Vale
by Nicki Bloom
State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
November 21. Tickets: $33- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online.
Duration 2 hours (including interval)
Until December 3.

“We’re weeds,” declares hotel tycoon Joseph Vale, “people rip us out roots and all /But back we come/tough as before.” Vale, Nicki Bloom’s new play for State Theatre Company, is a raucous, grimly funny portrait of star-crossed young lovers, their dysfunctional families, and the inevitable rise and fall of …

Switzerland
by Joanna Murray-Smith
State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
October 25. Tickets: $33- $61. Bookings 131 246 or online.
Duration: 1 hour 40 minutes. No interval.
Until November 5.

“My imagination functions much better,” the American novelist Patricia Highsmith sardonically observed, “when I don’t have to speak to people.” She much preferred to be alone with words. Misanthropic, prejudiced, witheringly intolerant, Highsmith wrote fiction about crime which was much more than generic crime fiction.

Admired by Graham …