Murray Bramwell

From the moment of its program launch in the Cunard ambience of the brand new international terminal at Adelaide airport, the 2006 Adelaide Bank Festival has been looking to the skies. Director Brett Sheehy says he dislikes heavily themed festivals, but from the ornately decorated gas balloons of the opening event, Il Cielo Che Danza, to the centerpiece opera, Flight, the impression has been of things taking off.

And that included the ticket sales, which topped fifteen thousand …

Murray Bramwell

Nora
(Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House)
Schaubuhne am Lehniner Plaz, Berlin
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide
March 11. Tickets $85 – $20. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until March 17.

It has been said that when Nora Helmer slams the door behind her in the final scene of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, its echo could be heard for the rest of the nineteenth century. Thomas Ostermeier’s inventive and incisive re-staging for Berlin’s Schaubuhne company is proof that the play still …

Murray Bramwell

Here Lies Love – A Song Cycle
Music by David Byrne and Fat Boy Slim

Ridley Centre, Royal Adelaide Showground
March 11. Tickets $59 – $20. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until March 14.

By way of preface to Here Lies Love, David Byrne wonders how people can justify “their nastier behaviours to themselves” – but twenty four songs and a reprise later, we are still not any the wiser. Imelda Marcos is both an interesting subject and an …

Honk If You Are Jesus
By Peter Goldsworthy and Martin Laud Gray

State Theatre Company
Odeon Theatre

Murray Bramwell

There is something really fascinating about cloning. Not so much Dolly the sheep, after all, she was only one more of the same. But the idea of cloning something extinct – like a Tasmanian tiger. Or something unique, like a famous person…? That is where Peter Goldsworthy’s intriguingly prophetic novel Honk If You Are Jesus comes in. Published in 1992, long …

Murray Bramwell

Honk If You Are Jesus
By Peter Goldsworthy and Martin Laud Gray
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Odeon Theatre, Adelaide.
February 27. Tickets $45 – $55. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until March 18.

It is the business of writers to tell us what’s in the wind, even before the shutters begin to rattle. But Peter Goldsworthy’s 1992 novel, Honk If You Are Jesus, has turned out to be especially prescient.

Before Dolly the sheep, stem cell research …