1992

Ramaz’ Gala Performance

Rustaveli Company

Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

When the Rustaveli Company performed in Australia in 1986 they remained imprinted in the DNA of everyone who saw them. The most distinguished state company from the distinguished theatrical state of Georgia, the Rustavelis have toured extensively in Europe and North America presenting their unique readings of classic works – Shakespeare, a staple in Georgian theatre since last century, and Brecht, whose Threepenny Opera and Caucasian Chalk Circle are …

1991

The English Shakespeare Company spend most of their time travelling. Murray Bramwell talks with Michael Pennington, June Watson and Andrew Jarvis about touring, audiences and their current repertory season of Coriolanus and The Winter’s Tale.

It is something of paradox that because of their colourful, minimalist stagings, tuxedo toffs, punks and mod cons, the English Shakespeare Company are regarded as an experimental group. In fact, on the road since 1986 with The Henrys, and then the epic Wars of …

1991

Boswell for the Defence
by Patrick Edgeworth
Leo McKern
Her Majesty’s Theatre, January, 1991.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The story of Mary Bryant nee Broad has been back in prominence lately. Documented in Robert Hughes’ book The Fatal Shore, described by Thomas Keneally in the Playmaker and dramatised in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, Mary Bryant’s intrepid escape from Sydney Cove to Timor and subsequent return to England is a post-colonial ripping yarn. That the famous James Boswell, biographer …

1990

Screening tonight as part of the Frames Film Festival is An Angel at My Table, based on the autobiography of the writer Janet Frame. Director Jane Campion talks with Murray Bramwell about her newest work.

There is a story the poet James K. Baxter used to tell about Janet Frame – that when she was confined in a mental institution in New Zealand she was persuaded by doctors to consider a leucotomy, a procedure which cuts through nerve fibre …

1990

Festival Theatre
Adelaide, August 13, 1990.

Everybody knows that Peter Ustinov is a remarkable fellow but the list of his accomplishments is boggling. Linguist, playwright, novelist, director, actor, ambassador for UNICEF, his swag of honours include two Academy Awards, several Emmys, a Grammy, British Film Awards,
numerous Critics Awards, as well as a CBE, the Franklin Medal, a chair in the French Academy, and, in June this year, a knighthood.

In his show, An Evening With Peter Ustinov, the …

1990

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
Footsbarn
Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Footsbarn are a remarkable theatre company. With minimal subsidy they have toured for nearly twenty years presenting more than 47 productions. While their range is wide, Shakespeare is their staple. Adelaide saw Macbeth in the 1986 Festival, a production which they rehearsed at McLaren Vale and took on the the road to sixteen different countries.

From its origins in Cornwall (in the barn of founding actor, Oliver …

1990

Murray Bramwell talks with Beatrice Beaucaire, Fredricka Lascelles and John Kilby about Footsbarn Theatre’s latest production, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which has its world premiere in Adelaide tonight.

When, in Cornwall in 1971, they first began rehearsing in a barn belonging to an actor named Oliver Foot, the members of Footsbarn Theatre could not have possibly foreseen that they would become perpetual travellers, a theatre community trekking across continents performing to audiences from Darwin to Moscow to Tunis.

Last …