murraybramwell.com

June 10, 2016

Love and War

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Books

Love as a Stranger
by Owen Marshall
Vintage
ISBN 978-1-77553-857-8
RRP. $ 38.00. 289 pp.

The Antipodeans
by Greg McGee
Upstart Press
ISBN 978-1-927262-03-0
RRP: $ 38.00. 352 pp.

Murray Bramwell

In his captivating new novel, Love as a Stranger, Owen Marshall immediately greets the reader with portents. The epigraph quotes the 17th century dramatist and poet, Pedro Calderon de la Barca : “When love is not madness, it is not love.” And the opening sentence in the …

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May 03, 2016

Gender duality in world of adolescent alienation

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Australian Texts,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Gorgon
by Elena Carapetis
State Theatre Company
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
May 3. Tickets : $20 – $38.
Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
Duration : 60 minutes
Until May 7. SA Regional tour May 9–27.

“Feel …what is that… I feel…pissed off ?” asks Lee, a teenager at the end of his tether, “Yeah. Like my whole body has become a fist. I’m made of fists, all of me, ready to smash something.” In this year’s State Ed schools …

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March 09, 2016

Marriage viewed uncomfortably and kaleidoscopic cautionary tale

Filed under: 2016,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Adelaide Festival

The Country
by Martin Crimp
Stone/Castro in association with Insite Arts International,
State Opera of SA and Adelaide Festival.
State Opera Studio, 216 Marion Rd, Netley
March 7. Tickets: $ 25 – $ 36
Bookings : adelaidefestival.com.au
BASS 131246. Until March 13. Duration 90 minutes, no interval.

Golem
1927, co-production with Salzburg Festival,
Theatre de la Ville Paris and Young Vic.
Dunstan Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
March 8. Tickets: $30 – $59
Bookings : adelaidefestival.com.au
BASS 131246. Until …

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March 03, 2016

All Delighted Audience

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Festival,Music

Sufjan Stevens
Thebarton Theatre
Adelaide Festival
February 29, 2016

Murray Bramwell

Last time we saw Sufjan Stevens it was his 2011 Age of Adz tour. Inspired by the paintings of the schizophrenic visionary Royal Robertson, the concert featured massive back projections of Robertson’s ecstatic, vibrantly coloured imaginings while Stevens and a ten piece band produced a symphonic event, festooned with samples, loops and intrepid orchestrations.

For his 2016 tour Sufjan Stevens is in lyric mode. With just four band members …

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March 01, 2016

Navigating the New World

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Music,Womadelaide

Murray Bramwell previews WOMADelaide 2016

It is less than ten days until WOMADelaide opens again for three days and four nights of intriguing and often exhilarating music, performed by 400 musicians from more than 30 countries. From small, but nonetheless impressive, beginnings in 1992 under the wing of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival, WOMADelaide, now in its 20th incarnation and an annual fixture since 2002, has become a major national festival. Noted for its consistent quality, and the depth and …

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February 28, 2016

King James Versions

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Adelaide Festival

The James Plays
by Rona Munro
National Theatre of Scotland,
National Theatre of Great Britain,
Edinburgh International Festival.
February 27. Duration 7 hours 40 minutes including intervals.

“We cannot know the character and thoughts of these dead kings and queens and long-gone Scots,” Rona Munro remarks of the succession of royals and underlings who populate her dazzling epic trilogy, The James Plays, “(But) we can speculate a whole series of possibilities from the few hard facts we …

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February 18, 2016

Penny Arcade – Older, Wiser, Longer – and as thoughtful as ever

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Fringe,International,Theatre

Penny Arcade
(Ukiyo, The Royal Croquet Club, 9.30 until March 14. Four and a Half Stars)

Penny Arcade, aka Susana Ventura, has an impeccable New York CV. She performed in Warhol/Morrisey films, she hung out as a teenager at Max’s Kansas City. She was there at Stonewall and in the terrible AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. Last time she visited Adelaide as part of the 1994 Adelaide Festival, she performed wearing only an American flag. She also brought …

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Four of the Best of the Adelaide Fringe …So Far

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Cabaret,Fringe

The Adelaide Fringe gets ever bigger and more successful. This year an estimated sixty-six thousand citizens turned out for last week’s opening parade marking the beginning of the month long Fringe season. On the same day a record 10,000 tickets were sold. With more than 1100 events and 5000 artists, it is the second largest (and second oldest) Fringe after the legendary Edinburgh fixture.

The venues spread around the Adelaide CBD have all been packed. At Rundle Park, Rymill Park …

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February 17, 2016

Excellent new theatre works worth seeking out in carnival of culture

Filed under: 2016,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Fringe,Theatre

Adelaide Fringe

Echoes
by Henry Naylor
The Arch, Holden Street Theatre Company
In association with Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh
February 10. Until March 13.

The Last Time I Saw Richard
by Cat Commander
five.point.one
The Bakehouse.
February 16. Until Feb 23.

Red Ink
by Duncan Graham
Tuxedo Cat, Perske Pavillion
February 16. Until Feb 23.

It is not yet “mad March” in Adelaide and already the Fringe, the gargantuan, carnivalesque doppelganger to the Festival has roared into action. For artists and …

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February 08, 2016

Sublime the Revelator

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Music

An Evening with Gillian Welch
Her Majesty’s
February 3.

Some things really are worth the wait. And Adelaide has waited a very long time for a first visit from the incomparable Gillian Welch and her brilliant musical partner David Rawlings. It has been eleven years since they last toured Australia and then it was Eastern States only. This time they drove to South Australia from Perth – 28 hours by car, they proudly report, but- with some regret – not …

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