29 August, 2003.
Murray Bramwell
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
by Edward Albee
State Theatre Company
Adelaide Festival Centre, The Space
Until 13 September, 2003. Bookings at BASS 131 246
Tickets $16.50 – $ 42.
Poor Virginia Woolf. She is almost as famous for belonging in the quirky title of Edward Albee’s play as she is for To The Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway . A whole generation has wondered how she could be so scary, when, in fact, she has …
Continue Reading Back to topAdelaide Theatre
The Stowaway and the Captain’s Cat
by Anne Brookman
The Adelaide Festival Centre Trust
and the State Library of South Australia
Adelaide Festival Centre, Dunstan Playhouse.
Until 30 August. Bookings at BASS 131 246
$10 children, $20 adults, $50 family.
We already know quite a lot about Trim, the Captain’s Cat – from the captain himself. While held by the French authorities in Mauritius for seven years, Matthew Flinders wrote a Biographical Tribute to the Memory of Trim, …
Continue Reading Back to topRobinson Crusoe
Adapted by Gillian Rubinstein
Windmill Productions in association with
Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image
The Space
July, 2003
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Windmill Productions have completed their first year of operation and there is much to celebrate. In the capable hands of Creative Producer Cate Fowler, Windmill is firmly in the first rank of companies which specialise in work for young audiences. Windmill, it would seem, has stepped straight into the first tier as a national and international …
Continue Reading Back to topMyth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany
and Contemporary America
by Stephen Sewell
State Theatre Company
in co-production with Playbox
Dunstan Playhouse
July, 2003
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
A new play by Stephen Sewell is always an event. And more often than not, his plays are heralded by marvellous titles. There is a cadence to them – The Blind Giant is Dancing, Dreams in an Empty City, The Father We Loved on a Beach by the Sea. These plays sound …
Continue Reading Back to top2003
Murray Bramwell
The Mystery of Irma Vep by Charles Ludlam
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
Until 31 May, 2003. Tickets $28 -42
Bookings BASS 131 246.
If you were to feed the plot lines of Wuthering Heights, The Wolf Man, The Mummy’s Curse and Rebecca into a blender and spin at high speed, the result might well be The Mystery of Irma Vep. This theatrical tour de force for two was first performed …
Continue Reading Back to top2003
The Crucible
by Arthur Miller
State Theatre Company
with Urban Myth Theatre Company
Dunstan Playhouse
March, 2003.
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
In his memoirs Arthur Miller describes driving back from Salem, Massachusetts and hearing on the radio that Elia Kazan, his close friend and the director of his famous play Death of a Salesman, had agreed to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee. It is 1952 and Miller is in Salem researching the witch trials which had enveloped …
Continue Reading Back to top2003
Come Out 2003
Australian Festival for Young People
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Come Out has been reappearing every two years since 1974 which my add-ups tell me is just short of thirty years. This is an extraordinary achievement and a tribute to the continuing commitment of artists, administrators, teachers and funding agencies in establishing and maintaining, not just a festival for young people, but a focus and a forum for the presentation and preservation of youth arts.
In a …
Continue Reading Back to top2003
Murray Bramwell
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
Until 29 March, 2003. Tickets $28- $42
Bookings BASS 131 246
When, a year ago, Rosalba Clemente listed Arthur Miller’s The Crucible for inclusion in the 2003 State Theatre Company season, she cannot have imagined it would speak so vividly in such difficult times as these . Miller’s play, written in 1952, uses the analogy of the Salem Witch trials of …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Last Acre
by Sean Riley
Oddbodies Theatre Company
The Bakehouse
February, 2003
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
We know, and absolutely don’t want to know, how a single action, a single impulse can change everything. This is what we mean by a life-or-death moment, that split second, as we call it, when something irrevocable occurs and it can’t be changed back. This is the moment that can’t be believed even when it is re-lived repeatedly, the moment that is still …
Continue Reading Back to top2003
Nixon’s Nixon
by Russell Lees
P&S Productions
in association with Arts Projects Australia
Dunstan Playhouse, March 2003
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Much of what I know about Richard Milhous Nixon came from the unbiased testimony of Hunter S. Thompson. Throughout the Watergate hearings in 1973 he reported for Rolling Stone, despatching down his infamous mojo wire the most scabrous accounts of the disgraced president which were duly published alongside exhilaratingly vehement illustrations by Ralph Steadman.
Nixon was fair game. …
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