As I look over my year’s attendances, I saw less of the festivals – the Cabaret Festival and OzAsia in particular. State Theatre Company South Australia had a strong year with outstanding attendances but the second-tier independents remained fairly quiet. After a long and accomplished stint Chris Drummond announced his departure from Brink and the promising projects coming from RUMPUS came to an untimely end with the termination of the Bowden lease. Windmill and Slingsby featured in the Festival program …
Continue Reading Back to topFebruary 09, 2024
October 20, 2023
2024 Adelaide Festival program launched
The program for the 2024 Adelaide Festival has been unveiled and it is a first for incoming Artistic Director Ruth McKenzie and general manager Kath Mainland. It promises excellence, continuity and a showcase for emerging works that may prove to be future classics.
Written by Murray Bramwell
“We were both here for the 2023 festival, “says Ruth McKenzie, “but that was the last one for Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield – which went incredibly well, as all of their festivals …
Continue Reading Back to topOctober 13, 2023
Theatre: The Garden
Written by Murray Bramwell
With thrift and wit and unnerving candour, Theatre Republic’s intriguing new play examines in microcosm the inescapable reality of discrepant worlds and insufficient good intentions.
“This play has never been comfortable,“ Emily Steel writes in her program notes for The Garden. “It was uncomfortable to write and if I’ve done it properly it will be uncomfortable to watch.”
And she has done it properly. In a compact sixty minutes she has produced a crowded hour …
Continue Reading Back to topAugust 30, 2023
Music Theatre: Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
In State Theatre Company’s newest co-production, with Belvoir Street and Melbourne Theatre Company, the brilliant Zahra Newman and her band recapture and celebrate the vibrant life, loves, torments and timeless music of Billie Holiday.
Murray Bramwell
There can be few singers as mercurial as Billie Holiday. Biographer John Szwed says of the more than forty books written about her – “All those who have attempted to write about her have discovered there are many Billie Holidays: one lively and joyful, …
Continue Reading Back to topJuly 14, 2023
Adelaide Guitar Festival – The Milk Carton Kids (with special guest Vera Sola)
Whatever you want to call it – Americana, Old Timey Music, Indie Folk, The Milk Carton Kids do it. And they do it very well. Their opening night concert for the Adelaide Guitar Festival is the full bottle.
Murray Bramwell
Formed in 2011, when solo performer Joey Ryan went to a concert by Kenneth Pattengale in their home town of Eagle Rock, California and suggested they join forces, The Milk Carton Kids duo (named from a lyric of one their …
Continue Reading Back to topJune 19, 2023
June 15, 2023
May 04, 2023
Theatre: Every Brilliant Thing
When his mother attempts suicide, a seven year old boy starts to make a list of everything “brilliant” worth living for. This insightful, funny, increasingly complex play explores the pain and complexity of mental illness.
Written by Murray Bramwell
We are often encouraged to count our blessings, to focus on the glass half full. It is a worthy aim, but it is never that simple. In Every Brilliant Thing, UK playwright, Duncan McMillan (in collaboration with comedian Jonny Donahoe) …
Continue Reading Back to topMarch 16, 2023
Herd Mentality
Adelaide Festival
The Sheep Song
by Jonas Vermeulen, Stef Aerts, Joe Agemans, Thomas Verstraeten, Marie Vinck, Matteo Simoni with Bart Hollanders, Titus De Voogdt, Yorrith De Bakker.
FC Bergman
Toneelhuis, Antwerp.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
March 16. Until March 19.
Titus De Voogdt
In the final weekend of the Adelaide Festival’s theatre program comes the most intriguing- the FC Bergman company’s The Sheep Song. Described in their program notes as “a visual story without words, an epic solely …
Continue Reading Back to topMarch 10, 2023
Uplifting
Grey Rock
Written and directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi
Remote Theatre Project.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
March 10. Until March 12.
We last saw the work of the remarkable writer and director Amir Nizar Zuabi at the Adelaide Festival in 2018. Touring then with his Palestinian ShiberHur Theatre Company, he presented two plays Azza and Taha both of which made an enduring impression for those fortunate enough to see them.
So Zuabi’s return with Grey Rock, under the …
Continue Reading Back to top