Ben Brooker’s The Lake was first performed in a rehearsed reading by five.point.one last year. This year it premieres with a full production by five.point.one in The Arch, a small old church at Holden Street Theatres. Before entering we are given a small torch and told to use it to find our chairs and to…
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John Doyle is probably best known to many as Roy of Roy and HG fame. That’s certainly how I knew him, although I won’t pretend to be that familiar with the world of sports comedy. Nonetheless, I was looking forward to seeing a play written by someone known to be so astutely funny. Vere (Faith)…
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Kneehigh’s Brief Encounter is Noël Coward on Noël Coward on Noël Coward. The production combines the texts of his 1945 film Brief Encounter with the 1936 play Still Life on which it was based, interspersed throughout with songs by Coward. First performed by the Cornish company in 2008, Brief Encounter has played in the…
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Directed by Chris Drummond, Babyteeth, explores the effects of cancer on the families it touches. The production, currently showing at the State Theatre Company of South Australia, Adelaide, also depicts an unusual love story, undoubtedly spurred on by the disease. Fourteen year old Milla (Danielle Catanzariti) meets twenty-five year old Moses (Matt Crook) at a train…
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State Theatre Company of South Australia’s tag line for this play is “the play that hit theatre like a sledgehammer”. Upon viewing Sarah Kane’s Blasted, you can understand why. It’s a play that should come with trigger warnings, its setting in the (relatively) intimate Space Theatre forcing its already controversial content into your face. The…
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Set in Margaret Thatcher’s England, Top Girls portrays a world in which women are oppressed by the capitalist social system in which they live. It is a play so entrenched in its era that the actors’ costumes are topped off with shoulder pads. The play made waves when it was first produced at the Royal…
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The gender imbalance in Australian theatre has been a talking point over the past few years. In South Australia this imbalance, which sees men greatly outnumber women as playwrights, directors and artistic directors, was evident in the State Theatre Company of South Australia’s 2011 season, with all eight plays authored by men. It is not…
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In a joint production, Windmill Theatre and the State Theatre Company of South Australia have undertaken an ambitious task: creating not only a new musical, but one that is also suitable for children. Pinocchio, written by Julianne O’Brien and based on the original children’s tale by Carlo Collodi, is a colourful production, full of energy,…
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Originally performed as part of the 2012 Adelaide Fringe Festival, Squidboy is show about, well, a squid boy. New Zealand’s Trygve Wakenshaw (of Auckland theatre company Theatre Beating) is the squid in question, a tall, bearded man decked out in a pointed hat and long, flowing, tentacled arms. Through just this simple costume Wakenshaw becomes…
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For his last show as the Artistic Director of State Theatre Company of SA, Adam Cook has selected a well-known and much loved author. Tennessee Williams once described The Glass Menagerie as the saddest play he’d ever written. To depict that kind of emotion on the stage as a farewell would be a stunning departure,…
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The main question on one’s mind upon hearing about Henry Rollins‘ spoken word tour maybe well be: what exactly is a spoken word tour, and is it filed with sub par haikus? The answer, at least in this case, is a thankful no. This spoken word show starts out with the comedic stylings of Bruce…
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Sepia is a play about cuttlefish. It’s also not about cuttlefish at all. It’s a play about family, about big company construction and small town politics, about the environment, about opportunity – all jammed into about 50 minutes. Directed by Nescha Jelk, Sepia tells the story of a Whyalla family, tracking their progression through life…
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Bob Downe is one of those Australian comedians who most of you would probably identify as just “that guy”. You know, those people who have been around for ages but don’t seem to do much these days to warrant their continual presence on your cultural radar. When Bob and his polyester pants returned to Adelaide…
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Just as you should never judge a book by its cover, you should ordinarily never judge a play by its title – but it’s pretty much all in there with this one. The only thing left out is that the life of Charles Darwin, and the development of his seminal work The Origin of Species,…
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