murraybramwell.com

January 01, 2014

The Best of 2013

Filed under: 2013,2014,Archive

Live performances have their seasons and then are gone : sometimes they remain vivid, but often, excellent productions and outstanding performances drift into imperfect recollection and hearsay. I hope this website, for all its sometimes unwelcome opinions, is a useful record of some of the notable activity in Adelaide this year.

I want to thank all the companies and creatives who have invited me to performances in 2013 and to acknowledge your continuing commitment and achievement.

Looking back on my …

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December 01, 2013

Stories from Nearby

Filed under: 2013,Archive,Books

Two Girls in a Boat
by Emma Martin
Victoria University Press
ISBN 978-0- 86473-893-6
RRP. $ 35.00. 197 pp.

Tough
by Amy Head
Victoria University Press
ISBN 978-0-86473-698-7
RRP: $ 28.00. 79 pp.

Tales from the Netherworld
by Jo Randerson
Steele Roberts Aotearoa
ISBN 978-1-877577-88-8
RRP. $. ??? 115 pp.

Murray Bramwell

One of the many pleasures of reading collections of short stories is the variety of ways in which a writer can explore the local – things, places and …

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November 13, 2013

Bitterly funny refuge in financial dependency

Filed under: 2013,Archive,Australian Texts,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Adelaide Theatre

Maggie Stone
by Caleb Lewis
State Theatre Company
Space Theatre
Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 12. Tickets $ 25 – $ 65
Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
Until November 30 .
Duration : 100 minutes, no interval.

It was Polonius, in Hamlet who said : “Neither a borrower or a lender be/ For loan oft loses both itself and friend.” He’s right, but that’s not how we live in the world. In his astutely incisive, often bitterly funny, new …

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October 16, 2013

When truth and faith collide, twice

Filed under: 2013,Archive,Australian Texts,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Adelaide Theatre

Vere (Faith)
by John Doyle
State Theatre Company
And Sydney theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse
Adelaide Festival Centre.
October 16. Tickets $ 25 – $ 65
Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
Until November 2 .
Duration : 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

Vere is the name of the central character in John Doyle’s engaging new play about an Australian physicist on the brink of a momentous discovery. In its Slavic origins, Vere means faith, but in Latin it …

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September 15, 2013

Coward’s ironies lost in the action

Filed under: 2013,Archive,International,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Brief Encounter
by Noel Coward
Adapted and directed by Emma Rice
Kneehigh (UK)
Presented by Arts Projects Australia,
with State Theatre Company of South Australia
Dunstan Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
September 13. Tickets $ 25 – $ 65
Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
Until September 28.
Duration : 1 hours 40 minutes (no interval)

Tour dates : Canberra Theatre, October 2-5; Melbourne:
Athenaeum Theatre, October 9-27; Sydney, The Concourse Theatre, October 31-November 17; Wollongong, IMB Theatre November 20-24; Perth , …

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August 21, 2013

Emotionally illuminating portrait of a family’s grief

Filed under: 2013,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

August 21, 2013
Adelaide Theatre

Babyteeth
by Rita Kalnejais
State Theatre Company
Space Theatre
Adelaide Festival Centre.
August 20. Tickets $ 25 – $ 65
Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
Until September 7.
Duration : 2 hours 20 minutes including interval

“How do you live like you’ve got nothing to lose ? “ that is the question playwright Rita Kalnejais poses as the starting point for Babyteeth, a captivating, sometimes audacious, comic drama about Milla, a terminally ill teenage …

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July 06, 2013

Wolf lights up the house with poetry

Filed under: 2013,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australian Texts,Theatre

Adelaide
Theatre

Big Bad Wolf
by Matthew Whittet
Windmill Theatre
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
July 6. Duration 50 minutes, no interval
Tickets: $15 – $20. Family rate $ 75 (2 adults, 2 children)
Bookings BASS 131 246 or bass.net.au
Until July 13.

The Big Bad Wolf has quite a case to answer. Just ask the Three Little Pigs or, if you can find her, the grandmother of Little Red Riding Hood. However, according to Windmill Theatre’s latest production (written …

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July 02, 2013

Double the fun with the Bard

Filed under: 2013,Archive,Interstate,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Adelaide Theatre

The Comedy of Errors
by William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company and Bell Shakespeare
Dunstan Playhouse
Adelaide Festival Centre.
July 2. Tickets $ 25 – $ 65
Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
Until July 14.

Shakespeare’s comedies are full of tricks, dupes and misunderstandings. His characters frequently use disguise, subterfuge and illusion to create confusion. Appearances are altered to remedy injustice, take revenge and, often, to bring the misguided and the wrongheaded to their senses. But only his first …

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June 20, 2013

Modern Family

Filed under: 2013,Archive,Cabaret,Music

Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2013
Martha Wainwright
Dunstan Playhouse
June 20.

What was it Tolstoy said about families? That all happy families are the same but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Not that the Wainwright -McGarrigle family was all that unhappy. Rather, they made unhappiness a favourite subject in their prolific and very memorable songs .

The McGarrigle Sisters – Anna and Kate – wrote plangent songs about hearts like wheels, and dancers with bruised knees. Similarly, …

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June 17, 2013

Cabaret Central

Filed under: 2013,Archive,Cabaret,Music

Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2013

Cabaret Central

Que Reste-T’Il
Robyn Archer
with Michael Morley and George Butrumlis
Adelaide Festival Theatre Stage.
June 15.

Just when we were wondering what cabaret is any more, along comes Robyn Archer to give us a splendid master class. Archer has long been recognised internationally as one of the foremost interpreters of the music of the German Weimar period – most especially the works of Bertolt Brecht and his musical henchmen , Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler …

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