1989

Murray Bramwell talks to director Angela Chaplin and writer Gillian Rubenstein about Magpie Theatre’s current project at Theatre 62 – an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland

Since it first appeared on July 4th 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has become not only a classic work but an integral part of the modern consciousness. Translated into fifty languages and published in countless editions it has also been adapted for both stage and screen. Most people know something about …

1989

Hedda Gabler
By Henrik Ibsen
State Theatre Company
Playhouse, October, 1989.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Ibsen’s plays, including the great works of his last phase of writing in the 1890s, operate on two levels – they are convincingly anchored in middle and upper class life in 19th century Europe at the same time as being dramas of what in classical literature is called psychomachia, the conflict of the soul.

Hedda Gabler is a Grade A example. In his copious, …

1989

Shirley Valentine
by Willy Russell

State Theatre Company/
Sydney Theatre Company
The Playhouse,

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Playwright Willy Russell not only touched the zeitgeist with his stage hit, Educating Rita, he also hit paydirt. The screen version launched Julie Walters as a performer with presence and showed there could be life after flab for Michael Caine. Essentially, Educating Rita was Pygmalion Revisited with just a smidge of feminism to keep it a la mode. On film, at least, …