murraybramwell.com

February 24, 2023

The World Returns to Botanic Park

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Music,Womadelaide

Murray Bramwell talks with Director Ian Scobie and Associate Director Annette Tripodi about the rapidly approaching WOMADelaide 2023

Annette Tripodi is not really pondering the idea that WOMADelaide is entering its fourth decade. She is just pleased the current one has landed in the net. “It’s worth saying that the last three years have been so peculiar in that we never knew what the next festival would hold…”

COVID-19 has cast a long shadow over all of the performing arts …

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February 20, 2023

Fringe Review: The King of Taking

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Comedy,Fringe,Theatre

Five Stars

Rubber-limbed and deadpan, New Zealand mime wizard Thom Monckton makes an hilarious return as the selfish King whose only subject is himself.

Written by Murray Bramwell

He has played the Adelaide Festival as The Artist and, back in 2016, the much-lamented Croquet Club as The Pianist. Now, the inimitable Thom Monckton is The King of Taking. A preposterous figure in none-too splendid isolation, he is the Mr Bean of hopeless monarchs, and delivers a slapstick routine that …

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February 17, 2023

Guffaws and vengeance in a tale of family woe

Filed under: 2023,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?
by Edward Albee.
State Theatre Company South Australia
and Sydney Theatre Company.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
February 14. Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au
Tickets: $49-95. Until February 25.
Duration : 100 minutes. No interval.

Sydney Theatre Company season
at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney,
March 2 -25. Tickets : $65- $125.

Murray Bramwell

It’s in the title of the play so it doesn’t need a spoiler alert. We know who Sylvia is. She is a goat. …

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February 16, 2023

Fringe Review: Jesus, Jane, Mother & Me

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Fringe,International,Theatre

Five Stars

In an empty house a young man is waiting to celebrate Mother’s Day but the more he describes her –and their religious devotions and special bonds, the more uncertain his rapture becomes.

Written by Murray Bramwell

After the chintzy palladium orchestra fanfare, it is his cheery manner which captures us first. This young extravagant man, eyes wide, all gestures and beaming smile. Hello, I’m Daniel Valentine.

He is in his mother’s house dressed in a summer dressing gown …

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February 01, 2023

Comedy Theatre: Mono

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Comedy,Theatre

Three goes very amiably into one in Mono, a suite of gently comic monologues divided up and performed by some of Australia’s favourite funny people, past and present.

In what he calls a ‘Brand New Classic Comedy ‘ and ‘A three-person one-man show ‘ Mono writer and director Angus FitzSimons has a fairly clear demographic in mind and it is not the Wil Anderson/Hannah Gadsby/ Kirsty Webeck crowd. Like his other show (with a published book tie-in) the semiotically …

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December 19, 2022

The Best of 2022

Filed under: 2022,2023,Archive

For the third year running any discussion of the performing arts turns inevitably to COVID-19 and the wreckage it has brought to scheduling and presenting events. More has been launched this year (and there have been fewer cancellations) but many changes had to be made to casts and crew all the same. The masking restrictions have lifted but that has on occasion made some, including me, watchful of which events we attended.

As I look over my year’s attendances, I …

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October 21, 2022

Theatre Review: The Demon

Filed under: 2022,Archive,Australian Texts,Festival,Theatre

The Demon explores the dark past in Australia’s colonial history, its effects on First Nations people and later on migrant minorities both Asian and Middle Eastern. This bold production is a grim journey – often compelling, but sometimes hampered by its own theatrical ambition.

Written by Murray Bramwell

The Demon is the kind of project we look forward to with the OzAsia program. Like Light, Thomas Henning’s discursive account of Adelaide’s Colonel William Light and his tribulations with the …

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October 08, 2022

Theatre: The Normal Heart

Filed under: 2022,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

InDaily InReview

State Theatre Company’s excellent revival of Larry Kramer’s incendiary account of the early years of the AIDS crisis in New York is a compelling reminder of another epidemic where some are timely and heroic in their response, while others choose to look away.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The writer and social critic, Susan Sontag called him one of America’s most valuable troublemakers. Larry Kramer was the founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the first organisation formed to …

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August 10, 2022

Theatre Review: Chalkface

Filed under: 2022,Archive,Australian Texts,State Theatre Company,Theatre

InDaily Review
Theatre: Chalkface
Written by Murray Bramwell.

Angela Betzien’s Chalkface, premiered by State Theatre, is a zany portrait of an Australian public primary school. It holds up a cracked and grimly funny mirror to the end-result of years of state neglect and disrespect for teachers and their profession.

Many essential institutions have been exposed and found wanting during the Pandemic – the health system is one, another is education. Not the lavishly funded private system, but the increasingly …

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June 24, 2022

Adelaide Cabaret Festival: Moments in the Woods – Songs and Stories of Sondheim

Filed under: 2022,Archive,Cabaret

This splendid tribute to Stephen Sondheim not only exuberantly showcases the best of his songs, but affectionately recalls his close links with Australian music theatre.

Murray Bramwell

Almost single-handedly, Stephen Sondheim transformed the stage musical in the 20th century and over his 91 years on earth he led the charge well into the 21st also. Sondheim’s invention, his flair, his brilliance as a lyricist, his gift for melody, extended the boundaries and ambition of music theatre. Whoever thought …

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