Reviews

This very different play, both in staging and storyline, was finally found deep in Da Vinci’s vault beyond countless locks and traps – Shakespeare’s lost manuscript.

There have been four major theatre premieres in Adelaide this week, three of them one person offerings.  Shore Break shines brightly among these as an exquisite work of theatre written and performed by Chris Pitman, an actor who is utterly spellbinding as he inhabits a character existing on the edges of society. 

The great thing about contemporary dance is that you never really know what to expect. You can read the media releases and the program notes – and they are always very descriptive and thought provoking – but they are just words! They can’t really prepare you for the way the choreographers and the performers translate those words into allusive, complex, even provocative, movement.

The Adelaide University Theatre Guild and director Thomas Filsell are to be congratulated for mounting The Wonderful World of Dissocia, a play highlighting mental illness, what it feels like to be mentally ill, and what it feels like when someone you love is mentally ill.

Anthony Neilson’s 2004 drama about dissociative identity disorder was partially created while Neilson was working with a theatre group. It toys with the idea that mental illness is a world for the person who has it. It was then rewritten by a theatre company collaborating with Neilson.