Category Archive: THEATRE
Joep Beving : Hermetism
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, 18 July 2024 “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” That’s how one feels in reviewing Dutch minimalist pianist Joep Beving, who is obviously a very nice guy, but his work is alarmingly redolent of the kind of records Windham Hill put out in the 1980s. We were told: “Beving’s latest endeavor, Hermetism, released in 2022, marks a return to solo piano, inspired by the ancient spiritual philosophy of Hermeticism. Through this project, Beving invites listeners into a meditative exploration of music’s ability to reflect the universal laws of nature and the interconnectedness of existence.”…
Continue Reading →Rhonda Burchmore – Tall Tales
Adelaide Festival Theatre, 12 June 2024 The most famous pair of legs since Betty Grable, Rhonda Burchmore took to the Cabaret Festival stage in a show that gave a full house souvenirs, stories, selfies and songs from her 42 year career (details linked in Wikipedia below), in an amusing reverie touching upon gigs and hotels from hell, celebrities with peccadillos, almost-but-not-quite meeting Michael Jackson, the idiosyncratic Betty Buckley and her vicious Macaw, and more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhonda_Burchmore Covering a wide range of songs from ONJ, Melissa Manchester, Eartha Kitt, Bette Midler, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, etc., (song list below), Rhonda’s voice can…
Continue Reading →The Woman in Black
Adelaide Festival Theatre, Dunstan Playhouse, 24 May 2024 The Woman in Black is an adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 Gothic novel, by Stephen Mallatratt, concerning a mysterious spectre that haunts Eel Marsh House in a small, remote English town. It’s a hoary old piece, and a tad clunky, but the novel, film and TV versions, and the play, have been consistently popular – only The Mousetrap (another mediocre piece) has had a longer run on the West End. There’s some post-modern, story-about-a-story business, as Arthur Kipps (John Waters), a self-effacing and strangely diminished solicitor, tries to enliven his story for…
Continue Reading →Stephen K. Amos
“Oxymoron“, Arkaba Hotel Top Room, 23 May 2024 The Arkaba Top Room is perfect for stand-up comedy – sit where you like, and there’s a handy bar. TVC chose a high table where we could enjoy the contents of a bottle of wine, settle in, and enjoy the querulous but funny Stephen K. Amos. With his show, Oxymoron, Amos is not revealing all new material, but who cares. His basic niceness allows him to get away with audience interactions – a young man named “Marcus” was awarded the unfortunate epithet “Mucus.” A lady in the front row regretted wolfing her…
Continue Reading →Angels in America
By Tony Kushner; University of Adelaide Theatre Guild; directed by Hayley Horton – Part 1 (‘The Millennium Approaches’) 2 May 2024; Part 2 (‘Perestroika’) on 3 May 2024 The AIDS epidemic hit New York City the worst (San Francisco came second). It emerged in the early 1980s, primarily in the gay community, and became synonymous therewith, but was in no way actually so localised. Poorly understood initially by medical science, it was first tagged as Kaposi’s Sarcoma (cancerous lesions on skin, lymph nodes, mouth and other organs). Like all plagues, it caused fear, suspicion, mistrust, prejudice and panic. Lives and…
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