Category Archive: AUSTRALIANIA
The King is Dead
Neil Kerley after the 1973 Grand Final
Neil Kerley (20 February 1934 – 29 June 2022) Tonight, Saint Jude (the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes) is having dobs with Neil Kerley. ‘Knuckles’ specialised in taking football teams from despair to triumph, or at least respectability. West Adelaide, a good team, could not win Grand Finals. Until Kerley took over and captain-coached the Bloods to the 1961 Premiership in the “The Turkish Bath Grand Final.” South Adelaide, eating its gruel with 1963’s wooden spoon, was talented but clueless. Until Kerley took over and captain-coached the Panthers to the 1964 Premiership. The Glenelg Tigers had descended…
Continue Reading →‘Nothing Better than the First Attempt’: Cabaret Life Drawing
(Cabaret Life Drawing, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, 11 June 2022) A very pleasant hour passed in the Cabaret Festival’s Spiegeltent on the Festival Centre Plaza. This was a life drawing session (not really a lesson, more like a brief taste with a light touch). The assembled throng, their creative impulses enlivened by a glass of wine and some piano and bass versions of songs such as Puttin’ on the Ritz, Tea for Two and All of Me, attempted to depict model Letitia, striking various classy poses in an elegant gown (see below). It was conducted by Adelaide Central School of Art…
Continue Reading →Nitram
Untethered
(Directed by Justin Kurzel) (2021) Suspense need not be a mystery. Out of the so-called 7 plots, the dramatist’s art is to finesse the selected one. As with Shakespeare, it matters not that we know the ending. In Nitram (‘Martin’ backwards, as is Martin), the story (about Martin Bryant, going ‘postal’ in April 1996) is notorious. Here, the director creates an intimate, very private background to a very public tragedy, and does it with great depth of feeling and beautiful pacing. It is a small town saga (the south-east coast of Victoria standing in for Port Arthur, probably for political…
Continue Reading →Icehouse
Adelaide Oval’s Village Green, 8 February, 2022 ‘Icehouse’ were never really the techno-guys they were painted as – Nothing to Do from their first (best?) album (when they were ‘Flowers’) is a song Lou Reed would have liked to write and perform – and this terrific retrospective, conceived around the 40th anniversary of the inaugural release of Great Southern Land, written by Iva Davies in homage to Australia and its landscape while homesick on the band’s first overseas tour, showed how their hits were basically great rock/pop, performed by a band that is pretty much as cohesive and professional as…
Continue Reading →Albo in the Hawse
Ever since Rats in the Ranks, socialist leader Anthony Albanese has overcome his natural shyness and backed into the political limelight. He is now likely to be the next Prime Minster of Australia, according to published polls. We await not his campaign platform but rather the inevitable consequences of his stewardship of the nation, most of which will occur due to desuetude of governance, owing to Albo’s lethargy and indifference to issues such as energy security, border protection, national debt, freedom of the individual and the rise of China. Albo is enthusiastic about the movies, though, especially one with a…
Continue Reading →