Bare
by Toa Fraser
Madeleine Sami and Ian Hughes
Space
November, 2000
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Bare is an odd title for a stage work as richly arrayed as this. It is certainly unadorned – a two hander for actors who perform with minimal lighting and two chairs. But its language, narrative complexity and emotional energy mark this suite of twenty four monologues as impressive. I find myself going back to productions such as the South African play Woza Albert …
Continue Reading Back to top2000
Collected Stories
by Donald Margulies
Northside Theatre Company
with State Theatre and AFCT
Playhouse, October 2000
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Collected Stories might well have been entitled Recollected Stories because its subject is the writer’s responsibility to respect the privacy of others. Somewhere between the right to free trading in a good yarn and the obligation to protect the feelings and integrity of individuals there is a line- not to be written – but drawn.
It is, of course, …
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Sweet Road
by Debra Oswald
State Theatre South Australia
and Playbox
Space, September 2000
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Life, as everyone from your aromatherapist to your personal trainer will tell you, is a journey. We are all out there, pounding away on the four lane black top. That is, when we are not cruising the information superhighway or moping about the road not taken. In popular culture the open vista has beckoned everyone from Jack Kerouac to Toad of …
Continue Reading Back to topPoM pOm
by Pamela Allen
Patch Theatre
Odeon Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It is often said that young people deserve the best theatre. And yet, just as often, they end up with the very opposite. Not only have we seen a reduction in the amount of work on offer in all age ranges in the past five years, but, seemingly, there has been a failure of nerve by performing companies desperate to compete with Sony Playstations and the global …
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Equus
by Peter Shaffer
State Theatre South Australia
Optima Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Peter Shaffer wrote Equus several years after a friend told him about a crime committed by a young man. The friend knew none of the particulars, only that a stable had been invaded and horses had been mutilated. Shaffer’s informant died some months after and the playwright was unable to find out anything further. The image stayed in his mind, though, and he wrote an …
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How I Learned to Drive
by Paula Vogel
State Theatre South Australia
Space
Secret Bridemaids’ Business
by Elizabeth Coleman
Playbox with State Theatre
Optima Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
In How I learned to Drive, American playwright Paula Vogel uses humour as a vehicle, you might say. And with it she takes us down some pretty dodgy back roads. If anyone were to tell you that this is a play about the intimate relationship between a seventeen year old …
Continue Reading Back to top2000
How I Learned to Drive
by Paula Vogel
State Theatre South Australia
Space
Secret Bridemaids’ Business
by Elizabeth Coleman
Playbox with State Theatre
Optima Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
In How I learned to Drive, American playwright Paula Vogel uses humour as a vehicle, you might say. And with it she takes us down some pretty dodgy back roads. If anyone were to tell you that this is a play about the intimate relationship between a seventeen year old …
Continue Reading Back to topBlithe Spirit
by Noel Coward
State Theatre South Australia
Optima Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It is a strange shift from the contemporary theatrical idiom of Festival
productions like Iets op Bach, Ur/faust and Cortese’s Roulette to the stagey drawing room manners of Blithe Spirit. This is not to say that Noel Coward’s other-worldly comedy, written in six days in May, 1941 and performed in London nearly two thousand times from 1941 to 1946 is not worth the revival. But …
Stolen
by Jane Harrison
Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Theatre Co-Operative and Playbox Theatre
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It is always the hope of theatre that it has currency. But rarely does a work touch the moment like Jane Harrison’s play Stolen. The Ilbijerri Company’s Adelaide season, part of a national and international tour which includes the UK and Asia, opens in the very week when, as the result of a leaked Government submission, Aboriginal Affairs Minister John …
Continue Reading Back to topBig hArt Works
Director: Scott Rankin
Care Park, Moore Street
Adelaide until 17 March
The Theft of Sita
Director : Nigel Jamieson, Music: Paul Grabowsky and I Wayan Gde Yudane, Puppetry: I Made Sidia and Peter Wilson, Design: Julian Crouch and Reg Mombassa
Botanic Park, Adelaide
until 17 March.
The cavernous warehouse venue is lit up with activity. Painting easels surround the walls, a dozen young people hold up their portraits for viewing, a large expanse of red earth is …
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