The German Club. Adelaide Fringe 2018. 16 Feb 2018
The guided media tour around The German Club’s performance spaces - still being set up with seats, tech and rigging -by GC Co-Director Colin Koch AM, serves a significant purpose.
With sparse, focused intent Koch offers a succinct rundown of each room’s role, capacity and theme as part of The German Club for its iteration as a Fringe performance venue.
A strong sense of the German community this club represents is established alongside the genres of each room. By the time the media tour party arrive back in the club Bistro, it is also apparent how incredibly easy the building is to navigate, with bars and restaurant perfectly placed to sustain a vibrant, flowing social energy within.
Koch, a Member of the Order of Australia and seasoned contributor to the arts industry nationally and internationally, muses on the The GC’s role in terms of programming since its inception in 2016.
Koch tells us it is about reconnecting an older audience; those not feeling in sync with the ‘pop up venue culture’; those not up for the long and winding venue queues.
The answer is its music program, abetted by cabaret. Most particularly the In Concert series The GC inaugurated in 2016.
Koch and Co-Director Alan Rosewarne partnered with Rob Pippan’s RRP event company in 2016 to curate In Concert 1 series. In Concert 3 series will follow on from the clear success of the first two years.
Pippan and Koch are old school rock and roll/blues musos with a deep love of what is best in Australian and South Australian music. Pippan is proudly evangelistic as he outlines the third concert series, which is to be expected from a 40 year music industry veteran who’s worked with the who’s who of the game, including the band he founded, Zep Boys, the late Doc Neeson of The Angels, Joe Camelleri of The Black Sorrows, Russell Morris and most especially pertinent to today’s event, Glenn Shorrock of Little River Band, who is the In Concert Series 3 headline act.
It’s a program very much about respect for the history of these bands’ role in Australian music culture, especially given Shorrock is about to write his memoir.
Local bands get a go too, with The Flaming Sambucas offering The ABBA Gold Show and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - A Tribute to the Songs of Elton John, Rumours offer The Fleetwood Mac Show while Andy Seymour’s Buddy Diamond 1960 – A Night at The Stardust is his new show.
David O’Brien
Where: 223 Flinders Street Adelaide
Program details: thegcadelaide.com.au
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
The river Palais is coming back to glorious life. Hooray.
For almost a year, people have grumbled that its hibernation shape was blot on the riverscape.
Now, as the Festival opens up its 2018 program, it glows with promise of beautiful sounds, sights, concepts and tastes.
By night, it will throb with music, laughter and celebration.
But first thing in the morning, it has a very special magic.
It is the clever thinkspace of the Adelaide Festival.
As the fragrance of fresh coffee wafts across the water, people gather for Breakfast with the Papers.
This is when ideas are spun, when satirical quips fly and when caustic commentaries whip across the crisp pages of the morning papers.
This is when journalists come out to play with literary identities, when Writers’ Week and local scribes cross paths and when bright and curious Adelaideans can have the best free entertainment.
Breakfast with the Papers was introduced last year, its lively interactions instantly demonstrating its staying power as a Festival event.
This year, with CIBO Espresso coffee on hand alongside the papers courtesy of The Advertiser, Tom Wright again will host the morning current affairs show bringing together panels of interesting media brains - from visiting Festival identities to familiar local journalists, from renown writers to specialist academics - a new crop each morning.
The Palais opens its doors at 7am when the Torrens waters shimmer in the morning calm and the odd swans glide by. It pays to arrive early to beat the coffee queue. But this gives some reflective time to browse the free copies of the paper before their contents are dissected.
I had the pleasure last Festival of being one of Tom Wright’s panellists in a session with American political analyst Thomas Frank from Writers’ Week and fellow Aussie journalist Peter Cave. It was good grist on the American political front whence I had just returned from a 6-month road trip around the USA observing the rise and rise and then election of Donald Trump. The world was still numb with shock.
It was exciting to see the Palais filling up with interesting Festival and community personalities. Even the Festival’s artistic directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healey, can’t resist joining these audiences. This year, with the Trump regime’s Tweet-driven madness reverberating through the world, the political discussions promise to be wild with Australian politics also sitting right up there in the controversial hot seat.
Breakfast with the Papers, along with David Marr’s Festival Forums on the Palais, are free events.
They are part of a diverse 47-event program which will keep the Palais bubbling along from morning until deepest dark for 17 festive days.
By night it becomes a floating music mecca with bright lights laughter and cocktails. Top acts will perform, from sweet melodic lilting folk sounds like Julia Jacklin and divine Lior, to Archie Roach AM and the Perfumed Genius and Grizzly Bear and Regurgitator. Heels will kick up and the water below will shimmy to the tempos.
At lunchtime on the Palais, it is another story altogether.
Foodies will unite in this glorious foodie city.
The Palais will assume a gourmet mantle hosting luscious Long Lunch events catered by top chefs. Obviously, these gourmet happenings aren’t freebies like Breakfast with the Papers or the David Marr forums. They’re $169 a head and are exquisite gustatory adventures delivered by the foodie stars of the moment from here and afar. Needless to say, they’re pretty hot ticket events. Book now.
All the details can be found on the links below.
Samela Harris
The Palais
Where: Adelaide Riverbank and Elder Park
When: 2 to 18 March
Visit: adelaidefestival.com.au for exact times
Festival hospitality options are available.
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au or BASS 131 246
Long Lunches Program
Sun 4 Mar - O Tama Carey
Sat 10 Mar - Jared Ingersoll
Sun 11 Mar - Alex Herbert
Mon 12 Mar - Jordan Theodoros
Sun 18 Mar - Janet Jeffs
Time: 11.45am – 3pm
Cost: $169 per person. Transaction fees apply
Breakfast with the Papers
Palais open from 7am daily
Hosted panel session 8 to 9am
No sessions Friday 2 Mar & Mon 5 Mar
Free Entry – No bookings required
Festival Forums
Fri 2 Mar 12.30pm
Mon 5 Mar to Fri 9 Mar 12.30pm
Tue 13 Mar to Fri 16 Mar 12.30pm
Duration 1hour
Free Entry – no bookings required
Wow! A kick butt statement! How else to ponder allowing a very young emerging arts company to launch its 2018 season in the Balcony Room of South Australia’s Parliament House?
The evening proved revelatory.
With a short rush of play from three characters of Stephen Sewell’s Welcome The Bright World, which House of Sand and State Theatre Company of South Australia are presenting next year, a story unfolded, overlooking the big renovation of the Adelaide Festival Centre.
Artistic Director Charles Sanders and I chatted. We narrowed down on something important which is a problem that dates back to the 90’s… in Adelaide especially. How do you get to be a developing second tier artist or company in South Australia, let alone anywhere else? When funding decisions have essentially destroyed the sector connecting arts and community?
The answer? Cross collaboration, within the state and around the nation.
Sanders expressed it well in his speech, observing, “South Australia has been wonderful at investing in the hardware that makes theatre possible — theatres and festivals and institutions. And we’ve got some amazing ‘software’ too, wonderful major companies and independent artists doing wonderful work. But I’d hazard to suggest there’s a ‘gap’ in the software — through no lack of trying by many, many skilled and talented individuals and collectives, there’s not enough high quality, independent theatre by early and mid-career artists, supported by decent company structures… We need the work to fill all these shiny new buildings.”
Sanders has been dividing his time between Adelaide and Sydney and joins another Adelaide force of this cross-state-creative-nature existent on stage, isthisyours. They just completed a season at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Adelaide of Angelique, but individually divide their time on income making projects interstate or overseas. However, they remain dedicated to making work in Adelaide.
The cross-state collaboration is becoming markedly a new model for those small companies we know and love. Even more, you can take it overseas as Sanders has done in New Zealand. Two works of House of Sand 2018 programme, dance theatre works, have played to award winning success in New Zealand last year, Pedals and Castles.
Rolling through the House of Sand 2018 program, all of the above becomes wonderfully evident in the potential offered and hope given for ‘home’ made excellence.
Sanders’ programme is a ‘hella yeah’ blend of dance, politics and theatre stretching from the aforementioned production of Sewell’s Welcome The Bright World to hard-hitting, hard to get performing rights of Alice Birch’s Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.
I’d go. I’ve spent a quarter century supporting this kind of gutsiness.
David O’Brien
What: Pedals. Castle
When: 8 Feb to 7 March
Where: Holden Street Theatres
What: Welcome The Bright World
When: 20 Sept to 6 Oct 2018
Where: Queens Theatre
What: Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.
When: 20 Nov to 1 Dec
Where: Holden Street Theatres
As a music lover, there are lots of artists and albums that I rate highly, yet interestingly there are relatively few that occupy the status of being ‘favourites’. Among others, my favourites include names like Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden, and a little Canadian trio called The Tea Party! I’ve long been a fan of these guys, and have the great fortune of catching them play, as well as a host of other acts that front man Jeff Martin has put together, many, many times. Every time they return, I’m just as excited as the first time I witnessed them all those years ago.
It seems that at the moment, lots of past acts are either doing reunion shows or tours celebrating past releases and the like. On face value, The Tea Party seem to be doing something similar, as they tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their awesome fourth album, Transmission. But then you realise that unlike so many contemporaries running the cash-in cycle, The Tea Party actually reunited quite a few years ago after a hiatus and have released a few albums in that time too, so this tour really is a celebration; and what an album to celebrate!
Opening with the sensational party-starter Temptation, things go from strength to strength. As a big Tea Party fan, I’ve followed them on their musical journey and each album is a new path on that journey, a definite progression through the musical ether.
Transmission builds on their earlier releases, Splendor Solis and Edges Of Twilight, but is somewhat heavier with Eastern influences and more electronic sounds than we’d heard before. Tunes like the aforementioned Temptation, the mellow Eastern-progressive Psychopomp and Release, thumping Gyroscope or Babylon, and the massive epic title track still get my heart pumping two decades on.
Not only are these guys touring, but they’ve also re-recorded the album’s biggest tunes - Temptation, Psychopomp, Release, and Transmission - released them as an EP, and also produced a coffee-table book retrospective of the Transmission era. Like Big Kev, I’m excited!
The Tea Party are set to play Thebarton Theatre on Thursday November 2nd. They’ll be playing Transmission in full for their first set, and will be back for more Tea Party goodness in what is sure to be a killer second set too! See you there!
Luke Balzan
When: 2 Nov
Where: Thebarton Theatre
Bookings: ticketmaster.com.au
Matt Byrne Media. Maxim’s Wine Bar.
On the opening night of Matt Byrne’s My Kitchen Fools, Matt Byrne will celebrate his 20th year bringing performances to Maxim’s Wine Bar in Adelaide’s east.
“Twenty years ago I was looking for a venue for my first Fringe show and the former Odeon Theatre manager Bob Jesser suggested I get in touch with a Sam Savis who had taken over the Leon’s Wine Bar and turned it into Maxim’s Wine Bar,” Byrne says.
The upstairs venue overlooks the corner of Norwood Parade and George Street at Norwood.
“It was nice and central opposite the Norwood Town Hall upstairs, there’s a great atmosphere and we have been using four stools and the dance floor ever since. Maxim’s is a great Fringe venue, as it’s intimate, still holds 100 people, the bar is always open and the people always seem to come in and out with a smile on their face.” Byrne continues.
Byrne’s first show, way back in 1997, was John Godber’s Bouncers. The show was a sell out for four weeks.
After performing Shakers in 2000 Byrne turned his hand to writing his own shows, and has never looked back.
“The first was Barrackers, then came Virgins, Pricks, Over The Hill, Chalkies, Caddyshack And Other Dangerfields, WAGS, The Penis Principles, P.I.G.S., Bogans, dateless.com, Chunderbelly, and The Luv Boat and now we have Matt Byrne’s My Kitchen Fools" Byrne says.
The four handers have become a bit of an Adelaide Fringe institution; well known for their bawdy humour, overflow of dad jokes, and spoof titles. Byrne’s quick wit is always showcased and there is virtually no end to the puns on offer.
“The Fringe has grown massively over the past 20 years.” Byrne says “There were only a few shows when I first presented Bouncers back in 1998, now we have more than 1,300 shows. We’ve had some wonderful actors in our Fringe shows over the years and I’m delighted with the cast for our new show Matt Byrne’s My Kitchen Fools”
Half-baked TV cookery is now in the oven as Byrne’s latest show turns up the heat on the ridiculous array of Celebrity Chefs and the many TV shows they serve us up.
“We used to have cooking shows, now we have cooking CHANNELS!” Byrne says
The show will be hosted and judged by Gordon Ramraid (Byrne), Nigella’s Awesome (Niki Martin), Rachel Rayban (Stefanie Rossi) and Jamie Bolivar (Marc Clement).
“But we also play the four teams who are fighting to win the right to run their own pop-up restaurant on The Parade,” Byrne continues, “We have Greek grandmother and grandson team Yia Yia and Con Moussaka, Scottish BFs Colin Justin and Justin Colin, the super bitchy Farkin Sisters Jacinta and Placinta and hippie collective Big Daddy Grassroots and his Nimbin niece Moonbeam.”
They are joined by other Celebrity Chefs, including Poo with an H, Saggy Beer, Galiano Zumba and Hester Bloominheck.
“We get to know, love and hate these people who have no cooking skills but loads of ambition,” Byrne says, “We sing and dance and give the audience an interactive taste of everything from snakes, to oysters, pheasant plucking, creamy cantaloupes and zero gravity green cheese. It’s a feast of comic ingredients but like every cooking show, it’s not about the food!”
The show will play from the 14th of February to the 19th of March at Maxim’s Wine Bar on Norwood Parade. Bookings can be made on 1300 621 255, adelaidefringe.com.au or mattbyrnemedia.com.au
Paul Rodda
When: 14 Feb to 19 Mar
Where: Maxim’s Wine Bar
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au