Good Works
Nick Enright
Playbox
in association with Adelaide Festival Centre Trust
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It has been too long since Nick Enright’s writing has featured on the Adelaide stage. Can it be On the Wallaby -back in 1981 ? So far, recent works such as A Property of the Clan and Blackrock have not been seen here, although we will soon be seeing double with State Theatre’s revival of his adaptation of The Venetian Twins coming up …
Continue Reading Back to topTerminus
Daniel Keene
Red Shed Company
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The Red Shed Company continues its productive collaboration with Melbourne playwright Daniel Keene with one of their best productions in some time. Terminus, Keene’s newest work commissioned by the Shed, follows other company successes- All Souls, the two-handers Low and Silent Partner and SA Premier’s Award winner, Because You Are Mine.
Keene’s plays, though varied in subject matter, have distinctive tropes. Densely poetic, socially deterministic and infused with dread they …
Continue Reading Back to topSkylight
David Hare
Melbourne Theatre Company
in association with Adelaide Festival Centre Trust
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It has been a good time for The Adelaide Festival Centre Trust and a good time for the Space. The so-called World Theatre program brought in Nick Enright’s Good Works and now David Hare’s Skylight. They are both good plays and in the modest confines of the Space they have also given us absorbing performances.
David Hare’s writing suggests many things. The …
Continue Reading Back to topSummer of the Seventeeth Doll
Ray Lawler
Melbourne Theatre Company
in association with State Theatre
Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
I have to say that I greeted the revival of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll with some trepidation. Its reputation, shall we say its legend, is a kind of tyranny – not least probably, to Ray Lawler himself. The Doll is an acknowledged turning point, a setting for historical watches, a kind of cultural synecdoche. It is also a convenient …
Continue Reading Back to topDead White Males
by David Williamson
Sydney Theatre Company
in association with the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust
Her Majesty’s
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
There is nothing that David Williamson won’t grab by the tail and swing into the theatrical arena. Whether it is the protocols of the New Rich, the ethical obligations of lawyers and journalists, the complexities of sexual harassment procedures, the truth of anthropological research or-as in Dead White Males- the arcana of cultural and literary theory. It …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Torrents
by Oriel Gray
State Theatre
The Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The Torrents stands in our theatre history as a road not taken. Or a twin separated at birth and raised in obscurity. As the co-winner of the 1955 Playwrights’ Advisory Board competition, Oriel Gray might have expected greater recognition for her work as playwright with the New Theatre in Sydney. In fact The Torrents was only staged twice -by New Theatre in Adelaide in 1956 and in …
Continue Reading Back to topTap Dogs
Her Majesty’s
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
From the moment it premiered at the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf in January last year Tap Dogs has been a thumping success -as Adelaide testified when we saw them in the Space only a month later. National and international tours followed, including headline performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Currently there are two companies performing, one in the UK the other on extended tour from Perth to Lismore and all watering holes …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Shifting Heart
by Richard Beynon
State Theatre
Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
In 1957 The Shifting Heart created considerable impact for its young playwright Richard Beynon. In fact, at the time, prospective producers were wary of the currency of its themes. Triggered by a newspaper report about the suicide of a Polish immigrant -the Mr Leczycki named in the play’s dedication- The Shifting Heart examines, in the microcosm of Collingwood’s Bianchi family, the social and cultural tensions created by …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Queen and I
by Sue Townsend
adapted by Melissa Reeves
Her Majesty’s
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Take a script by Sue Townsend, already a success in the UK, add adaptations from Melissa Reeves, gather together a strong cast of Australian and English actors, have it directed by Max Stafford-Clark, toss in some songs by Ian Dury and you ought to have some sort of a hit. Alas, The Queen and I is a royal mess.
Sue Townsend, creator of …
Continue Reading Back to topClaustrophobia
devised by the Maly Company
Maly Theatre of St Petersburg
Festival Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
In both Gaudeamus and Claustrophobia, the Maly Theatre present us with a profusion of mixed messages. The company, youthful, vibrant and full of theatrical charm performs material which is often bitter, predatory, and seething with cynicism. The vignettes of life in the Construction Battalion in Gaudeamus show a vicious, divisive group of young people brutalised by circumstance. And the closing tableau with the …
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