Festivals

Permanent URI for this collection

This collection include previews and reviews of Festivals such as The Adelaide Festival, The Fringe Festival, The Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Womadelaide and The Big Day Out.

Browse

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 6 of 34
  • Item
    Cabaret Funnies - Fond and Furious. "iBob" by Bob Downe, "We Don't Have Husbands" by the Kransky Sisters, and "The Big Con" by Max Gilles and Eddie Perfect. Adelaide Cabaret Festival [review]
    (The Adelaide Review, 2005-07-08) Bramwell, Murray Ross
    The Adelaide Cabaret Festival, in part, arose from the need to separate from the avalanche of stand-up comedy that dominates the Fringe. However, there has been no shortage of funny business in the Festival Centre recently in a program that has included the CNNNN jokers, Sandman and Flacco, Wil Anderson - and Bob Downe. Even after twenty one years, it seems, you can’t keep an irrepressible man down. Bob Downe, the acrylic and polyester alter ego of Mark Trevorrow, has - you might say - come of age. But he hasn’t quite arrived either because he belongs in a long and hilarious line of repressed entertainers, those, like Norman Gunston, whose vaulting ambitious outweigh their talents, and whose geek-detectors are permanently switched off.
  • Item
    Running, Jumping, Not Standing Still. "Come Out Festival 2005" [review]
    (The Adelaide Review, 2005-04-01) Bramwell, Murray Ross
    Come Out, the Australian Festival for Young People has been showcasing new work for more than thirty years and its achievement is impressive. For much of that time, Come Out was not just the leading festival for young people in Australia, it was the only one - and an important opportunity, through forums, performances and collegial exchange, to take a look at the state of the arts for audiences ranging from pre-school to late adolescence. In 2005 Artistic Director Sally Chance has again brought together all the many aspects of Come Out - schools touring, outreach programs, Allwrite the literature and creative writing branch - as well as theatre, music and dance. It is an ambitious brief and includes many thousands of children across the state.
  • Item
    Hearts and Box Office Won, Minds Yet to Follow. "Adelaide Festival 2004" [review]
    (The Australian, 2004-03-16) Bramwell, Murray Ross
    2004 would be the Recovery Festival for Adelaide. That has been the received wisdom ever since the 2002 event ended in inglorious shambles. The experience with iconoclastic American director Peter Sellars had been financially and organisationally traumatic. He had embarked on an ambitious series of community arts programs which he then left to a team of Associate Directors with neither experience nor clout.
  • Item
    Other People's Festivals. "Edinburgh International Festival", "Melbourne Festival", and "China Shanghai International Arts Festival" [review]
    (The Adelaide Review, 2003-01) Bramwell, Murray Ross
    Over a ten month period last year I had the chance, including the Adelaide Festival in March, to attend four international festivals. I haven’t had such an opportunity before and it will be about the time of Halley’s Comet before I am likely to again - so, with our own 2004 event little more than twelve months away - maybe it is worth some impressions and comparisons.
  • Item
    Festival's Defining Moment. [review]
    (The Adelaide Review, 2004-04) Bramwell, Murray Ross
    Let’s start with "Gulpilil". A project initiated by Festival director Stephen Page and Belvoir Company B director Neil Armfield, this theatre monologue featuring one of Australia’s most distinguished screen actors was the subject of much speculation. There was talk that the rehearsals weren’t going well, that they were taking place in a cave in the Blue Mountains, that David Gulpilil was finding it all too much and had gone back to his home in Ramingining in Arnhem Land. Even Page conceded, with his trademark candour, that he was worried that this Festival commission might not happen.
  • Item
    New Works for New Audiences. "Come Out Festival 2003". [review]
    (The Adelaide Review, 2003-04) Bramwell, Murray Ross
    Come Out has been reappearing every two years since 1974 which my add-ups tell me is just short of thirty years. This is an extraordinary achievement and a tribute to the continuing commitment of artists, administrators, teachers and funding agencies in establishing and maintaining, not just a festival for young people, but a focus and a forum for the presentation and preservation of youth arts.