2001

Art
by Yasmina Reza

State Theatre Company
Space, July, 2001.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Plenty of people have bought paintings, and paid more than they could afford, but few have become as well known as Serge, the first-name-only character in Yasmina Reza’s hit play Art. First the French heard about him in Paris back in 1994. Then Sean Connery decided to back an English language version – scintillatingly provided by ace translator Christopher Hampton. After that, it was a …

2001

Killer Joe
by Tracy Letts

Brink Productions
with State Theatre Company
Space, June 2001

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Brink Productions are back, this time in co-production with State Theatre, for Tracy Letts’s Killer Joe, a grim little dog-eat-rottweiler saga about the Smith family.

Buried alive in a trailer park on the margins of Dallas, Texas, are Ansel and his second wife Sharla, and, from a previous marriage, son Chris and twelve year old daughter Dottie. Chris, in deep to …

2 May, 2001

Murray Bramwell

House Among the Stars
by Michel Tremblay.
State Theatre Company of South Australia
The Playhouse. Until 12 May, 2001

State Theatre’s newest production, House Among the Stars, from prolific French Canadian writer Michel Tremblay, is set in a log cabin in rural Quebec-“at the beginning of a beautiful evening in July.” In fact, it is set in three Julys- one in 1910, one in 1950 and a third, forty years on, in 1990. Three generations …

2000

The Taming of the Shrew
by William Shakespeare
State Theatre South Australia
Playhouse, November 2000

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is nothing else in all of Shakespeare that has caused the sort of qualms that The Taming of the Shrew has over the past twenty years or so. The subduing of the fiery Katherina by her mocking suitor Petruchio and the proofs of her obedience in the final scene have not been welcome spectacles in a time when equality …