Shakespeare’s Villains
Steven Berkoff
Festival Theatre, February 16.
Murray Bramwell
In the polite world of English theatre Steven Berkoff has always been the bad boy, and, even at sixty eight, he is still a bit of a lad. We owe much to him – for the turbulent rough magic of East, for the curdled wit of his play Decadence, for the outrageousness of his Salome and the camp guignol he has brought to a posse of Hollywood baddies. But this …
Continue Reading Back to top2 March, 2005
Murray Bramwell
The Government Inspector
by Nikolai Gogol
Translated by May-Brit Akerhold, Neil Armfield,
Leah Mackiewicz and Geoffrey Rush
State Theatre Company of South Australia.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
1 March. 2005. Tickets $ 16.70 – $ 49.
Bookings BASS 131 246.
Until 19 March.
Between the colourfully decorated stage curtain and a row of babushka dolls doubling as footlights, a motley group of players, dressed in styles ranging from comic peasant to Soviet nerd, lugubriously …
Continue Reading Back to topPlease Go Hop !
The Border Project
Fowlers Live
2 February, 2005
Murray Bramwell
The Border Project’s absorbing theatre game show Please Go Hop! thrives on fun, wit, frenetic energy, Eighties nostalgia and a very welcome serve of theatrical flair. Taking its name from Plastic Bertrand’s kitsch classic Ca Plane Pour Moi (or maybe the Captain Sensible translation, Jet Boy Jet Girl ) it adroitly brings together improvisation and theatrical set pieces in the random format of a dice and …
Continue Reading Back to top2004
Euripides’ Trojan Women
Adapted by Rosalba Clement and Dawn Langman
State Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It is not surprising that the Greek drama speaks so strongly to us now, because it also spoke strongly to its own audience. And none more so than the works of Euripides. His plays confronted the Athenian audience with an unwelcome mirror of its prejudices, its cruelty and its follies. Even such legendary victories as the sacking of Troy Euripides …
Continue Reading Back to top17 November, 2004
Murray Bramwell
Euripides’ Trojan Women
Adapted by Rosalba Clemente and Dawn Langman
State Theatre Company of South Australia.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
16 November
Tickets $ 17 – $ 45.
Bookings BASS 131 246.
Until 27 November, 2004
Even in Euripides’ grim repertoire there are few more harrowing plays than The Trojan Women. His subject, once again, is the cruelty and pity of war. The occasion is the gloating victory of the Greeks over the Trojans …
Continue Reading Back to top2004
Adelaide
Music Theatre
HMS Pinafore
WS.Gilbert and A. Sullivan
Carl Rosa Company
Her Majesty’s, Adelaide.
4 November, 2004
Tickets $ 49 – $ 79
Bookings BASS 131 246.
Until 7 November, 2004
Murray Bramwell
The Carl Rosa Opera Company occupied a distinguished part of English operatic history from its establishment in 1873 through to the late 1950s. It presented the first English productions of Carmen, Lohengrin and Aida and would have staged the works of Gilbert and Sullivan had …
Continue Reading Back to top2004
Murray Bramwell
An Evening With Queen Victoria
Prunella Scales
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
1 November, 2004
Tickets $ 40 – $ 69.
Bookings BASS 131 246.
Until 3 November.
Melbourne
The Arts Centre, Fairfax Studio
6 -7 November, 2004
Geelong
Ford Theatre
9 November, 2004
Cairns
Civic Theatre
23 -24 November, 2004
Townsville
Civic Theatre
25 November, 2004
Rockhampton
Pilbeam Theatre
26 November, 2004
Canberra
The Playhouse
29 30 November, 2004
Albury
Performing Arts centre
1 December, 2004…
4:48 Psychosis
by Sarah Kane
Brink Productions
in association with Budgie Lung Theatre
Queen’s Theatre
Murray Bramwell
Sarah Kane didn’t write prefaces for her plays. She said that if they were any good they would stand alone. But in her case it was never going to be that simple. When, in 1998, she committed suicide at the age of 28, she caused the kind of literary sensation that had not been seen since the death of Sylvia Plath nearly forty …
Continue Reading Back to topBoston Marriage
by David Mamet
State Theatre Company of South Australia
The Space
Murray Bramwell
David Mamet is well-known for the testosterone dialogue of plays like American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross and the intriguingly minimalist expression of his film scripts, so it is interesting to see him venture into the very different world of Boston Marriage, a play he wrote for his wife the actor Rebecca Pidgeon.
A Boston marriage is a late nineteenth term for a partnership of …
Continue Reading Back to topLast Cab to Darwin
by Reg Cribb
Pork Chop Productions
Dunstan Playhouse
October, 2004
Murray Bramwell
It is not surprising that playwright Reg Cribb saw the story of Max Bell as ready-made for the telling. It has all the elements of a mythic quest with a sturdy, self-deprecating hero meeting a host of different characters as he travels a last time through his native land. Like Alvin Straight, the elderly American who travelled hundreds of miles on a lawn mower …
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