For more than two hours, with a brilliant band and a portfolio of songs that have conquered time, James Taylor reminds us that we have still got a friend.
Written by Murray Bramwell
“I’ve got my RM’s on,” muses James Taylor, staring at his boots. And from that very first moment he endears himself to the audience in the Entertainment Centre. They, or I should say, we are very predominately of a certain age. We are here to listen again …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Festival
Theatre : Qui a tue mon pere (Who killed my father)
In his compelling monologue Edouard Louis meticulously describes a childhood ruined by poverty, abuse, and alienation. He blames his father but comes to realise there are also much larger social and structural cruelties in play.
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
In the preface to his harrowing 2018 memoir Qui a tue mon pere, Edouard Louis hypothesises.
“If this were a text for the theatre, here is how it …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Festival
Music Theatre: The Threepenny Opera
Barrie Kosky’s version of The Threepenny Opera has had a haircut and a makeover but the satire is still in there, along with the comedy, and Kurt Weill’s splendid music.
Written by Murray Bramwell
The Threepenny Opera is just four years short of its hundredth birthday and it has had a long history of popular successes and mixed receptions. In Berlin, in 1928, it did poorly when it opened and then became popular …
Continue Reading Back to topI Hide in Bathrooms
Astrid Pill and Collaborators
Vitalstatistix
Waterside.
I Hide in Bathrooms, we are told, by an offstage voice, is “based loosely on a true-ish story” but it is also “made-uppish”. We know from the program notes that this excellent theatre work had its beginnings when devisor and performer Astrid Pill became preoccupied with the notion of the death of a life partner, in response to the experiences of people in her intimate circle.
But it is …
Continue Reading Back to topDescribed as a visual meditation on mourning, Goodbye Lindita eloquently, and sometimes convulsively, expresses feeling and wonder about the mystery of death – without uttering a single word.
Written by Murray Bramwell
“I feel like mourning has a silent, almost suffocating quality,“ Mario Banushi writes in the program notes, “This is why it is a performance without words.”
Conceived and directed by Banushi, Goodbye Lindita may be wordless but it has plenty to say. Inspired, or perhaps provoked, by the …
Continue Reading Back to topAs WOMADelaide 2024 draws closer, Murray Bramwell talks to Director, Ian Scobie, about bringing in the new and keeping the familiar .
“Things are going pretty well. Touch wood” As always Ian Scobie is taking early soundings in late January. He has been involved with WOMADelaide for all of its 32 years. Right back to 1992 when APA was formed and Festival director, Rob Brookman negotiated with WOMAD UK’s Thomas Brooman to bring World Music artists to a weekend festival …
Continue Reading Back to topWritten by Murray Bramwell
With her acid wit and memorably wicked aphorisms, Dorothy Parker is a rich subject for the stage, and playwright Annie Lux has seized the chance. The Portable Dorothy Parker draws its title from the writer’s first collection, garnered from works published in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and literary magazines.
It is 1943, and an emissary from Viking Press is visiting Parker to hasten the selection process. The setting is her apartment – a chair …
Continue Reading Back to topWritten by Murray Bramwell
When a play begins with a man screaming in a dumpster we know this is a story of the lower depths. England & Son is a corrosive account of the degradation and insecurity of working people in the UK, escalated by the Thatcher years and even more pervasive today.
We don’t know the man’s first name but his surname is England and so was his father’s. At one point in his childhood, England the younger is …
Continue Reading Back to topWritten by Murray Bramwell
You don’t have to know about rugby to enjoy Grav. But if you do, this one-hander, performed memorably by Gareth J Bale, really kicks it out of the park.
Ray Gravell played more than 400 games for his Welsh club Llanelli, earned 23 caps for Wales and played for the British Lions in 1980.
He described himself as “just a minor cog, quite an ordinary player to be honest.” Fellow players, opponents and his loyal …
Continue Reading Back to topAs 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 …
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