1990
Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller
Gilles Theatre Company
Warren Neale Theatre
Gilles Plains College of TAFE
August, 1990.
From the moment it appeared in 1949 Death of a Salesman was hailed as a modern classic. Twenty years ago it seemed like a monument to a bygone cult of mammon. Now, forty-one years on, it has much to say again about contemporary confusions between the business of life and the life of business. New Age marketspeak may have …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
Our Country’s Good
by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Melbourne Theatre Company
Playhouse, July, 1990
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
So tight are the copyright requirements for Our Country’s Good that before you can say Timberlake Wertenbaker you have been obliged to remember that the play is based on Thomas Keneally’s novel The Playmaker. Drawing from historical documents, notably the journal of Lt Ralph Clark, the Playmaker, is an imaginative recreation of the staging on June 4th, 1789, of The Recruiting Officer, the …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
Footsbarn
Playhouse
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Footsbarn are a remarkable theatre company. With minimal subsidy they have toured for nearly twenty years presenting more than 47 productions. While their range is wide, Shakespeare is their staple. Adelaide saw Macbeth in the 1986 Festival, a production which they rehearsed at McLaren Vale and took on the the road to sixteen different countries.
From its origins in Cornwall (in the barn of founding actor, Oliver …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
Quickies
State Theatre Company
Space, June 1990
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The first thing to say about Quickies is that they are a welcome addition to the State Theatre Company’s card. Combining the formula for the 1986 Shorts season- recent works performed by the State and Magpie ensembles, directed by a variety of guests – with State’s long-standing practice of offering public readings of plays by SA dramatists, the result is a double season of works by local writers …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
Murray Bramwell talks with Beatrice Beaucaire, Fredricka Lascelles and John Kilby about Footsbarn Theatre’s latest production, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which has its world premiere in Adelaide tonight.
When, in Cornwall in 1971, they first began rehearsing in a barn belonging to an actor named Oliver Foot, the members of Footsbarn Theatre could not have possibly foreseen that they would become perpetual travellers, a theatre community trekking across continents performing to audiences from Darwin to Moscow to Tunis.
Last …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
Murray Bramwell talks to Geraldine Turner and Simon Burke, stars of the revival production of Anything Goes, Cole Porter’s hit musical from 1934, which opens its Adelaide season at the Festival Centre tonight.
Cole Porter might well have been a character in any of the more than fifty musicals and movies for which he wrote hit songs. Wealthy, stylish, smart, he embodied the kind of chic that epitomised New York in the ’30s and ’40s. But a crippling horse …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
Adders : A Very Venomous Revue
Sheridan Theatre, May 1990
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
With so many theatres dark at present, the opening of a new one is a signal event. The extensive refurbishment of the Sheridan on McKinnon Parade has brought a highly idiosyncratic intimate theatre space back into use. Decked out in maroon with gilt trim, the Sheridan not only has a well-rigged acting area it has more fibreglass statuary than the Pantheon. Derek Jolly has created …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
The Comedy of Errors
by William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company
Playhouse, April 1990
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The Comedy of Errors might have been entitled The Comedy of Preposterous Situations. I mean, really. Twin boys are born in Ephesus and, at the same time in the same household, twin servants- both pairs identical. Then, in some nautical kerfuffle both sets of twins are separated and, before you know it, they have grown up in different cities unaware of each …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
Murray Bramwell talks with the State Theatre Company’s Simon Philips about their latest production, The Comedy of Errors, which opens next Saturday.
Simon Phillips is in rehearsal mode. It is well after six o’clock and the afternoon session has only just finished. Wandering barefoot back to his office for the interview, Phillips is looking weary. Gradually as actors begin appearing, it dawns on him that there is another rehearsal set for seven. A less genial soul might have …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
Actor and Director, Gavin Richards, currently in Adelaide with the popular comedy show Allo Allo, talks to Murray Bramwell about Alternative Theatre in the UK- where it has been and how it responds to a changed society.
Actors in television often seem to come out of nowhere, magically discovered and hurled into prominence, but this is rarely true. Take Gavin Richards for instance. He is a household name as the amorous Italian Captain in Allo Allo, the old-style Perry …
Continue Reading Back to top