murraybramwell.com

March 05, 2009

In thrall to the master

Maestro
By Anna Goldsworthy and Peter Goldsworthy
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide.
March 3. Tickets $45 – $60. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until March 11.

“What is the difference between good and great ?” Paul Crabbe, the eager boy pianist from Darwin keeps asking his enigmatic, Viennese trained teacher. “Not much” is his answer – “little bits.” Peter Goldsworthy’s masterful novel Maestro has intrigued readers since it first appeared twenty years ago and now, in …

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March 01, 2009

Planet Soundings

Filed under: Archive,Womadelaide

Murray Bramwell previews CDs for Womadelaide 2009

Now in its annual cycle, it seems no time at all before the next Womad program appears. Opening on March 6, the 2009 version is the thirteenth full-scale festival and again the program looks both recognizable and entirely unfamiliar. This is the paradox of the event and an important part of its success. There are few fixtures as pleasingly ritualized as Womadelaide and that is a strong reason why the numbers returning remain …

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Another mad and balmy March

Filed under: Archive,Fringe

Murray Bramwell

Twenty three days and 187,000-plus tickets later, the Adelaide Fringe has folded its tent, assembled its caravan and gone its diverse ways. In fact, by now it seems as if it has dematerialized – as if the Garden of Unearthly Delights in Rundle Park was never there, nor the comedy queues in Angas Street, nor for that matter, the flurry around any one of the 259 venues which have hosted this sprawling mega-event.

Director Christie Anthoney can be …

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Uncurated and Unexpurgated

Filed under: Archive,Fringe

Murray Bramwell

The Fringe is back and, as someone once said, it’s like a shoebox full of grasshoppers. The program numbers are up again. This time organizers are proclaiming they have broken the 500-shows-listed barrier – with 293 of them Australian premieres. Whatever all those new shows might actually mean. Some will be brilliant and we will tell our friends, some will be just good enough and maybe we won’t. And some will be fascinatingly execrable and linger in the …

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Prizes and Short Shrifts

Filed under: Archive,Books

Janet Frame, Prizes: Selected Short Stories
Vintage, $34.99
ISBN 9781869791131
Witi Ihimaera, His Best Stories,
Raupo, $ 30.00.
ISBN 9780143010906
Owen Marshall (ed), Essential New Zealand Short Stories
Vintage, $40.00.
ISBN 97818697791285

Murray Bramwell

There is something unexpectedly, but suitably, upbeat about the title of this Vintage selection of Janet Frame short stories. Prizes, draws from all four of Frame’s previous collections, but unlike those ominous location titles, The Lagoon and The Reservoir, here we have …

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