1998
Adelaide Entertainment Centre
15 April, 19998.
Murray Bramwell
When Kenny Rogers last toured, ten years ago, he performed with Dolly Parton. Which sure proves that he’s not afraid of a bit of competition. This time, opening his Australian tour in Adelaide, he shares the stage with yet another country pop luminary, Reba McEntire- and it is not hard to see why, between them, they have sold 120 million albums. The Kenny and Reba show has it all. It looks …
Continue Reading Back to topFringe Reflections
Murray Bramwell
Since its relocation in the Rundle Street precinct the Festival Fringe has, seemingly, had a charmed life. But I say seemingly, because sometimes in among the razzle dazzle it is hard to work out exactly what is actually going on. In identifying the success of the Fringe you wonder, in the words of the poet, how you might tell the dancer from the dance ? There is certainly a lot of action in town. The nights …
Continue Reading Back to topFestival Notes
Murray Bramwell
With daylight saving over and the nights, as they say, drawing in, the Adelaide Festival, just two weeks after being squeezed back in its box, seems rather like a dream. But it was not. We do not but slumber here. It happened, and with considerable distinction.
There are a number of factors which made Robyn Archer’s 1998 event such a success. The first is that again, the festival captured the attention and enthusiasm of the city. …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Department
David Williamson
State Theatre South Australia
The Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Set in 1967, first performed in 1974, David Williamson’s The Department, like other early works such as The Club and Don’s Party , is both generic and prophetic. While bearing some resemblance to Swinburne College of Technology, where Williamson taught in the Engineering faculty in the sixties, The Department is also archetypical of a staff meeting in any educational institution. Or, for that matter, anywhere that …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Architect’s Walk
Daniel Keene
Red Shed Company
Arts Theatre
Such was his sense of manifest destiny that Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer, drew artist’s impressions of the buildings of the Reich as two thousand year old ruins. Much later, in an interview for European TV, Speer observed, like a naughty schoolboy, that he was glad the Fuhrer was not around any more. He would not be pleased with Speer’s work, it was all built of such inferior concrete that it …
Continue Reading Back to topReverberations
The Seven Streams of the River Ota (98 Version)
Devised by Ex Machina
Directed by Robert Lepage
Ex Machina
Thebarton Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
When he first visited Hiroshima, a city, a word, synonymous with thermonuclear destruction, Quebecois director Robert Lepage expected to be dismayed by an enduring grimness. Instead he found “a lively, reconstructed modern city with large parks planted with tall trees: a vibrant night life and some of the most interesting contemporary art galleries in …
Continue Reading Back to topNine
Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston,
Book by Arthur Kopit.
Directed by John Diedrich
Festival Theatre
It is now twenty five years since Federico Fellini’s 81/2 was first released. A film about a filmmaker making a film, it is bizarre, narcissistic, sexist and cinematically fearless. 81/2 remains a classic not least for the performances by Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale and Anouk Aimee.
Nine is more than fractionally different from 81/2. …
Continue Reading Back to top1998
Will Oldham
Tivoli Hotel
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
After a succession of albums as the Palace Brothers, Palace Music or just plain old Palace, Will Oldham is now travelling under his own passport. With a current CD, Joya (Shock Records) and a compilation Lost Blues and Other Songs, Oldham is presently giving us plenty of opportunity to peruse his singular talents. His music is fragile and perilous. With scraps of elliptical lyrics intoned in his high pitched, mewling …
Continue Reading Back to top1998
Magpie 2 – A Future or a Blown Youth ?
Murray Bramwell
Adelaide
It was only in July last year that I reported in these columns the arrival of a new funded company in Adelaide. Well, it was not so much a new company as a makeover of an existing operation. In an effort to rescue the long-term subscriber base for State Theatre, then Executive Director Chris Westwood grasped the nettle and changed the charter for Magpie, the young …
Continue Reading Back to topFeatures of Blown Youth
by Raimondo Cortese
Magpie2
Queens Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
When State Theatre refitted Magpie 2 this year it also gave it a difficult task. Some might have called it a Mission Impossible. No longer a theatre-in-schools project its charter was switched to post secondary audience development. Magpie was now to produce theatre for eighteen to twenty-five year olds- a group that is not really a group at all, a demographic that not even demographers can …
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