Leonardo’s Bride
Flinders Uni Refectory
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It’s not very often we hear a debut album as good as Angel Blood, released earlier this year by Sydney band, Leonardo’s Bride. There is a lyrical introspection and a perky confidence about them that is reminiscent of Do Re Mi or even the Go-Betweens. There is also a sense of a group arriving on the scene, not with the usual larval potential but already formed. You know… butterfly-ready.
With both …
Continue Reading Back to topGulls
by Robert Hewett
State Theatre
Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
As State Theatre’s Australian Playhouse staggers to an unceremonious conclusion with the recent announcement that Away has been scratched from the 1997 card, it is something of an irony that Don’s Party and now Gulls have actually given us two very good reasons for reviving works from our national repertoire. Unlike earlier choices such as The Torrents and The Shifting Heart, which held more historical than dramatic interest, Gulls, …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Mourning After
by Verity Laughton
Playbox
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Belle Doyle may be by herself on the beach on Christmas Day but she is not alone. Verity Laughton’s comic weepie The Mourning After, is a monodrama with a cast of dozens. The situation is emotionally raw. Belle’s husband Harry has unexpectedly gone blue and died on the morning of Christmas Eve. In fact he has died in the middle of an argument over whether Belle, a song …
Continue Reading Back to topThe North
William Yang
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
When he presented Sadness at the Institute Hall in Kintore Avenue William Yang gave us one of the unexpected highlights of the 1994 Adelaide Festival. Idiosyncratic, intimate and full of wry good humour, Yang’s slide show did much to draw together the otherwise inchoate strands of Christopher Hunt’s program. This modest one- person show provided a regional perspective and dealt with regional ethnicity. But, unlike much of the abstracted, ethnomusicological fare …
Continue Reading Back to top1997
Paul Kelly
with Monique Brumby
Her Majesty’s
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
A lot has happened since Paul Kelly played at Womad in February. For a start he has become a household word. When his Greatest Hits collection, Songs From the South (Mushroom/Sony) hit the stores in June, it seemed like everybody had to have one, or even two. Perched in the top five of the album charts week after week, the CD has gone gold, platinum, double platinum, cadmium. …
Continue Reading Back to top1997
Rules of Thumb
by Daniel Keene and Alison Croggan
Red Shed Company
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The Red Shed’s association with Melbourne playwright Daniel Keene has been hugely productive. Collaboration in the best sense, it has created a trust between playwright and directors, designers and actors which has resulted in a series of successful commissions. All Souls was first, then award-winner, Because You Are Mine and last year, the film noir-ish spine-chiller, Terminus.
Rules of Thumb is a …
Continue Reading Back to topQuiver
Leigh Warren and Dancers
Norwood Town Hall
Adelaide
Murray Bramwell
Quiver, the new program from Leigh Warren and Dancers is continuing evidence of the company’s invention and excellence. With last year’s return season of Klinghoffer and now, the unveiling of two contrasting works, Shimmer and Swerve, Leigh Warren’s signatures are becomingly increasingly apparent. His work is disciplined, elegant and has the added intensity which music performed live can bring. With Klinghoffer, he borrowed ethereal choruses from John Adams’s opera, …
Continue Reading Back to topDon’s Party
by David Williamson
State Theatre
Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
There can be no better instance of David Williamson’s theatrical verve than Don’s Party. This suburban bacchanal not only captures in broad sweeps the issues of its day it is also a durable comedy of humours. The situation is disarmingly simple. A group of people get together for an election night party which deteriorates into confrontation and regret. It ends not with resolution but exhaustion -with just …
Continue Reading Back to topWolf Lullaby
by Hilary Bell
Griffin Theatre Company
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
A large white kitchen chair dominates the minimal set for Hilary Bell’s powerful new play, Wolf Lullaby. Denoting a child’s perspective of the adult world it dwarves the two normal sized chairs set next to it. And when Lizzie, aged nine, climbs into it clutching her dolly, it also amplifies the enormity of the emotions and anxieties this play manages to conjure.
Lizzie lives with her mother, …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Mutton Birds
Cartoons Club
Dave Graney ‘n’ the Coral Snakes
Flinders Uni Refectory
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
There are plenty of bands with unappetising names but there can be few less prepossessing than the Mutton Birds. They could have chosen something a bit more… lyrical. Even the Shearwaters sounds better. But, no. Just plain old muttons. A salty seabird and a possible sheep joke, that’s how they like it. And always have. Lead singer and principal composer, Don McGlashan …
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