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December 09, 2005

Formulating the Festival

Filed under: Archive,Interviews

2005

Murray Bramwell talks with Brett Sheehy about preparations for the 2006 Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts

Asked how he is feeling, six weeks out from the launch of the 2006 Adelaide Bank Festival, and Brett Sheehy says he’s thrilled. According to his general manager, Simon Bogle, in the first month of sales the Festival has broken a forty year box office record. Fifteen thousand tickets snapped up and one show already sold out.

Brett Sheehy is thrilled. But he …

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Formulating the Festival

Filed under: Archive,Festival

2005
Murray Bramwell talks with Brett Sheehy about preparations for the 2006 Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts

Asked how he is feeling, six weeks out from the launch of the 2006 Adelaide Bank Festival, and Brett Sheehy says he’s thrilled. According to his general manager, Simon Bogle, in the first month of sales the Festival has broken a forty year box office record. Fifteen thousand tickets snapped up and one show already sold out.

Brett Sheehy is thrilled. But he …

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November 11, 2005

Doubling the Doors

2005

Noises Off
By Michael Frayn

Dunstan Playhouse
Until 19 November, 2005

Murray Bramwell

Where would theatre be without the three door farce? In the century beginning with Feydeau and continuing to the Seventies and Eighties romps by Ray Cooney and Brian Rix, the antics of philandering husbands have been cut off at the ankles by the comedy of karma, circumstance and intersecting third parties. The titles tell it all – Run For Your Wife, Not Now Darling, Out of …

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November 03, 2005

Romping through a fine farce

2005
Theatre

Murray Bramwell

Noises Off
By Michael Frayn
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Theatre.
November 1, 2005. Tickets $13.50- $49. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until November 19.

Noises off are off-stage sound effects – like a pistol shot in Chekhov, bells tolling, or someone selling flowers for the dead. However, in Michael Frayn’s classic 1982 farce they refer to the sounds of the actors themselves writhing in pain, calling out prompt lines, falling down …

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November 01, 2005

A New Director and a New Direction

Adam Cook , State Theatre Company’s Artistic Director for 2005,
removes the veil.

Murray Bramwell

It is midday on a Friday and the crowd is gathered in the Dunstan Playhouse
for the launch of the State Theatre Company’s 2005 season. There’s the usual mix of subscribers, sponsors, arts heavies and media, as well as actors, techs, artisans, luvvies and hopefuls, all with plenty say about what should happen next for State Theatre, Adelaide and, of course, themselves. And this year, …

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October 28, 2005

Incendiary Devices

Bombshells
by Joanna Murray-Smith
State Theatre Company
With Melbourne Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse

A Thing Called Snake
by Stephen House
iNSPACE
Adelaide Festival Centre
October, 2005

Murray Bramwell

It is not hard to see why Bombshells has had successful seasons in Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto, Edinburgh and London’s West End – Caroline O’Connor is a champagne performer, as classy as she is spritzy. Written for her by Joanna Murray Smith, Bombshells is a vehicle for her energy and warm comedy. Tautly …

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October 21, 2005

Narratives Entwined

Theatre
Murray Bramwell

Checklist For an Armed Robber
By Vanessa Bates
Vitalstatistix
Waterside, 11 Nile St, Port Adelaide.
October 19. Tickets $12- $23. Bookings (08) 8447 6211
Until November 5, 2005

It is almost three years to the day since Chechen rebels stormed the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow during a performance of the popular musical Nord-Ost. The siege lasted three days and resulted in the deaths of fifty rebels and 117 hostages – the latter, for the most part, as …

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September 30, 2005

Father of Night

The Daylight Atheist
By Tom Scott

State Theatre Company
Sydney Theatre Company co-production
The Space

Murray Bramwell

A daylight atheist, New Zealand playwright Tom Scott tells us, is someone who doesn’t believe in God until it gets dark. Dan Moffat, the dominant of many voices in Scott’s monodrama, is a man for whom the night is closing in. An Irish emigrant to New Zealand after the end of the war in 1945, Moffat is followed by his wife and infant …

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September 16, 2005

Songs from the Heart

Filed under: Archive,Music

Jimmy Webb
8 September
Martha Wainwright, with Josh Ritter
9 September
Governor Hindmarsh

Murray Bramwell

We’ve had many good nights at the Gov – last week, two in a row. Songwriter Jimmy Webb is on his sixth visit but, this time, he is spruiking his first album of new material in a while. Dedicated, as he says, “to rebels, outcasts and unruly characters of all types,” Twilight of the Renegades begins with Paul Gauguin in Tahiti and veers outwards from …

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August 12, 2005

Dark heart of goatness

2005
Murray Bramwell

The Goat, or Who is Sylvia ?
by Edward Albee

State Theatre Company of South Australia.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
9 August, 2005 Tickets $ 16.70 – $ 49.
Bookings BASS 131 246.
Until 20 August.

Edward Albee writes that “every civilisation sets quite arbitrary limits to its tolerances”. And in the Tony award-winning play, The Goat, he tests those limits and tolerances in both his characters and his audience.

Martin is turning fifty. An architect …

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