2007
Murray Bramwell previews the current production of a South African drama classic directed by theatre legend Peter Brook.

Siswe Banzi is Dead opens at the Space on November 7 but it is not for the first time in Adelaide. Athol Fugard’s play, written in collaboration with actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, was scheduled, along with its companion work The Island, at the 1976 Adelaide Festival. The two plays with their vivid and disturbing accounts of life in South …

China
By William Yang
Space Theatre
Adelaide Festival Centre
September 26.

The Eyes of Marege
By Julie Janson
Australian Performance Exchange
And Teater Kita Makassar
Dunstan Playhouse
Adelaide Festival Centre
September 27.

To look from Arnhem Land, across the horizon of the Timor Sea towards Sulawesi, is to see with the Eyes of Marege. For four hundred years the Yolngu people traded and intermarried with the Makassan fishermen and mariners from Indonesia – until 1904, when all dealings were terminated …

2007

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Yohangza Theatre Company, South Korea.
Dunstan Playhouse.
February 1. 2007

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is a credit to Douglas Gautier’s plan to revive the program in the Festival Centre that he has brought this sprightly – and spritely – adaptation so auspiciously early. It is smart to link with the Sydney Festival and get the benefit of their line-up – may there be more of it. And, in selecting this skilful Korean company and …

2006

Bash

by Neil Labute

Directors’ Choice Season

Holden Street Theatres

Until 16 September.

The Woman in Black

Adapted by Stephen Mallatratt from the novel by Susan Hill

Her Majesty’s.

Until 9 September.

Murray Bramwell

American playwright Neil Labute has called them latterday plays, but the characters in Bash, his triple bill of one-act pieces, are anything but latter day saints. Raised in Utah as a Mormon himself, Labute draws on these experiences to represent the everyday quality of …

Shakespeare’s Villains
Steven Berkoff
Festival Theatre, February 16.

Murray Bramwell

In the polite world of English theatre Steven Berkoff has always been the bad boy, and, even at sixty eight, he is still a bit of a lad. We owe much to him – for the turbulent rough magic of East, for the curdled wit of his play Decadence, for the outrageousness of his Salome and the camp guignol he has brought to a posse of Hollywood baddies. But this …

2004

Adelaide
Music Theatre

HMS Pinafore
WS.Gilbert and A. Sullivan
Carl Rosa Company
Her Majesty’s, Adelaide.

4 November, 2004
Tickets $ 49 – $ 79
Bookings BASS 131 246.
Until 7 November, 2004

Murray Bramwell

The Carl Rosa Opera Company occupied a distinguished part of English operatic history  from its establishment in 1873 through to the late 1950s. It presented the first English productions of Carmen, Lohengrin and Aida and would have staged the works of Gilbert and Sullivan had …

2004
Murray Bramwell

An Evening With Queen Victoria
Prunella Scales

Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
1 November, 2004
Tickets $ 40 – $ 69.
Bookings BASS 131 246.
Until 3 November.

Melbourne
The Arts Centre, Fairfax Studio
6 -7 November, 2004

Geelong
Ford Theatre
9 November, 2004

Cairns
Civic Theatre
23 -24 November, 2004

Townsville
Civic Theatre
25 November, 2004

Rockhampton
Pilbeam Theatre
26 November, 2004

Canberra
The Playhouse
29 30 November, 2004

Albury
Performing Arts centre
1 December, 2004…

2004

Vanishing Point
Compagnie Philippe Genty

Her Majesty’s
September, 2004.

Murray Bramwell

It is startling to think that Philippe Genty has been performing in Australia for more than thirty years. His company featured at the Festival in 1978 and again in Adelaide in 1996, when, in collaboration with Australian artists, they generated a new work, Stowaways. Genty has had a long association with this country and, for many in the audience, his blend of illusion and movement has been their …

Talking Heads
by Alan Bennett
Her Majesty’s

Murray Bramwell

Originally, there were six Talking Heads in Alan Bennett’s splendid set of monologues written for BBC Television and broadcast in 1989. Featuring some of the best actors in the UK – Julie Walters, Thora Hird , Patricia Routledge, Stephanie Cole and Maggie Smith – they were a great success. Several selections were subsequently staged in 1992 directed  by Bennett himself. He then took a further production to the Chichester Festival in …

2003.

Adelaide

Theatre

Marcel Marceau

Her Majesty’s Theatre

Adelaide until 1 November.

5 November, Canberra Theatre Centre

Bookings : Canberra Ticketing  02 6275 2700

7 November, Regal Theatre, Perth.

Bookings : BOCS Ticketing 08 9484 1133

11- 12 November, Her Majesty’s Theatre,  Melbourne.

Bookings : Ticketek 132 849

15 November, State Theatre Sydney

Bookings: Ticketek 132 849

Tickets : (Adelaide)  $ 52 – $72

Murray Bramwell

When asked recently why mime had gone out of fashion, Marcel Marceau replied briskly …