Review: That Boy – Holden Street Theatre
That Boy opens with a mother standing in her kid’s bedroom, the floor strewn with plush toys, Lego pieces and crumpled pyjamas; it may be a familiar scene, but the…
Author: James Murphy
James is a freelance writer with a diverse portfolio of work, predominately focused upon the performing arts, but also sports, business, technology and current affairs, and mental health.
He is the South Australian Arts Writer for Scenestr, Australia’s biggest street press stable. He has also been published in InDaily, Fritz Mag, Junkee, The Upsider, GLAM Adelaide, Teo Magazine, Fight News Australia and The City Standard.
He has performed in amateur operettas, cabaret, and classical lunchtime concerts. He is familiar with the Adelaide alternative music scene having previously hosted a show on local community station, Three D Radio for six years.
Review: Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton – State Theatre Company of South Australia
Step away from the live stream, cease compulsively refreshing daily COVID updates detailing the Victorian outbreak; Her Majesty’s is open and resplendent, the curtain is lifted, the boards are being…
State Theatre Company South Australia to deliver a plague of plays
In Italy, during the middle of the fourteenth century, five years after the black death had ravaged the nation, author Giovanni Boccaccio published The Decameron; a collection of novellas featuring…
Review: Rich Bitch- A Parody of Law of Attraction Gurus
With an MA from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, comedienne Cristina Lark is far too qualified to be an online wellness coach. Thankfully, instead of becoming an…
Review: Bordertown
Bordertown walks the line between comedy and drama, and while it succeeds with getting laughs, the darkness in this black comedy, suicide, is dealt with so flippantly that the work…
Review: Dance Nation by State Theatre Company of South Australia, Bevoir, and Adelaide Festival
The Mitchell Butel era begins with Clare Barron’s Pulitzer Prize nominated work, Dance Nation, with the new artistic director starring as a tracksuit- clad dance coach with spirit fingers and…
Review: Frankly’s Wordrobe
Fringe-award-winning cabaret artist Frankly thinks in pictures; she possesses a pronounced autobiographical memory, which is an ideal trait for a cabaret artist. Frankly can instantly recall the minutiae of every…
Review: Tartuffe
Moliere’s 1962 lines of comedic verse has been immaculately sliced by former National Poet of Scotland, Liz Lochhead, into a dirty Scottish one-act quickie starring a quartet of Scotland’s finest,…
Review: S-27 by Sarah Grochala
As Australia, and the world, inch closer towards totalitarianism, with raids upon the free press and the subversion of key components of the rule of law, S-27 is a reminder…
Review: Sh!t Theatre Drink Rum With Expats
In 2018, with Europe about to shut the gate on the balmy British Isles, Sh!t Theatre’s Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole hoped to squeeze the last dregs of freedom from…
Arts with heart: connecting people with a disability to support workers that share their passions
In 2017, a UK study entitled ‘Creative Health: The Arts For Health and Wellbeing’ found, according to The Guardian, that the arts “can help keep us well, aid recovery, and…
Black is the New White review
In Nakkiah Lui’s gut splittingly hilarious Indigenous Black is the New White, Ray Gibson (Tony Briggs), a Noel Pearson-esque former politician pleads to his successful lawyer and media commentator daughter…
Talking about our cultural identity doesn’t need to be a drag, according to La Nonna
Prompted by a speech given by an Indigenous matriarch at a student environmental conference, Melbourne based writer, performer and activist Samuel Dariol cast his gaze for the first time at…
Aunty Social’s Dark Carnivale
Ever since her early childhood, the only place Toronto’s Daniela Gitto aka Aunty Social felt comfortable was in her room; social anxiety robbed her of many experiences, most notably a…
After 20 years of frozen silence, Jaguar Jonze’s Deena Lynch fights back
For most of her life, Jaguar Jonze’s Deena Lynch closely guarded the gates to her inner world of unspeakable pain; a place where the wounds from a childhood marked by…
Charmaine Jones faces her best self through music
As the director of the thriving musical services and education agency, Gospo Enterprises, and leader of the Gospo Collective, who have performed at almost all our peak artistic festivals and…
Riding out the storm of depression with Amelia Ryan
At the end of this year’s summer arts festival season, acclaimed cabaret performer and mother of one, Amelia Ryan, reached out on social media for help. Touring three shows across…
Entertainment Assist champions for wellbeing
Mental illness and artistic creativity are often seen as being inextricably intertwined; opposite sides of the same coin. While, as a society, we like to mythologise the lives of tortured…
An Honest talk about men’s mental health
By distilling the essence of a drunken public servant named Dave in his Adelaide Fringe performances of DC Moore’s one-man play Honest, British actor and activist Matt Hyde tapped into…
Burlesque that bares soul
Velvet Chase Productions, with their two neo-burlesque shows in the Adelaide Fringe, #nofilter and Gorelesque, aim to normalise the mental illness debate while healing audience members and performers in the…
Josh Belperio’s wall of existential despair
Josh Belperio’s sophomore Fringe show, 30,000 Notes, is an exploration of how tightly humanity clings to its strongest attachments: the bonds we form with the people that we love, and…