2007
\nMarch 15<\/p>\n
Adelaide
\nTheatre
\nAdelaide Fringe 07<\/p>\n
Fern Hill and Other Dylan Thomas
\nPerformed by Guy Masterson
\nTickets $20 -25.<\/p>\n
What I Heard About Iraq
\nBy Simon Levy
\nHolden Street Theatres\u2019 Directors\u2019 Choice 07<\/p>\n
Holden Street Theatres, Hindmarsh
\nTickets $17 -23.
\nUntil March 31<\/p>\n
Tom Crean \u2013Antarctic Explorer
\nWritten and performed by Aidan Dooley
\nBakehouse Theatre until March 23
\nTickets$20 – $22.<\/p>\n
Rubeville
\nThe Black Lung Theatre
\nuntil March 24
\nKissy Kissy
\nThe Black Lung Theatre
\n145 Hindley Street
\nUntil March 16
\nTickets: all $ 14
\nBookings at Fringetix. Ph.8418 8666<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
A week into the Fringe festival, all the vital signs are good \u2013 long, cheerfully patient queues for stand-up comics, busy city cafes and bars, and at Rundle Park, aka The Garden Of Unearthly Delights is bopping with music, freaks and carny shows. With just over fifty listings, the theatre program is only about half the size of the 2006 Fringe and there have been some late scratchings as well. Many scheduled are school and amateur productions \u2013 and one person shows, as though too many years of economic rationalism have reduced the performing arts to individual contractors. But there are also exceptional offerings to be found. <\/p>\n
UK director and performer Guy Masterson, returning with Under Milk Wood, has added another Dylan Thomas vehicle, based around Fern Hill, the Welsh poet\u2019s finely wrought hymn to childhood. Masterson chooses well. There is the Auden-like political poem, The Hand that Signed the Paper, and the rages against mortality – the rambunctious Lament and Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night. <\/p>\n
But it is the prose works, written and performed by Thomas as BBC radio broadcasts, which provide the ballast. Masterson is good on the lilting Welsh, as his wicked impersonations of Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins attest, but he wisely understates the rolling vowels with the gently funny A Visit to Grandpa\u2019s and A Child\u2019s Christmas in Wales, spared the author\u2019s own excesses, is revealed anew as a monologue of distinction. <\/p>\n
Few have ever heard of Tom Crean, the Antarctic Explorer, which is why actor and writer Aidan Dooley\u2019s first rate show about the Irish lad who found himself in pioneering expeditions led by both Scott and Shackleton, is such a revelation. Dressed in authentic looking period polar gear, Dooley recounts exploits of danger and endurance that almost defy belief. <\/p>\n
But this splendidly crafted script is all nuance and subtext. Rather than a ripping yarn of Empire, it looks beneath the legend. Aidan Dooley, with a disarmingly direct performance which never misses a beat, describes those quiet forms of courage that are most eloquent. You will go to the end of the earth to find theatre this rewarding <\/p>\n
The facts also matter in What I Heard About Iraq, written by Simon Levy and based on an article by Eliot Weinberger. The Holden Street Theatre complex has been a hub for the Fringe again this year and owner Martha Lott directs this production featuring five actors, video screens and a ton of information. Taking a leaf from the Living Newspaper of the Thirties, this is the theatre that tells us not only the news fit to print, but takes from journals of record. It is a chronology of events in Iraq from the first Gulf War to the day of performance. Each actor begins \u201cI heard..\u201d and proceeds to quote politicians, commentators and everyday citizens caught in the chaos. There are droll impersonations and grimly funny ironies but the strong effect of all these hearsays is to remind us that the real enemy of spin is sequential thought. <\/p>\n
The Black Lung Theatre working in a derelict shopfront next to a strip club in Adelaide\u2019s Hindley Street is a Melbourne collective producing a self-devised season including the nasty-noir Rubeville, Thomas Henning\u2019s deconstructed tale of pros and cons, and Kissy Kissy, directed by Daniel Koerner and featuring Mark Winter and Sarah-Jane St Clair, which describes the go to woe of a love affair with comedy, karaoke, banality and a freshness which is attracting full houses and reminding us that companies like Black Lung breathe new life into the Fringe with theatre this rough and this ready. <\/p>\n
\u201cNumbers down but stellar performances\u201d The Australian, March 16, 2007, p.14. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
2007 March 15 Adelaide Theatre Adelaide Fringe 07 Fern Hill and Other Dylan Thomas Performed by Guy Masterson Tickets $20 -25. What I Heard About Iraq By Simon Levy Holden Street Theatres\u2019 Directors\u2019 Choice 07 Holden Street Theatres, Hindmarsh Tickets $17 -23. Until March 31 Tom Crean \u2013Antarctic Explorer Written and performed by Aidan Dooley Bakehouse Theatre until March 23 Tickets$20 – $22. Rubeville The Black Lung Theatre until March 24 Kissy Kissy The Black Lung Theatre 145 Hindley Street […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-fringe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}