1994
Because You Are Mine
by Daniel Keene
Red Shed Company
Space, September, 1994.
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
In the Festival Centre Trust’s Brave New Works season there could be few works as brave and new as Daniel Keene’s Red Shed commission Because You Are Mine. The Shed has presented other works by Keene -Low, a taut two-hander of underclass crime and punishment and the densely poetic dream play, All Souls. They were strong productions – some of the Shed’s …
Continue Reading Back to top1994
Viva la Vida
Frida Kahlo
Handspan Theatre
Space, September, 1994.
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Maybe it was all those calendars of Frida. Those querulous looks from heavy brows and hooded eyes. Each month, the iconography of pain and gore, flesh perforated with thorns and nails, a few small nips and Diego on my mind. The rediscovery of Frida Kahlo has charted a steep curve from obscurity to greeting cards. Her works have been seen in festivals and her biography …
Continue Reading Back to topMorning Sacrifice
by Dymphna Cusack
State Theatre
Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Reviving a play can often be a damnable business. You are damned if you do it and even more damned if you don’t. There was some lively discussion around our part of the stalls, for instance, about whether Morning Sacrifice was worth the evening sacrifice or not. One heatedly dismissed the play as a waste of time but a number, including several teachers, quietly and keenly defended.
Dymphna …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Swan
by Elizabeth Egloff
State Theatre
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The Swan is exactly the kind of bright, young theatre Chris Westwood promised. We didn’t get it with Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Crow was too much a work in progress. But The Swan flies straight at you. First performed at the Yale School of Drama in 1988, Elizabeth Egloff’s play- presented in Melissa Bruce’s excellent version- is the sort of fresh air that we need. It …
Continue Reading Back to topFence
by Colin Lane, Frank Wood and Neill Gladwin
Performed by Lano and Woodley
Director: Neil Gladwin
Lighting Co-ordinator: Charlie Murray
Stage Manager: Dan Jonsson
Lion Theatre. June 14, 1994.
In the popular TV comedy show, Fast Forward, there was a recurrent skit about the WhizzBang Theatre Company. They were a TIE group bringing worthy, didactic theatre to schools. Short on talent, subtlety, and anything remotely resembling humour, the Whizzbangs represent all that captive adolescent audiences most dread.
When Neill …
Continue Reading Back to top1994
Jim Rose Circus Sideshow
Old Lion
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
O Rose, thou art sick. Blake didn’t know the half of it. From Seattle, Washington, grunge mecca of the New World, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow returned to Sunday night Adelaide to bring worms visible and invisible from his garden of unearthly delights. Too big for Heaven this time, Jim packed us into the Old Lion for the gawp of our lives. Looking around we looked normal enough. People …
Continue Reading Back to topMy Mathematics
Rose English
Festival Tent
Memorial Drive
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The name’s Charlie and, obviously, I’m a horse. I’ve just been in Adelaide for the Festival. I wasn’t too sure about it all myself. It was my agent’s idea really. Good for your CV he said. You need to diversify, get into the arts more. But that’s what he said when he found that other play for me- Equus.
Well, anyway I’m back doing theatre and frankly it …
Continue Reading Back to topTheatre
A Kyogen Falstaff: The Braggart Samurai
Adaptation: Yasunari Takahashi
Director: Mansaku Nomura
Suke-emon Horato (Falstaff): Mansaku Nomura
Tara Kaja (Bardolph): Takeshi Nomura
Jiro Kaja (Pistol): Haruo Tsukizaki
Yakbei (Ford): Mannosuke Nomura
Omatsu (Mistress Ford): Yukio Ishida
Otake (Mistress Page): Shichisaku Ogawa
Koken (Stage Assistant): Ryosaku Nomura
Fue (flute): Takayuki Isso
Taiko (drum): Hitoshi Sakuraoi.
The Playhouse
Sir John Falstaff is Shakespeare’s big comic success. Hot with appetite, ripe with laughter, he is ego made flesh- and a force of …
Continue Reading Back to topA Cheery Soul
by Patrick White
Queensland Theatre Company
Her Majesty’s
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
On the slowly spinning revolve Bill Haycock’s design could be a retro-chic lunch place. Patrick White’s meticulously described kitchen scene, in cream and red chrome and formica, once embodied the Australian Ugliness, the bland vulgarity of that early Sixties suburban Sydney he lumped together as Sarsaparilla. Now it is aestheticised, wry down-market decor, unable to harm or threaten- as it did White and the young …
Continue Reading Back to topTomoe Shizune and Hakutobo
Union Hall
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It is generally agreed that the first butoh performance was Forbidden Colours, based on the works of Mishima and presented by Tatsumi Hijikata at a Japanese dance festival in 1959. From there this eclectic dance drama form has been interpreted by a variety of companies and soloists. Some, such as Kazua Ohno, Sankai Juku and Byakko Sha have been visiting Australian festivals since the mid 1980s.
Hakutobo -which means the …
Continue Reading Back to top