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November 05, 2009

Characters rise above a costume drama of no fixed dress

King Lear
by William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Dunstan Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 5. Tickets $45 – $60. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until November 21.

It is as if Shakespeare’s King Lear is made of huge tectonic plates called power, loyalty and love and, when the king declares his darker purpose to divide the kingdom, they begin to grind against one another like the crack of doom. Lear is a huge, bleak, primeval play, set in …

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October 31, 2009

BRIEF

2009

BRIEF

The Under Room

by Edward Bond

five.point.one

Bakehouse Theatre, 255 Angas Street, Adelaide

October 30. Until November 14.

Tickets:  $18 – $22. Bookings: www.bakehousetheatre.com

Or by phone on (08)8227 0505.

It is 2077, the UK is under military rule and an Immigrant breaks into Joan’s house. Sheltering him in her cellar (he calls it an “under room”) she promises to help him find a future – courtesy of  the Fagan-like Jack, a ruthless people smuggler. In Edward Bond’s …

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October 08, 2009

Adelaide Theatre

Things We Do For Love
By Alan Ayckbourn
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Dunstan Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
October 6. Tickets $45 – $60. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until October 17, 2009

While it is the chirpy Seventies tune from 10CC which lends its name to State Theatre’s latest offering, it is another song used in the production – Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart – which equally matches the mood of the play.
The prolific Alan Ayckbourn …

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October 01, 2009

Coffee with the King

Filed under: Archive,Interviews

October 2009

John Gaden, back in Adelaide for State Theatre Company’s latest production, talks to Murray Bramwell about playing King Lear – for a third time.

John Gaden is, and has always been, one of Adelaide’s favourite actors. He performed at Theatre 62 in the late 60s, headlined often for the South Australian Theatre Company in its early years, and as Artistic Director from 1986 to 1989, he not only pulled the State Theatre Company out of the cactus, but …

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September 09, 2009

Weathering the Past and Reconciling the Future: Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling

Filed under: Archive,Commentary

2009
Weathering the Past and Reconciling the Future:
Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling

Murray Bramwell

It is not often we see a play that has its first scene set in 2039 and features a fish falling from the sky. But When the Rain Stops Falling is no ordinary play. Even its genesis was a slow and sometimes arduous one. This work, as Chris Drummond’s introductory note has indicated, had its origins some five years before its premiere at …

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August 05, 2009

Well enough to work magic

The Hypochondriac
by Moliere.
Adaptation by Paul Galloway
Brink Productions
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
August 5 . Tickets $24.90 – $42. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until August 22.

Laughter may be the best medicine but in the case of Moliere’s The Hypochondriac, you would have to say that medicine is the best laughter. Also known as The Imaginary Invalid, this pungent comedy, first performed in 1673, takes aim at those quacks, charlatans and medical phonies who, with their …

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August 04, 2009

Death and Delusions

The Memory of Water
by Shelagh Stephenson
State Theatre Company of SA
Dunstan Playhouse. August 4

The Hypochondriac
by Moliere, adapted by Paul Galloway
Brink Productions
The Space. August 5

Arabian Night
By Roland Schimmelpfennig
Accidental Productions
The Bakehouse. August 13

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

A death in the family is not only a time of sadness, it also brings together friends, relatives, estranged siblings and blasts from the past. Old griefs join new ones, past memories are not only …

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August 01, 2009

Parallel Worlds

The Wizard of Oz
By L.Frank Baum
Windmill
Dunstan Playhouse, June 30.

Mnemonic
Conceived by Simon McBurney and Devised by Complicite
State Theatre Company of South Australia
In association with Adelaide Festival Centre’s inSPACE Program
Space Theatre, July 2 .

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Nothing can quite match The Wizard of Oz. Ever since Judy Garland, as Dorothy, was spun from black and white Kansas into the dazzling lolly- coloured world of Oz in the 1939 MGM film version, …

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July 02, 2009

The iceman cometh memorably into focus

Mnemonic
Conceived by Simon McBurney and Devised by Complicite

State Theatre Company of South Australia
In association with the Adelaide Festival Centre’s inSPACE Program
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
July 2 . Tickets $45 – $60. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until July 18.

What are the traces of an individual life, a culture, a relationship, a family? How are they remembered and, in the end, what do they mean ? UK’s Theatre Complicite’s inventive investigation of memory and meaning, Mnemonic

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July 01, 2009

Cabaret Nights

Filed under: Archive,Cabaret

Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2009
June 5 -20.
Adelaide Festival Centre.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Now in its ninth go-round, the Adelaide Festival is well into its groove. Even from its first years discernible patterns emerged that continue to identify it and secure its success. Significantly, it has found – and kept- a consistently older audience who bring their bountiful grey dollar and their generous enthusiasm to a festival which has more than its share of retro and nostalgic programming. There …

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