Simply Red
Entertainment Centre
Adelaide
The last time I saw Simply Red they were touring the second album Men and Women. Their mix of reggae, soul and Brit pop had, even with their debut Picture Book, made immediate impact. The band was on its way and they knew it. Singer Mick Hucknall set the pace; brash, cocksure and blessed with vocal gifts to rival Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. Like other UK stylists such as Eric Burdon, Joe Cocker, Paul …
Continue Reading Back to topThe 1996 Adelaide Fringe program lists sixty-two entries under Theatre, not including another ten or so roosting under the heading of Comedy. The range is huge in both style and quality. There are a variety of spins on Shakespeare, revivals of classics such as Marlowe’s Edward II and Buchner’s Danton’s Death, as well as productions of contemporary playwrights Wallace Shawn, Edward Albee and Stephen Berkoff. There is also a gratifying array of new and self-devised work.
Lotus War , written …
Continue Reading Back to topClaustrophobia
devised by the Maly Company
Maly Theatre of St Petersburg
Festival Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
In both Gaudeamus and Claustrophobia, the Maly Theatre present us with a profusion of mixed messages. The company, youthful, vibrant and full of theatrical charm performs material which is often bitter, predatory, and seething with cynicism. The vignettes of life in the Construction Battalion in Gaudeamus show a vicious, divisive group of young people brutalised by circumstance. And the closing tableau with the …
Continue Reading Back to top1996
Adelaide Festival
Living Yesterday Tomorrow
Malcolm McLaren
Her Majesty’s
The speaker for the evening takes the stage. Strolling towards the lectern in a baggy black suit and a peach coloured open-neck shirt, shuffling papers and lugging an attache case, he looks like a dotty art theory lecturer. This is Malcolm McLaren ? The Fagin of punk, Alfred Jarry of the Kings Road, bagman for the Sex Pistols ?
With his tousled Harpo curls, his languorous eyelids and drawling delivery …
Continue Reading Back to top1996
Joan Armatrading
Festival Theatre
Adelaide
Murray Bramwell
There are few singer/songwriters as singular as Joan Armatrading. Over seventeen albums she has not only put a patent on her lilting vocal, she has consistently explored themes where most other lyricists fear to tread. While she can write perky tunes with the best of them, it is her investigations into the telltale heart which have made her an audience favourite. She writes grown-up pop: about jealousy and betrayal, about women who …
Continue Reading Back to topFiguring the Landscape
Murray Bramwell talks with Philippe Genty and Mary Underwood about their new Australian-based production, Stowaways.
For nearly twenty years Philippe Genty has been an Australian stowaway. Ever since his first visit to the Adelaide and Perth Festivals in1978 he has lodged in the minds of a diverse Australian audience which has been both entranced and intrigued by the imaginative world of his theatre. His wacky dancing ostriches and weird little floating homunculi, his erotic puppets festooned in …
Continue Reading Back to top1996
Paul Kelly
with Paul Brady
Governor Hindmarsh
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Paul Kelly has played here four times this year and each time he’s been full of surprises. The January gig at Heaven brought a five piece line-up plus a set from the Blackeyed Susans. Then, fresh from the Womad train, he played a full house at Festival Theatre with fabled pedal steel player and national broadcaster, Lucky Oceans. The Norwood Town Hall show featured Renee Geyer, whose fortunes …
Continue Reading Back to top1996
Womadelaide
Murray Bramwell talks with Womadelaide organisers Rob Brookman and Thomas
Brooman about the World Music festival’s continuing success.
Adelaide’s Botanic Park is a green haven right in the centre of town. With
its majestic Moreton Bay figs and well-watered meadow, it is bounded by the
zoo on one side and the botanical gardens on the other. Not surprisingly, it
is a favourite spot for a scattered population of picnickers, joggers,
strollers, sketchers, spin bowlers and anybody else fancying …
Continue Reading Back to top