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October 20, 2023

2024 Adelaide Festival program launched

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Festival

The program for the 2024 Adelaide Festival has been unveiled and it is a first for incoming Artistic Director Ruth McKenzie and general manager Kath Mainland. It promises excellence, continuity and a showcase for emerging works that may prove to be future classics.

Written by Murray Bramwell

“We were both here for the 2023 festival, “says Ruth McKenzie, “but that was the last one for Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield – which went incredibly well, as all of their festivals …

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October 13, 2023

Theatre: The Garden

Filed under: 2023,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Written by Murray Bramwell

With thrift and wit and unnerving candour, Theatre Republic’s intriguing new play examines in microcosm the inescapable reality of discrepant worlds and insufficient good intentions.

“This play has never been comfortable,“ Emily Steel writes in her program notes for The Garden. “It was uncomfortable to write and if I’ve done it properly it will be uncomfortable to watch.”

And she has done it properly. In a compact sixty minutes she has produced a crowded hour …

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August 30, 2023

Music Theatre: Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Music,State Theatre Company,Theatre

In State Theatre Company’s newest co-production, with Belvoir Street and Melbourne Theatre Company, the brilliant Zahra Newman and her band recapture and celebrate the vibrant life, loves, torments and timeless music of Billie Holiday.

Murray Bramwell

There can be few singers as mercurial as Billie Holiday. Biographer John Szwed says of the more than forty books written about her – “All those who have attempted to write about her have discovered there are many Billie Holidays: one lively and joyful, …

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July 14, 2023

Adelaide Guitar Festival – The Milk Carton Kids (with special guest Vera Sola)

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Festival,Music

Whatever you want to call it – Americana, Old Timey Music, Indie Folk, The Milk Carton Kids do it. And they do it very well. Their opening night concert for the Adelaide Guitar Festival is the full bottle.

Murray Bramwell

Formed in 2011, when solo performer Joey Ryan went to a concert by Kenneth Pattengale in their home town of Eagle Rock, California and suggested they join forces, The Milk Carton Kids duo (named from a lyric of one their …

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June 19, 2023

Adelaide Cabaret Festival: Robyn Archer – An Australian Songbook.

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Cabaret,Music

Assembling an intriguing selection of Australian songs and sources, including some doozies of her own, Robyn Archer and her versatile trio return to the Cabaret Festival in fine form.

Written by Murray Bramwell

Robyn Archer is a highlight in any festival. And her appearances at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival always remind us what the best, of that rubbery term ‘cabaret’, actually looks and sounds like. With her musical prowess, her exuberant erudition, and her keen wit, she is unique. As …

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June 15, 2023

Adelaide Cabaret Festival: Edge of Reality: Elvis Presley Songbook

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Cabaret,Music

In Edge of Reality, bandleader Paul Grabowsky, and Oz music luminaries Joe Camilleri and Deb Conway brilliantly rescue Elvis from impersonators and cartoon legend and celebrate his considerable musical legacy.

Written by Murray Bramwell

It is 46 years since Elvis Presley died, aged 42. It will soon be fifty. At the time his ardent followers were inconsolable. He was the first god of Rock’n’Roll, transforming the very notion of popular music. He looked like a cross between a pouting …

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May 04, 2023

Theatre: Every Brilliant Thing

Filed under: 2023,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

When his mother attempts suicide, a seven year old boy starts to make a list of everything “brilliant” worth living for. This insightful, funny, increasingly complex play explores the pain and complexity of mental illness.

Written by Murray Bramwell

We are often encouraged to count our blessings, to focus on the glass half full. It is a worthy aim, but it is never that simple. In Every Brilliant Thing, UK playwright, Duncan McMillan (in collaboration with comedian Jonny Donahoe) …

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March 16, 2023

Herd Mentality

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Adelaide Festival
The Sheep Song
by Jonas Vermeulen, Stef Aerts, Joe Agemans, Thomas Verstraeten, Marie Vinck, Matteo Simoni with Bart Hollanders, Titus De Voogdt, Yorrith De Bakker.
FC Bergman
Toneelhuis, Antwerp.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
March 16. Until March 19.


Titus De Voogdt

In the final weekend of the Adelaide Festival’s theatre program comes the most intriguing- the FC Bergman company’s The Sheep Song. Described in their program notes as “a visual story without words, an epic solely …

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March 10, 2023

Uplifting

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Grey Rock
Written and directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi
Remote Theatre Project.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
March 10. Until March 12.

We last saw the work of the remarkable writer and director Amir Nizar Zuabi at the Adelaide Festival in 2018. Touring then with his Palestinian ShiberHur Theatre Company, he presented two plays Azza and Taha both of which made an enduring impression for those fortunate enough to see them.

So Zuabi’s return with Grey Rock, under the …

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March 06, 2023

Tragic Lifelines

Filed under: 2023,Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

A Little Life
Based on the novel by Hanya Yanagihara.
Adaptation by Koen Tachelet
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam.
Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre
March 4. Duration: 4 hours including interval.
Until March 8.


Ramsey Nasr, Steven Van Watermeulen and Hans Kesting. Photo: Adam Forte

It is always a matter for celebration, at the Adelaide Festival, when Ivo van Hove and his company Internationaal Theater Amsterdam return with a new work. Based on the 2015 novel by Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life is …

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