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March 28, 1986

Anderson shows the essence of pop amid hi-tech legerdemain

Filed under: Archive,Festival,Music,National Times

Very few performance artists have made the leap to pop with such spectacular success as Laurie Anderson whose concert in Adelaide’s Festival Theatre opened her Australian tour and coincides with the release of her newest album, Home of the Brave.

All of the paradoxes of Anderson’s achievements are evident in her opening monologue, Progress. The eclectic, hi -tech relativism of her work exactly mirrors the processes she rails against as heartless progress. Anderson’s is a triumph of style …

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March 21, 1986

First day at school

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Australian Texts,National Times,Theatre

Magpie Theatre Company’s production of David Holman’s new play The Small Poppies has opened at Theatre 62 in Adelaide.

Directed by Geoffrey Rush with music composed by Moya Henderson and recorded for performance by the Australian String Quartet, The Small Poppies is about three little tackers on their first day at school.

Typically of David Holman’s work -and this is his 70th play – The Small Poppies makes its intentions very clear. It is for five-year-olds and all who want …

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March 07, 1986

Audacity carries the day

Filed under: Archive,Australian Texts,Festival,National Times,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Adelaide’s State Theatre Company has premiered Stephen Sewell’s Dreams in an Empty City, directed by Neil Armfield, as its Festival offering in the Playhouse.

Ever since State’s and Armfield’s production of Sewell’s earlier play, The Blind Giant is Dancing, astonished admiring audiences in 1983 there has been great anticipation of this new work.

Stephen Sewell’s dramatic writing is extraordinary both in its scope, which is almost hubristically epic, and in the appalling risks he takes …

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March 01, 1986

Billie Rocks

Filed under: Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Rockaby
By Samuel Beckett
Billie Whitelaw
Union Theatre

“This,” Billie Whitelaw announced pointing to the bright blue cover of her script folder, “is the most cheerful thing you’ll see all evening.” Maybe it was meant to be disarming to the audience but it momentarily short-circuited the possibilities of the evening by reinforcing Beckett’s popular reputation, or rather his notoriety, as a joyless nihilist who wrote those now rather old hat plays about loitering tramps and people in rubbish bins.

The …

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Sisters

Filed under: Archive,Music

Sisters
Kate and Anna McGarrigle
Festival Theatre

Kate and Anna McGarrigle first gained attention as songwriters in the early Seventies when Maria Muldaur recorded Kate’s “The Work Song”, and Linda Ronstadt used-Anna’s “Heart like a Wheel” as the title song for her 1974 album.

The McGarrigles began recording their own material in 1975, rapidly gaining attention for their fetchingly artless vocals and whimsical arrangements. On this tour, eleven years later, the McGarrigles are still being whimsical and fetchingly artless and …

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