Archive for the ‘Adelaide Fringe Reviews’ Category

For once, I can agree with the official blurb for a 2009 Fringe show.

This is indeed a ”wicked black fat-heartedcomedy about love, loss and the mourning after”.

Bowengabbie is a fictitious, regional town that has lost is young people to the big cities, at least until family members die, forcing the young departed to return to pay respects to the dear departed. In many ways, it could be Victor Harbor which is affectionately referred to as “God’s waiting room”.

And because the funerals are frequent, the town is good at them, staging elaborately themed events in keeping with the loved ones’ wishes.

This play by Caleb Lewis hits the mark and actor Andrew Brackman does a brilliant job enacting a story full of colourful characters.

Often funny and always very human, I think most audiences will enjoy the story of Oscar, the young man “forced” back to Bowengabbie for a string of family funerals.

Buy tickets with confidence!

I have discovered a little venue of treasures for the 2009 Adelaide Fringe – The Tuxedo Cat, on the rooftop of 15-19 Synagogue Place in the city.

There is a superb array of shows running up in the clouds and they all espouse pure “fringeness”.

Other People’s Problems is a performance by Sarah Quinn of three short plays: Your Life Starts Tomorrow, Good Authority, and Self Help.

Sarah’s characterisations are well round and her transitions between characters quite fluid.

The three plays are all very simple, comedic and pithy. They examine the cult of the larger-than-life, self help gurus, the vulnerabilities of people enjoying their 15 minutes of fame through online social media channels, and the self-deluding lengths we all have the potential to go to in order to justify our timidity and lack of action.

Good, simple fun and an enjoyable way to spend 50 minutes during the Fringe.

Shakti’s Swan Lake is one of those “to be missed” shows.

Yes, there is precision, yes it is a good idea to explore this classic ballet, but no, this is not the way.

Shakti’s obvious skill is lost in this self-indulgent piece made worse by bad, bad costume choices.

There is a certain age after which nudity should be reserved for partners and naturist colonies, and Shakti has passed that age. Perhaps this is why most of us were distracted from the premise that the “black swan symbolises the material world and the white swan the pure desire within which cries to be released”. 

In this pitiful striptease-cum-dance, Shakti descends beneath dignity in moves and gestures that had four out of five audience members glancing at fellow patrons in disbelief, numerous times through the performance. 

One unexpected tragedy surrounding this show is how it strips credibility from the following reviewers/publications:

London Ballet Review: named it as one of their favourites!  

3 weeks, Edinburgh: “A more romantic piece you will not see!” If that is romance, a lapdance is akin to courtship!

Daily Mail: “You thought swans were sedate but they are sexy!” Nude and desperate perhaps, not sexy.

Scotsman: “Highlight of the festival!” Must have been a terrible festival

Independent: “Wild dance experience not to be missed!” Wild, yes, meaningful, no.

Herald: “Danced with utmost precision.” Methinks that is damning with faint praise.

Lesson learned: trust absolutely no recommendations from any of these publications ever again. 

Rich Hall is an Adelaide Fringe legend. And he keeps getting better with age.

His opening segment as Rich Hall is pure stand up gold. Yes, I am gushing a bit as I write this, but he is just so damned good it is hard to sound neutral.

Rich happily pokes fun at our habits and insular media (read “The Advertiser”) and then pokes fun at his own country, the US of A.

He barks and snarls his lines, wanders off the cuff, and prepares us for his alter ego, Otis Lee Crenshaw.

Otis, appearing courtesy of the Australian/US Prisoner Exchange program, and his band walk us through quirky, faux-chauvanistic, redneck-flavoured ditties in the guise of a country and western band.

We learn how to compare women to musical instruments, the dangers of Bundaberg Rum, and the subtlties of breaking up.

It is raucous, rough and razor sharp. It is Rich Hall. The safest spend of your Fringe budget.

This is pure Fringe brilliance.

A troupe of young actors, I Must Not Theatre, transport us to another world, in fact, into the inner world of a young John Lennon through a play written in 1968.

This play is based on the poetry and writings of John Lennon, and captures the spirit of fantasy and escapism that we are told he resorted to during his droll upbringing in WW2 England.

Don’t expect linear narrative in this show. Expect, instead, a mindscape, beautifully and playfully crafted, full of colour and movement and absurdism and satire and humour.

In part, this show is nuttier than many Goon scripts and more lunatic than many Monty Python scripts. It is like a hybrid of AA Milne and Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde. 

I won’t try to describe the show. I will say, enter with a relaxed, open mind, allow the players to play, and hold on for a disturbingly fun piece of theatre.