Reviews

Jopuka Productions’ Because There Was a Fire is by local Adelaide playwright Jamie Hornsby and is a very welcome part of this year’s Adelaide Fringe Festival.

It is being performed at the small new intimate theatre venue called ‘The Breakout’ at The Mill Creative Centre on Angas Street. It is absolutely well worth seeing and good to support this company from New South Wales as well as Jamie Hornsby, one of the most dynamic and interesting new playwrights from South Australia.

Grounded is the story of an American Air Force fighter pilot. Brought to life by experienced actor Martha Lott, it tells the tale of a woman’s love affair with her job and her obsession with ‘the blue’ (sky). “Astronauts have colour, but I am the blue,” she proclaims.

When news first broke that a musical was being made based on the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail I was so excited that I bought a ticket to see it on Broadway. The sketches in the movie are still so familiar that sitting in the Hayes Theatre I could anticipate great wads of dialogue and I was regularly interrupted (inside my head) with flashbacks to the original actors. Such is the experience of a child of the 1970’s who watched the movie over and over.

Playing to full houses, this is an inspiringly ambitious work by writer Christine Croyden.  Underground is a pastiche of scenes about the life of Nancy Wake a New Zealander - claimed as an Australian.  She worked in the French underground resistance - a highly romanticized occupation.  Wake left Sydney for Paris at eighteen.  Known as ‘The White Mouse’ (die Weisse Maus), she lived a long life - from 1912 to 2011.  Her extraordinary youthful years offer rich and intriguing material to explore for theatrical presentation.