1989
Murray Bramwell talks with Bill Gillespie, General Manager of the State Opera of South Australia, about his plans for getting the company back to strength.
While it may be appealing for the leading characters to have true hearts and empty pockets, the same is not true for Opera companies. Little more than a year ago the State Opera of South Australia was in the cactus. The deficit was more than $500,000, the subscriber base could only be called precarious …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Tempest
William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company
Playhouse
During his stint as Artistic Director for the State Theatre Company, John Gaden has been closely associated with four Shakespearean productions – Much Ado About Nothing and The Winter’s Tale which he co-directed with Gale Edwards, as the lead in King Lear directed by Edwards, and now, The Tempest in which he directs but does not perform.
With little more than six months left with State, Gaden might have been tempted to …
Continue Reading Back to topA Complete Dagg
John Clarke
Susan Haynes/ Allen and Unwin
RRP $14.95
A series of interviews has begun appearing on Nine’s A Current Affair in the last five minutes of their Friday edition. Paul Keating, Andrew Peacock, Margaret Thatcher and Dan Quayle all appear on TV frequently but never before has anyone noticed their uncanny resemblance to John Clarke. They look and talk like him, they even share his profound belief in the reductio ad absurdum, but, at the same …
Continue Reading Back to topSpeed-The-Plow
by David Mamet
State Theatre Company
Space
David Mamet wrote his first plays when he was teaching acting. Tired of trying to find new exercises for students, he began making up his own. An essential part of building a character as Stanislavski will tell you, is ‘ determining what he or she wants from others in the play ‘ and David Mamet constructs intricate, subtle and disturbing theatre around these questions.
Mamet has written more than twenty plays as …
Continue Reading Back to topWhose Beach is it Anyway?
by Greg McCart
Kite Theatre Company, Queensland
Directed by Sue Rider
Design: Paul Edwards, Composer: Barry Ferrier
Cast: Tim Mullooly, Susi French, Lil Kelman, Elaine Cusick
For their contribution to Come Out 89, the Kite Theatre Company flew in from Brisbane to present a show for littlies entitled Whose Beach is it Anyway? Karah, a young suburban kid, comes across a hidden beach inhabited only by seagulls, a turtle, a crab and a brown booby …
Continue Reading Back to topInterpreting the New Dreaming
Come Out 89 Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Now that the eighth biennial Come Out Festival has come and gone there is time to reflect on what is a quite remarkable youth arts festival. For 16 years Adelaide has hosted a gathering of performers, participants and audiences which has become such a familiar part of the cultural landscape that it is almost taken for granted.
For that reason any commentary on Come Out should begin by praising …
Continue Reading Back to topCouple of Kids
by Julianne O’Brien
Magpie Theatre Company.
May 1989.
Directed by Angela Chaplin
Richard Margetson, Caroline Mignone, Stephen Mitchell,
Brett Wood, Peter Wood.
Magpie’s Angela Chaplin has taken on an ambitious task with her production of Julianne O’Brien’s Couple of Kids. Staged in a former church at Site 55, Port Road Hindmarsh, with an imaginative design by …
Continue Reading Back to top