls and sunshine boys. Because his plays invariably become films his work is hugely well-known and actors like Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, …

Continue Reading Back to top

Receding Temples

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Music,Theatre

Hair
By Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt McDermott
Thebarton Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

By the time Hair opened at the Biltmore Theatre in New York in April 1968 many of the major happenings of Hippie history had already… happened. More than a year earlier in January 1967, twenty thousand turned up (and on) for the Human Be-In in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. That was the year of the Summer of Love, photogenically documented with lots of groovy …

Continue Reading Back to top

June 01, 1992

Reversals of Fortune

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Money and Friends
David Williamson
State Theatre Company presents
RQTC, Queensland’s State Theatre Company
Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is an increasingly widespread perception that David Williamson is a man more sinned against than sinning, that after more than twenty years he has not been embraced for the plays he has given us and the institution he has become. He is presented as our loftiest poppy, a Gulliver of the theatre constantly needled by Lilliputian envy and peevishness.

This …

Continue Reading Back to top

February 16, 1992

The Germanic Players

Filed under: Archive,Fringe,Interstate,Theatre

Die Verwandlung
by Franz Kafka

Tandanya Theatre
Until February 28.

Kafka’s Metamorphosis is a creepy fable of modern angst. Gregor Samsa wakes up to find he has turned into an insect, his boss fires him and his family grow resentful that he’s no longer bringing home the bacon. The story shows the cruelty of the outside world mirrored within the toxic confines of the family.

The Germanic Players are from the University of Melbourne and their German language production, Die …

Continue Reading Back to top

April 01, 1991

Double Bill

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

1991

The Winter’s Tale
Coriolanus
by William Shakepeare

English Shakespeare Company
Her Majesty’s, March, 1991.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The English Shakespeare Company’s The War of the Roses is a hard thirty-five acts to follow – even for the English Shakespeare Company. When they visited Adelaide in 1988 the ESC was concluding a two year tour with their marathon history cycle – Richard II to Richard III with all the Henrys in between. Performed in a five day stint the …

Continue Reading Back to top

December 29, 1990

Summer at the River Bank

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

1990

Ratty, Mole and Badger are returning to the Botanic Gardens this week. Murray Bramwell talks with Director Elena Eremin about Park Projects’ new production of The Wind in the Willows.

According to the mythology Glenn Elston hatched the idea for his highly successful outdoor productions of The Wind in the Willows five or six years ago when he was living in London . He had never read Kenneth Grahame’s rodent classic before and after discovering it in the cheerless …

Continue Reading Back to top

August 01, 1990

Captivating

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

1990

Our Country’s Good
by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Melbourne Theatre Company
Playhouse, July, 1990

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

So tight are the copyright requirements for Our Country’s Good that before you can say Timberlake Wertenbaker you have been obliged to remember that the play is based on Thomas Keneally’s novel The Playmaker. Drawing from historical documents, notably the journal of Lt Ralph Clark, the Playmaker, is an imaginative recreation of the staging on June 4th, 1789, of The Recruiting Officer, the …

Continue Reading Back to top
« Newer Posts — Older Posts »