The South Australian State Theatre Company’s latest commission, Muse of Fire, by Nigel Krauth, is currently playing in the Playhouse in Adelaide.
Krauth takes the prologue from Henry V as his text – “O for a muse of fire, that would ascend/ the brightest heaven of invention” – and has written a witty, satiric melodrama based on the exploits of George Trafford, an indefatigable theatre manager whose troupe performs at the Empire Theatre in Sydney in 1910.…
Continue Reading Back to topThe Weekenders, by Ray Harding is the Adelaide Stage Company’s latest production in The Space.
Harding has had TV successes including the recent tele-movie, I Can‘t Get Started. Unfortunately he writes less effectively for the more precise requirements of the stage.
The play concerns three couples each of whom believes they have the exclusive use of a shack on the river for the weekend. Complications arise when it transpires that a divorced couple and their new lovers, …
Continue Reading Back to topStepping Out (Adelaide, Opera Theatre), directed by Rodney Fisher, is certain to be a success considering the appeal of Rowena Wallace and Colette Mann as television celebrities and the enduring reputation of Carol Raye and Nancye Hayes as stage performers.
They are supported by an able cast including Isabelle Anderson, Ron Challinor and Margot Lee. It is a pity, then, that a more worthwhile play wasn’t found as a vehicle for this formidable Australian talent.
The play, written by Richard …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Harlequin Shuffle, a new play by Tony Strachan, is the latest Stage Company production in the Space Theatre in Adelaide. This two-hander is an affectionate study of the passing tradition of the family circus in Australia.
Larry Tandy is the last of the family in Tandy’s Circus, a down-at-heel tent show touring country towns. A former high-wire clown, he has fallen from grace to flagons of hock and a hoopla stall.
Steve, a young street-theatre performer and aspiring …
Continue Reading Back to topThis year’s Come Out Festival in Adelaide has devoted special attention to visual arts and literature. Under the umbrella Dreams of Youth – Apocalypse or Utopia, 60 young artists interpret their world. They range from Rhianon Vernon-Roberts’ Arms Talk, which portrays the lack of communication between East and West to Andrew Dearman’s message-free wire sculpture Boy On A Swing.
The writing section is opened up for scrutiny in Allwrite, a celebration of young people as writers and readers.
Music and …
Continue Reading Back to topThe Young Playwrights season is Troupe’s contribution to Come Out ’85 in Adelaide. Seven plays were chosen from 140 scripts by young writers aged between 7 and 17. The first six to be performed are a theatrical treat.
The plays range from a zany retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, satiric spoofs of westerns and science fiction to disquieting studies of violence and its effect on the individual whether in war or in the dosed world of the family.
Directors …
Continue Reading Back to topThe State Theatre Company’s Beautland was commissioned to celebrate the International Year of Youth as part of the Come Out 85 Season in Adelaide.
Of his debut as director this season, State’s artistic director Keith Gallasch writes: “Our aim was to develop with Barry Dickins a play for adults about what it was like to be young in this country and … to recover some of the lost values of childhood, and of the past, that they had surrendered to …
Continue Reading Back to topTwo
By Ron Elisha
The Stage Company
The Space
Two, the Adelaide Stage Company’s latest production, examines the contrary states of the human soul. The play is set in Germany in 1948 and writer Ron Elisha uses two characters – a rabbi, Chaim Levi, and his pupil, Anna, to describe the experience of the Dachau death camp.
Elisha has set himself a formidable task with a subject which inevitably unleashes enough detail and associations to overwhelm players and audience alike.…
Continue Reading Back to topThey are baying for blood again in Adelaide. It’s not the first time that an artistic director of the State Theatre Company has been under siege from the disgruntled, the disappointed, the envious and the Charlie’s Aunt brigade, but the present minder of the State Theatre Company, Keith Gallasch, is particularly vulnerable.
The trouble is that much of what aggrieved Advertiser theatre critic, Alan Roberts, and Opposition Shadow Minister for the Arts, Murray Hills, have had to say in criticism …
Continue Reading Back to topCorse Humours
Richard III
by William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company
Playhouse
It is the job of theatre to invigorate the classical repertoire and for that reason we must occasionally endure productions as ludicrous as the State Theatre Company of South Australia’s Richard III.
It is difficult to fathom the reason for this particular revival. Richard III at any time presents a problem for production and audiences – haw do we regard the central figure: is he evil incarnate or …
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