Category Archive: THEATRE
An Evening Without Kate Bush
(Adelaide Fringe, Garden of Unearthly Delights, 13 March 2025) Kate Bush, is, like one of her influencers Emily Bronte, both genius and mystic. Her look, her voice, her entire unique and brilliant oeuvre, have entranced us ever since her debut in 1978, aged 19. Sarah-Louise Young is clearly a Kate obsessive, and her show, a dizzy mash-note, is clearly for fans (we mean that in a good way), the Fish People, but it is witty and vibrant enough to please those ignorant of Kate-World. Whilst the music is pre-recorded, Young is not: her voice is strong and she inhabits the…
Continue Reading →Krapp’s Last Tape
(Directed by Vicky Featherstone; Adelaide Festival, 7 March 2025) Less is more with the great reductionist Samuel Beckett, although sometimes less is less. James Wood observed of Beckett’s late work that he had “smothered longings for riches, and [made his] reductions seem like bankruptcy after wealth rather than fraud before it.”* Take the best of Kafka and Jimmy Joyce, stir, and simmer. Stephen Rea stars, if one can call it starring. In The Crying Game, he was upstaged by a penis; in V For Vendetta, by a Guy Fawkes mask; and a burning theatre in Interview With a Vampire. Here,…
Continue Reading →Prima facie
[Written by Suzie Miller; Directed by Justin Martin: live recording available online] (Our Guest Reviewer is a King’s Counsel of several decades experience, particularly in the criminal law) Prima facie: (of first appearance) Where there is some evidence in support of an allegation made, which will stand unless it is displaced. As it happens, I have never attended a performance by the National Theatre in London and I have not seen, or heard of, the actress Jodie Comer. That was until recently when I had the great pleasure to watch Prima facie, filmed live at the Harold Pinter Theatre and…
Continue Reading →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…
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