Rex Cramphorn 1941-1991

In 1971 Cramphorn seemed to be everywhere. He directed Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale and
the world premiere of Barry Conyngham’s Edward John Eyre for the University of New South Wales’ Music Department, and The Dutch Courtesan for the Old Tote. The Performance Syndicate was seen in Pericles at Jane Street and Yang’s Orestes at the Arts Factory, a converted warehouse in Surry Hills, and participated in John Bell’s first professional production of Shakespeare: a ‘dark’ Macbeth, at Nimrod, with Nick Lathouris in the title role. Cramphorn also found time to become drama critic for The Sunday Australian and work as Jim Sharman’s assistant on the quirky cult film Shirley Thompson versus the Aliens, after which Sharman invited him to design the costumes for Harry M. Miller’s original production of Jesus Christ Superstar, which opened at the Capitol in Sydney on 4 May 1972. That same year Cramphorn directed Helmut Bakaitis’ Shadows of Blood for Nimrod, and productions of Macbeth and The Tempest for the Old Tote. The latter also played a season at the Guild Theatre at Melbourne University. 

Cramphorn worked with Grotowski when he visited Australia in 1972. At the end of that year Cramphorn and Christopher Muir were recruited to breathe new life into the ailing St Martin’s Theatre in the conservative Melbourne suburb of South Yarra. St Martin’s – formerly the Little Theatre – had served its community since 1931, but its audience had aged and dwindled, and it had been eclipsed by the livelier offerings of the Melbourne Theatre Company and the Australian Performing Group. In March 1973 Cramphorn’s Performance Syndicate productions of The Tempest and an adaptation of Hans Andersen’s The Marsh King’s Daughter played there in repertory. Jeff Underhill’s Australian musical The Ballad of Angel’s Alley followed in May. The experiment failed and St Martin’s ceased production within a year.

By this time the Performance Syndicate was losing momentum. Its last productions were the Sanskrit classic Shakuntala and the Ring of Recognition for the Adelaide Festival and Alan Simpson’s Muriel and George Hutchinson’s My Shadow and Me at Jane Street, all in 1974; and Racine’s Bérénice and Molière’s Scapin, in Cramphorn’s translation, in 1975. In 1975, totally ‘out of character’, he directed an irreverent NIDA spoof of the vintage musical comedy Rio Rita, which introduced talent like Brandon Burke, Colin Friels and Tom Burlinson. He directed Helmut Bakaitis’s Le Château d’Hydro-Thérapie Magnétique the following year.