The Queen and I
by Sue Townsend
adapted by Melissa Reeves
Her Majesty’s
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Take a script by Sue Townsend, already a success in the UK, add adaptations from Melissa Reeves, gather together a strong cast of Australian and English actors, have it directed by Max Stafford-Clark, toss in some songs by Ian Dury and you ought to have some sort of a hit. Alas, The Queen and I is a royal mess.
Sue Townsend, creator of …
Continue Reading Back to topClaustrophobia
devised by the Maly Company
Maly Theatre of St Petersburg
Festival Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
In both Gaudeamus and Claustrophobia, the Maly Theatre present us with a profusion of mixed messages. The company, youthful, vibrant and full of theatrical charm performs material which is often bitter, predatory, and seething with cynicism. The vignettes of life in the Construction Battalion in Gaudeamus show a vicious, divisive group of young people brutalised by circumstance. And the closing tableau with the …
Continue Reading Back to topFiguring the Landscape
Murray Bramwell talks with Philippe Genty and Mary Underwood about their new Australian-based production, Stowaways.
For nearly twenty years Philippe Genty has been an Australian stowaway. Ever since his first visit to the Adelaide and Perth Festivals in1978 he has lodged in the minds of a diverse Australian audience which has been both entranced and intrigued by the imaginative world of his theatre. His wacky dancing ostriches and weird little floating homunculi, his erotic puppets festooned in …
Continue Reading Back to topMurray Bramwell
After the announcement of State Theatre’s Australian Playhouse season for 1996 comes detail of the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust’s World Theatre program. The world, it seems, is a somewhat closer place than we might have thought given the level of Australian content in the line-up. Perhaps now that State has committed itself to a five year plan we will have a better sense in future that the left hand knows whether the right hand has already signed the …
Continue Reading Back to top1995
Matisse Exhibition
National Gallery of Victoria
Melbourne
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It is around half past nine and there are people pouring out of Flinders Street station, some heading across the Swanston Street intersection, others, like me, heading into town for a salubrious bite to eat. There we all are- ordering our number one breakfasts, McBottomless coffee and bacon McMuffin. Several armies are about to march on their stomachs. The Magpies fans, in their black and white Nikes and …
Continue Reading Back to topAllo, Allo, Allo
An Inspector Calls
by J.B. Priestley
Royal National Theatre of Great Britain
Her Majesty’s
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
For some time now there have been intimations that an Inspector would be calling. Those who first saw the Royal National Theatre’s 1992 London revival of the J.B Priestley country house detective mystery reported back to the colonies that this fusty old chestnut had been given a startling new shine. The expressionist treatment, the assured direction from Stephen Daldry …
Continue Reading Back to topWarsaw Tango
by Alberto Felix Alberto
Teatro Del Sur
by arrangement with State Theatre
Amanda….Maria Alejandra Figueroa
The Diva…Marta Riveros
The Magnific…Eduardo Cappussi
The Pole ….Luis Tenewicki
Direction, Design and Lighting…Alberto Felix Alberto
The Space, Adelaide Festival Centre
Wednesday 2 November
Warsaw Tango is very much the creation of Alberto Felix Alberto. He has written, designed and directed this dream-like performance for quartet and the production has toured widely since its premiere seven years ago. This is the first tour …
Continue Reading Back to topWarsaw Tango
Written, Designed and Directed by Alberto Felix Alberto.
Teatro Del Sur, in association with State Theatre.
Technical Director: Ignacio Riveros.
With: Maria Alejandra Figueroa, Marta Riveros,
Eduardo Cappussi, Luis Tenewicki.
The Space, Adelaide Festival Centre.
Murray Bramwell
Argentinian company, Teatro Del Sur, touring for the first time to Australia, have opened their much-travelled piece, Warsaw Tango, in Adelaide. Pre-season detail about the work has been scarce. Even the program notes are opaque. Warsaw Tango is “meant to be …
Continue Reading Back to top1994
Jim Rose Circus Sideshow
Old Lion
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
O Rose, thou art sick. Blake didn’t know the half of it. From Seattle, Washington, grunge mecca of the New World, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow returned to Sunday night Adelaide to bring worms visible and invisible from his garden of unearthly delights. Too big for Heaven this time, Jim packed us into the Old Lion for the gawp of our lives. Looking around we looked normal enough. People …
Continue Reading Back to topMy Mathematics
Rose English
Festival Tent
Memorial Drive
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The name’s Charlie and, obviously, I’m a horse. I’ve just been in Adelaide for the Festival. I wasn’t too sure about it all myself. It was my agent’s idea really. Good for your CV he said. You need to diversify, get into the arts more. But that’s what he said when he found that other play for me- Equus.
Well, anyway I’m back doing theatre and frankly it …
Continue Reading Back to top