It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Nicky Bomba in all his various musical guises. One of the most talented and versatile musicians around right now, he’s turned his hand to many projects, and in recent times has been making quite an impression fronting the massive Melbourne Ska Orchestra.
Regularly venturing to our fair city, and always to rave reviews (admittedly, often from me!), they have some great ska albums under their belt. Always pushing the envelope – MSO’s last collection of tunes, Saturn Return, was released on USB – they’ve really gone the whole hog this year with their One Year Of Ska concept, a program that has the Orchestra release a new tune each week for the full year. It’s a massive 52-tune collection of ska heaven!
As we near the end of June there is no doubt that MSO has come a long way already. Themes within the releases become evident as time passes, with the first quarter covering a range of well-known, and less well-known, ska classics from across the ages and the current quarter showcasing movie and TV show theme tunes. What’s next? Who knows, but it will definitely be cool!
Looking at what’s been done so far, the 13-track ska classics suite covers a swathe of ska, and really is a logical and beautiful place to start the year-long journey. It’s an ode to the ska of days gone by, and includes tunes from the obvious stars of ska like the Skatelites’ Confucious and Man In The Street, the Specials’ Message To Rudy, Madness’ Night Boat To Cairo, Toots And The Maytals’ Monkey Man, or the Wailers’ classic Simmer Down, but some lesser known greats are here too, including Prince Buster’s Al Capone – the first release MSO made in the 52-tune behemoth – and Byron Lee’s Frankenstein.
With such a breadth of tunes included, this classics collection serves as a brilliant intro to the many facets of ska, as well as showcasing the sizeable talents of the MSO.
If the first collection pays tribute to music, the second suite is an ode to film, where the MSO present some fantastic versions of tunes from the big and small screens. Reading through the list, some choices are obvious, lending themselves very well to ska. But others are a surprise, keeping things fun all way through. The Austin Powers Theme kicks it off, with a ska-bossa nova take on the shagalicious tune which includes a couple of cheeky interludes of Dave and Ansel Collins’ Double Barrel. The theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm backs up Austin, and is a fairly logical choice too, but then it gets interesting with less ska-ish numbers, like the Doctor Who Theme, which comes across subtly and very well, the Family Guy Theme, which works spectacularly well, and then a great rendition of Star Wars, which is a fantastic medley of the Imperial March, Luke’s Theme (Main Titles), The Force Theme (Binary Sunset), and The Cantina Band so, just like the original Star Wars, this too is an epic (and yes, I am a Star Wars nerd!).
The mash-up of classic and modern fun continues with the themes from The Flintstones, Game Of Thrones, Hogan’s Heroes, and a bit of Latin flavour with Narcos. Silliness ensues with the Monty Python Theme, which skips along joyfully, while the James Bond Theme keeps the mix suave and cool.
There are a few more tunes to round out the collection, so keep your eyes peeled for those. Signing up to the MSO’s email-out, will ensure delivery of a link to the new tune right to your inbox each week, keeping you up to speed with all things ska.
And if the relentless releasing of new tunes each week is not enough for you, then get ready to concentrate all the ska you can imagine into a single night of joy, as the Melbourne Ska Orchestra are about to grace Adelaide’s shores once again! On Fri Jun 22, the MSO plays the Governor Hindmarsh, and with a 20+ crew of players, they’ll blow the place apart!
It may be cold outside, but the MSO will be hot, hot, hot! See you skanking down the front!
Luke Balzan
When: 22 Jun
Where: The Gov
Bookings: thegov.com.au
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. The Arts Theatre. 18 Mar 2018
Frankenstein’s Creature is alive and well and coming to a community near you.
That is the premise of the Nick Dear play of Frankenstein.
Of course, Frankenstein is based on the original Mary Shelly character, the mad scientist who creates The Creature in his laboratory.
In Dear’s adaptation for the National Theatre in London, one which scored success as a film starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Jonny Lee Miller, The Creature finds himself out in the big wide world trying to make sense of things.
It is a far cry from the classic yarn and it has stirred director Kerrin White and the Adelaide Repertory Theatre into producing it for a season starting April 5 in The Arts Theatre.
According to the British critics, it is a wild ride through an intriguing path of horror and also innocence.
The Creature would like to help people but they are horrified by him. He finds refuge and builds relationships not knowing who he is or why he is as he is. It is a turn-around of the classic story, compelling, electrifying and moving.
Kerrin White plans to give it a wild, Gothic atmosphere.
He has cast Steve Parker and Patrick Clements in the principal roles of The Creature and Victor Frankenstein.
Clements describes his character of Frankenstein as a man compelled to find ways to beat death since his own mother’s early death.
“Why does God get to be the only one to play God?” he asks.
“The emotional journey is interesting and fun to play in this version of the story because we see Victor after the creation of The Creature and he is dishevelled and tortured by his failings and accomplishments. Now we get to follow him in his downward spiral of madness and obsession.”
Clements says he does not intend to overplay the idea of the iconic Frankenstein but to examine the character and flaws of the man and play him as Victor. He describes his fellow actor, Steve Parker as “invested in this production and making The Creature his own.”
“The audience is going to have a wonderful journey in watching his performance.”
Meanwhile, Parker describes Clements' energy as “the opposite of mine which works brilliantly for this production.”
Parker was surprised when first he read the play and discovered that The Creature was the star and not the support character as we have all previously understood it.
He undertook lots of research and went on a training regime to gain fitness and trim down albeit, he says, “I fear I will never be as willowy as Benedict Cumberbatch or Jonny Lee Miller, the original actors in this play.”
He thinks audience members will relate to The Creature as depicted in this thrilling work.
“We all start innocent, but it’s not long before the realities of life place larger and harsher demands on ourselves,” he explains.
“As the conflict between a personal desire to be loving and good grows with the outside world’s constant bombardment of demands and petty harms, we tend to, in the least, cut ourselves off and, at the extreme, to seek revenge. I want to emphasise that The Creature did not start out as a villain but was made so by events and experiences beyond his control. Not as an excuse for his actions but perhaps as an explanation.”
The Rep's production of Frankenstein, based on the novel by Mary Shelley and adapted for the stage by Nick Dear runs at The Arts Theatre from 5 to 7 and 11 to 14 April, 2018.
Samela Harris
When: 5 to 14 Apr
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: adelaiderep.com
Adapted from Media Release. 13 Mar 2018
WOMADelaide 2018 wrapped up on Monday 12th March after four days of spectacular performances and an attendance of 96,000 people. The audience was held spellbound by an especially grand-scale, dazzling program that took them on a unique and memorable adventure through the world of music, arts and dance.
The 2018 program featured standout performances from more than 70 groups from 25 countries, including truly mesmerising shows on the Foundation Stage by Anoushka Shankar on opening night, the brilliance of American jazz maestro Kamasi Washington on Sunday and a powerhouse finale from Thievery Corporation.
With such a vast and diverse array of performers, organisers say it is not easy to list only a few highlights, however Tank and the Bangas’ Tarriona ‘Tank’ Ball had the audience in the palm of her hand within moments of their opening night set, the ‘bad boys of jazz’, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, conquered all who saw them, as did the elegance and vocal mastery of Cuba’s young Daymé Arocena and Cape Verde’s Lura.
Australia’s Baker Boy, Remi x Sampa and The Avalanches attracted great audiences, while Dustyesky’s delightfully tongue-in-cheek 28-strong all-male choir beautifully complemented Mama Kin Spender’s rich, warm songs accompanied by a 24-piece local choir. Thousands also flocked to Frome Park to experience the thrilling and visually spectacular Manganiyar Seduction from India.
A resounding highlight of the festival, Gratte Ciel’s Place des Anges, delighted young and old with a magical aerial spectacular as the visiting ‘Angels’ danced lighting up the skies above the treetops each night, filling everyone with joy and wonder.
WOMADelaide Director Ian Scobie said he had been “thrilled to witness the joyous reaction of audiences – and to see so many people experience WOMADelaide.”
He added that “we were blessed by ‘Angels’ both on, off and above the stages and the memories will linger for many years and [continue to] inspire audiences…”.
On reflection of the wonderful performances, Scobie said it “has been a joy… to see that some of the biggest crowds were for artists perhaps lesser-known in Australia, such as Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area Band from Ghana, Violons Barbares from France/Bulgaria/Mongolia and the youthful Elephant Sessions from Scotland.”
WOMADelaide fans now have to wait another year before the next WOMADelaide will be celebrated from 8-11 March 2019 in Botanic Park, Adelaide, South Australia.
Photography by Paul Rodda
Now established as a vital, vigorous and ground-breaking Fringe Festival entity, Holden Street Theatres is spreading its entrepreneurial wings with programs for Adelaide’s other important festivals: the Festival of Ideas, the Cabaret Festival, and the Feast Festival.
First up, in July, it is throwing a truly thrilling and deeply provocative show into the wonderful Festival of Ideas. Locker Room Talk springs from Donald Trump’s now famous justification for demeaning women in the name of the locker room. Holden Street’s Martha Lott, defines it as “a searing social commentary”.
And it is just the beginning of a wealth of new programming.
The secret to Holden Street’s success as a beyond-the-CBD Fringe venue has been its curated programs.
Director Martha Lott has made a point of importing the crème de la crème of Edinburgh Festival theatre and presenting Fringe seasons of new-wave or simply high calibre theatre. With a bar, food trucks and easy parking, Holden Street has been the upmarket Fringe of the Fringe, serving a demographic of serious art lovers and a wealth of drama and media students. It has become the “home of theatre” and some people spend their whole Fringes down there.
Thus with her venue well and truly front-of-mind among Adelaide audiences, Lott is using her entrepreneurial skills and her canny instinct for what will thrill an audience to spread her programs throughout the year. She discovered Locker Room Talk in Edinburgh in 2017. When she approached the Festival of Ideas chair Greg Mackie and Executive Producer, Sandy Verschoor, about bringing it here to the Festival of Ideas, she says the reception was very positive.
The established reputations of Holden Street and the famous Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh were clear credentials for this Rapid Response Theatre production, not to mention its sell-outs in Dublin and London.
Misogyny is a hot issue which is not threatening to go off the boil any time soon. This show looks at it in a very alternative and arresting manner.
It is not conventional theatre as understood by many. It involves recordings relayed via headphones and performed verbatim by a cast of women. It is all about the inequality of women. The women convey the words of men about women. These quotes have been gleaned through hundreds of conversations with men and boys. The idea explores the rights and wrongs, the thens and nows, honesty and ignorance and whether our world is as progressive as we like to think it is.
The concept was developed by Traverse Theatre’s Associate artist Gary McNair who with Traverse Theatre's Artistic Director Orla O’Loughlin, is a leader of Rapid Response Theatre. They’re considered to be two of the most important theatre makers of our time and will be interacting with Adelaide actors and theatre workers when bringing the work to town. Local actors will be involved.
Lott is jubilant that she has secured this controversial show not just for Holden Street but with a place in the Festival of Ideas.
“It is vital that we represent current issues in the arts and this is a brilliant example of how this can occur successfully,” she says.
Hereafter, her plans will fill the year not only with the usual in-house productions and relationships with exciting new Adelaide theatre companies such as Red Phoenix, which are a product of Holden Street’s creative umbrella, but with new shows tailored to the city’s busy arts calendar.
Hence, there will also be Cabaret Fringe Festival fare in June and Feast Festival fare in November.
Samela Harris
More info: holdenstreettheatres.com
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