1990

Murray Bramwell

I first met John Gaden just over four years ago when his appointment as Artistic Director of the State Theatre had just been announced and he had flown in to meet the Adelaide theatre faithful.He confided to me that he was being forced to consume tea and scones in life-threatening quantities but with characteristic courteousy and pragmatism,he circulated without demur. Gaden has continued to conduct this tea and scones diplomacy throughout his tenure with State because, to …

Ring Around the Moon
byJean Anouilh, adapted by Christopher Fry

State Theatre Company
Playhouse, December 1989.

The State Theatre Company has closed shop for the year with Rodney Fisher’s production of Anouilh’s L’Invitation au Chateau, better known, having been turned over-easy by Christopher Fry, as Ring Around the Moon. Written in 1947 it was first presented to English audiences in 1950 by Peter Brook . He called it a “charade with music” and its enormous success, it has been suggested, …

1989

The Rover by Aphra Behn

State Theatre Company of South Australia
The Playhouse, Adelaide, June 1989.
then York Theatre and Seymour Centre, Sydney.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

“All women together should let flowers fall on the tomb of Aphra Behn … for it is she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” Thus wrote Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own. But it would be mistaken to perpetuate the notion that Behn was the first, or …

1989

Murray Bramwell talks to director Angela Chaplin and writer Gillian Rubenstein about Magpie Theatre’s current project at Theatre 62 – an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland

Since it first appeared on July 4th 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has become not only a classic work but an integral part of the modern consciousness. Translated into fifty languages and published in countless editions it has also been adapted for both stage and screen. Most people know something about …

1989

Hedda Gabler
By Henrik Ibsen
State Theatre Company
Playhouse, October, 1989.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Ibsen’s plays, including the great works of his last phase of writing in the 1890s, operate on two levels – they are convincingly anchored in middle and upper class life in 19th century Europe at the same time as being dramas of what in classical literature is called psychomachia, the conflict of the soul.

Hedda Gabler is a Grade A example. In his copious, …

1989

Shirley Valentine
by Willy Russell

State Theatre Company/
Sydney Theatre Company
The Playhouse,

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Playwright Willy Russell not only touched the zeitgeist with his stage hit, Educating Rita, he also hit paydirt. The screen version launched Julie Walters as a performer with presence and showed there could be life after flab for Michael Caine. Essentially, Educating Rita was Pygmalion Revisited with just a smidge of feminism to keep it a la mode. On film, at least, …