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 …

1990

Actor and Director, Gavin Richards, currently in Adelaide with the popular comedy show Allo Allo, talks to Murray Bramwell about Alternative Theatre in the UK- where it has been and how it responds to a changed society.

Actors in television often seem to come out of nowhere, magically discovered and hurled into prominence, but this is rarely true. Take Gavin Richards for instance. He is a household name as the amorous Italian Captain in Allo Allo, the old-style Perry …

1990 Festival
Visual Arts

Festival Exhibitions
Visions, Maps and Dreamings
Frida Kahlo

The visual arts exhibitions have always been a big draw for the Adelaide Festival and this year’s are no exception. There are differences this time, though, which are likely to set patterns for the future. Firstly, the festival organisers themselves have initiated exhibitions and taken care to incorporate themes in the overall programme.

Daniel Thomas, Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, is well pleased with this …