murraybramwell.com

November 01, 1999

Cakes and Ale, Wind and Rain

Filed under: Archive,Theatre

Twelfth Night, or What You Will
William Shakespeare

State Theatre South Australia
Optima Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The season is not yet over for State Theatre but with Twelfth Night Artistic Director Rodney Fisher signs off on his two year residency. Also marking twenty five years of Playhouse activity, this production not only adds a festive note, it is among the best work State has produced for a while. Certainly it is a happier excursion into Shakespeare than last …

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September 01, 1999

Private Lives

Filed under: Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Closer
Patrick Marber
State Theatre
Space, August, 1999.
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Playwright Patrick Marber has described Closer as Noel Coward for the Nineties. It is an astute and useful, if not entirely modest, remark identifying the shrewd blend of wit and acerbic social observation that marks it as a comedy of manners. Because, beneath the spray of its contemporary realist profanity, Closer has a highly wrought and elegant structure.

Set in London, Marber’s play follows the lives of four …

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August 01, 1999

Grande, or de Trop ?

Filed under: Archive,International,Theatre

Saltimbanco
Cirque du Soleil
Ellis Park

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is called the Grand Chapiteau and massive it certainly is. With its turrets, minarets and domes the massive $18m travelling venue for Cirque du Soleil is a show in itself. Almost phosphorescently white it is a formidable feat of engineering. And it can hardly be accidental that it resembles Fantasyland, which as all mouseketeers would know, is the happiest land of them all.

With seven different entertainments currently on …

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July 01, 1999

Heartbreak Hotels

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

The Judas Kiss
David Hare

Company B Belvoir
Optima Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is only one thing worse than being talked about, observed Oscar Wilde, and that is not being talked about. He and his shade can have little fear of that. Especially as the Nineties offer us so many centenaries. Of his successes – publications, lecture tours and opening nights. And of the dark days, of trial, imprisonment and – hardly before the century he influenced had …

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Pulp Theatre

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Criminal Genius
George F. Walker

Bakehouse Theatre
Angas Street

Mojo
Jez Butterworth

Brink Productions
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Bakehouse Theatre’s Peter Green is to be commended for bringing us Criminal Genius , a recent work from Canadian playwright George F. Walker. It is a bleakly comic little piece about crime and more crime and the rippling effect of retribution. In its mix of hostility and farce it owes much, as many works now seem to, to the bravura writing …

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June 01, 1999

Dark Truths

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Carrying Light
Verity Laughton

State Theatre South Australia
and Vitalstatistix
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is something fundamentally threatening about closed religious societies. We call them cults and no matter how benign their objectives they are demonised. The settlement of the United States was propelled by groups going that further thirty miles just to get away. And whether Shakers, Amish, Mormons or Mennonites they solemnly believed that they embodied the extended family in Christ.

The appeal of the lifestyle …

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May 01, 1999

City of Dreadful Night

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

Roberto Zucco
Bernard-Marie Koltes

Brink Productions
Balcony Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Roberto Zucco is a modern Lizzie Borden. First he gave his father forty whacks. Then he gave his mother forty two. After that, he kills a policeman and a child. Freud may be able to explain the first three but only the Devil can account for the last. Based on the actual exploits of an Italian hoodlum, French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltes’ creation is a grimly funny portrait of …

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November 13, 1998

Coming to Grips with Heavyweight Barker

Filed under: Adelaide Companies,Archive,Theatre

1998

Adelaide

Theatre

The Europeans by Howard Barker.

Director: Tim Maddock. Designed by Mary Moore. Lighting: Geoff Cobham. Sound design Jeremy Rowney. Brink Productions.

Balcony Theatre. November 10, 1998.

Murray Bramwell

In London there is an outfit called The Wrestling School which is devoted to the works of playwright Howard Barker. Brink Productions, newly commissioned in Adelaide this year, could well qualify as its southern campus. Over the past three years or so, the Brink team has grappled with such …

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November 01, 1998

Wild Thymes in Warwickshire

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,Theatre

1998

The Herbal Bed
Peter Whelan
Sydney Theatre Company
Optima Playhouse, October 1998.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Very little is known about Susanna Hall, nee Shakespeare, but playwright Peter Whelan has made every skerrick count. It is verifiable that in 1607 the elder daughter of the greatest dead white male in the history of the English language married John Hall, a successful physician with a flair for herbal remedies. It is also recorded that she brought defamation charges against John …

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October 01, 1998

Crimes and Misdemeanours

Filed under: Archive,Interstate,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love
by Brad Fraser
State Theatre
Optima Playhouse

Speaking in Tongues
by Andrew Bovell
Griffin Theatre Company
Space

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is now ten years since Brad Fraser’s audacious play was first performed in his hometown in Edmonton, Alberta. But time has been good to this stylishly constructed account of the young and the restless. With almost instinctive flair Fraser captures the nerve and pulse of his characters, locating them …

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