murraybramwell.com

July 11, 2016

Straight to some uncomfortable truths

Filed under: 2016,Archive,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Straight White Men
by Young Jean Lee
State Theatre Company of South Australia
and La Boite Theatre Company
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
July 8. Tickets: $ 28 – $72.
Bookings : BASS 131246 or www.bass.net.au
Until July 23.
Duration: 90 minutes.
La Boite Theatre season: The Roundhouse, Brisbane,
July 27- August 13.

Korean-American playwright Young Jean Lee’s break-out hit, Straight White Men, has been discombobulating audiences since its debut at the New York Public Theatre in 2014, where …

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June 20, 2016

Breath of Heaven

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Cabaret,Music

Lisa Fischer and Grand Baton
Dunstan Playhouse
Adelaide Festival Centre
June 18.

Murray Bramwell

Lisa Fischer has performed on the biggest stages in the world. She played to more than 500,000 people in Rio, and to sold-out stadiums from London to Berlin, the US to Australia. Since 1989 – along with keyboard player Chuck Leavell and bassist Darryl Jones – Fischer has been an indispensible part of The Rolling Stones touring band. Stones fans will never forget her show-stopping solo …

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June 12, 2016

Far from a Weimar museum, cabaret undergoes a youthful makeover

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Cabaret

Adelaide Cabaret Festival

Variety Gala Performance
Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
June 10.

It’s that time again. Defying the mid-June wintry blast, the Adelaide Festival Centre opens every door and available performance space for thirteen nights of the best of burlesque, Broadway, music theatre and punk satire. Now in its sixteenth year the Adelaide Cabaret Festival has consolidated a reputation that has attracted legends and innovators from Europe, the UK and the Big Apple itself.

On the Festival Theatre stage …

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June 10, 2016

Love and War

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Books

Love as a Stranger
by Owen Marshall
Vintage
ISBN 978-1-77553-857-8
RRP. $ 38.00. 289 pp.

The Antipodeans
by Greg McGee
Upstart Press
ISBN 978-1-927262-03-0
RRP: $ 38.00. 352 pp.

Murray Bramwell

In his captivating new novel, Love as a Stranger, Owen Marshall immediately greets the reader with portents. The epigraph quotes the 17th century dramatist and poet, Pedro Calderon de la Barca : “When love is not madness, it is not love.” And the opening sentence in the …

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May 03, 2016

Gender duality in world of adolescent alienation

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Australian Texts,State Theatre Company,Theatre

Gorgon
by Elena Carapetis
State Theatre Company
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
May 3. Tickets : $20 – $38.
Bookings: BASS 131 246, bass.net.au
Duration : 60 minutes
Until May 7. SA Regional tour May 9–27.

“Feel …what is that… I feel…pissed off ?” asks Lee, a teenager at the end of his tether, “Yeah. Like my whole body has become a fist. I’m made of fists, all of me, ready to smash something.” In this year’s State Ed schools …

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March 09, 2016

Marriage viewed uncomfortably and kaleidoscopic cautionary tale

Filed under: 2016,Adelaide Companies,Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Adelaide Festival

The Country
by Martin Crimp
Stone/Castro in association with Insite Arts International,
State Opera of SA and Adelaide Festival.
State Opera Studio, 216 Marion Rd, Netley
March 7. Tickets: $ 25 – $ 36
Bookings : adelaidefestival.com.au
BASS 131246. Until March 13. Duration 90 minutes, no interval.

Golem
1927, co-production with Salzburg Festival,
Theatre de la Ville Paris and Young Vic.
Dunstan Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
March 8. Tickets: $30 – $59
Bookings : adelaidefestival.com.au
BASS 131246. Until …

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March 03, 2016

All Delighted Audience

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Festival,Music

Sufjan Stevens
Thebarton Theatre
Adelaide Festival
February 29, 2016

Murray Bramwell

Last time we saw Sufjan Stevens it was his 2011 Age of Adz tour. Inspired by the paintings of the schizophrenic visionary Royal Robertson, the concert featured massive back projections of Robertson’s ecstatic, vibrantly coloured imaginings while Stevens and a ten piece band produced a symphonic event, festooned with samples, loops and intrepid orchestrations.

For his 2016 tour Sufjan Stevens is in lyric mode. With just four band members …

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March 01, 2016

Navigating the New World

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Music,Womadelaide

Murray Bramwell previews WOMADelaide 2016

It is less than ten days until WOMADelaide opens again for three days and four nights of intriguing and often exhilarating music, performed by 400 musicians from more than 30 countries. From small, but nonetheless impressive, beginnings in 1992 under the wing of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival, WOMADelaide, now in its 20th incarnation and an annual fixture since 2002, has become a major national festival. Noted for its consistent quality, and the depth and …

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February 28, 2016

King James Versions

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Festival,International,Theatre

Adelaide Festival

The James Plays
by Rona Munro
National Theatre of Scotland,
National Theatre of Great Britain,
Edinburgh International Festival.
February 27. Duration 7 hours 40 minutes including intervals.

“We cannot know the character and thoughts of these dead kings and queens and long-gone Scots,” Rona Munro remarks of the succession of royals and underlings who populate her dazzling epic trilogy, The James Plays, “(But) we can speculate a whole series of possibilities from the few hard facts we …

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February 18, 2016

Penny Arcade – Older, Wiser, Longer – and as thoughtful as ever

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Fringe,International,Theatre

Penny Arcade
(Ukiyo, The Royal Croquet Club, 9.30 until March 14. Four and a Half Stars)

Penny Arcade, aka Susana Ventura, has an impeccable New York CV. She performed in Warhol/Morrisey films, she hung out as a teenager at Max’s Kansas City. She was there at Stonewall and in the terrible AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. Last time she visited Adelaide as part of the 1994 Adelaide Festival, she performed wearing only an American flag. She also brought …

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