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December 20, 2021

The Best of 2021

Filed under: 2021,2022,Archive

This has been another weird and difficult year. But differently weird and difficult from 2020 our first year of COVID-19. That year was normal-ish for the first three months. After that, things were postponed and re-scheduled. Or more often – thwarted, abandoned, cancelled and locked-down.

As I wrote this time last year – “It has been a global catastrophe – medically, socially, economically and creatively. In Australia the problems for the creative arts have been enhanced by federal government spite …

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December 10, 2021

UnSeen

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

UnSeen
by Kelly Vincent & Alirio Zavarce
and the True Ability Ensemble.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
December 1.

Seeing and Believing

“There are a lot of things that are really hard about being disabled,” writer and advocate Kelly Vincent said in a recent interview in CityMag. “But most of them are not because [of the disability]. It’s because of the barriers that society puts up for disabled people – from barriers to socialising and attending events and parties, to …

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November 19, 2021

How Not to Make it in America

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australia Plays,Theatre

How Not to Make it in America
by Emily Steel
Theatre Republic.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 18. Until November 20.
Murray Bramwell

“Hi I’m Matt. I’m here to audition for the role of Juliet”. These are the opening lines of Emily Steel’s excellent new play How Not to Make it in America . Those who followed the Act Now/ State Theatre’s Decameron 2.0 Project online last year would have already met Matt, and his performer James Smith, but …

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November 18, 2021

Theatre Review: Dry

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australian Texts,Theatre

In Catherine Fitzgerald’s grim comedy of climate crisis, two sisters cling desperately to the remnants of their unsustainable rural heritage.

Murray Bramwell

We have been warned for more than fifty years about climate change. The rapid deterioration of our biosphere is a concept terrifying to consider. Reports of polar melting, sea levels rising, and increasingly chaotic weather patterns have the enormity and unreality of science fiction. So how do we countenance this in ways that might sink in ?

Dry…

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November 16, 2021

Comedy of manners for quarrelsome age

Filed under: 2021,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Eureka Day
by Jonathan Spector
State Theatre South Australia.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 16. Tickets $39 – $79.
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Duration : 130 minutes (including interval)
Until November 27.

Californian playwright, Jonathan Spector could not have known, when his sparklingly witty comedy of ethics opened in Berkeley in April 2018, that Eureka Day would be so alarmingly prescient of the corrosive social divisions in a global pandemic.

Set in the Eureka Day Community school, the play opens on …

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October 21, 2021

Theatre review: White Pearl

Filed under: 2021,Archive,Festival,Theatre

White Pearl not only takes a sharp and funny swipe at the Asian cosmetics industry, it reminds us that racism comes in a disturbing variety of forms – and social media is often not helping. OzAsia 2021 has opened with its first highlight.

Murray Bramwell

Clearday is the name of this smart young Singaporean cosmetic company, but there is nothing very clear about the way they do business. Their product is called White Pearl and as playwright, Achuli Felicia King’s …

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September 14, 2021

Fiscal Abuse

Filed under: 2021,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Glengarry Glen Ross
By David Mamet
Flying Penguin Productions
The Bakehouse.
September 11.
Until September 25.

Murray Bramwell


L-R. Nicholas Garsden / Christopher Pitman. Photo: Shane Reid

Talking about the Art of the Deal has certainly lost its lustre thanks to the Shyster-in-Chief, Donald Trump, but the cult of the salesman, the samurai emissary of predatory capitalism, has been on the nose ever since Willy Loman discovered his pitiful net worth in Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s bitter …

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August 18, 2021

Theatre review: Hibernation

Filed under: 2021,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

InDaily
Murray Bramwell

Theatre review: Hibernation

Hibernation, State Theatre’s engaging and theatrically inventive new play, is not only a wake-up call about the climate crisis, it reminds us that to fix the planet we really have to fix ourselves.

Not often does a play seem to have been conjured from the most recent news headlines, but Hibernation is one of them. Writer Finegan Kruckemeyer describes beginning his draft in 2019- “and the writing of that world strangely became the …

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June 27, 2021

Adelaide Cabaret Festival: Thank you, Alan, it was a good time

Filed under: 2021,Archive,Cabaret,Music

Alan Cumming is Not Acting His Age
Adelaide Festival Theatre.

June 26. Duration : 1 hr 20 mins.

It is the final night of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and Alan Cumming bounds on to the stage in a slim-fitting grey suit jacket and black tie, matching grey shorts and black and white Converse sneakers. “I feel twitchy and bitchy and manic”, he sings, “Calm and collected and choking with panic /But alive, but alive, but alive.”

The song is from …

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June 26, 2021

Adelaide Cabaret Festival: Mostly Marlene – Kim David Smith

Filed under: 2021,Archive,Cabaret,Music

This accomplished set may be mostly Marlene Dietrich – with mashings of Kylie and Madonna – but it is all Kim David Smith at his mercurial best.

Written by Murray Bramwell

Kim David Smith has been performing at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival for more than ten years. Back when he was still Kim Smith, he brought shows such as Misfit and Morphium Kabarett featuring his shape-shifting gremlin mix of nova pop, reptilian camp and – when he switched into persona …

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