Bruckmor Entertainment. The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Umbrella Revolution. 20 Feb 2015
'Shotspeare'? Ha, ha, ha! What could they possibly mean? So off I went, and hey, this is a whole new way to do Shakespeare, specifically, Romeo and Juliet. S'easy.
First, be greeted at the door by the actors merrily downing Coopers' Mr Tims (a brilliant discovery for these Americans, and rightly so). While seats were taken, some audience members were offered shots of vodka in plastic cups from huge sweating bottles. Then the actors announced that there is going to be a considerable amount of drinking during the show, and it would be a lot more fun if you drank, too; I wished I was forewarned as I foolishly showed up empty handed. Then three audience members (there should be a word for audience member, like audient) were given power to call out Shotspeare and the show has to stop and everybody on stage has a shot of vodka. There was also a wheel that was spun prior to a soliloquy and some shenanigans were undertaken, like spanking, or throwing socks at the actors, and more shots. A lucky audience member was chosen to help out with the small parts, and he was told, "Noooooo, you can't take your own beer up here, you have to chug it!" which he did, and was immediately fixed up with a fresh Dr Tims. Giant vodka bottles and Dr Tims were iced on stage and ready to go. To add to the confusion, there was a guy dressed as a knight complete with armour in the front row, but he had nothing to do with the show.
Oh, the show. Well, that was completely shambolic, as you might expect. Somewhere on stage were good actors who accomplished a one hour R &J - complete with ridiculous sword fights - filled to the gills. In sweat-soaked period costumes, they cavorted and yelled their way through the script with gleeful irreverence, but there were heaps of surprisingly (given the circumstances) performance bits that connected with me, and the silouetted sex scene was a real hoot.
I got caught up in the fun, I mean, it's a funny (weird) show, it's a concept that would normally not be remembered to have been thought of the night before on a bender - somebody must have been taking notes. So I kept thinking, "Why did they do it?" Does the booze excuse substandard performance? Does it unite the players and audience in Bacchanalian revelry? Is it a great way to make R & J an out-and-out comedy? Did it make Shakespeare accessible?
I walked out of the show, thinking, "Wow, that was pretty novel; I had a few yucks" and the day after, in the clear light of day without the buzz, I'm thinking, "What a load of crap." But if you want to experience the whole panoply of the Fringe experience, have a few Dr Tims with vodka chasers first.
David Grybowski
When: 13 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Umbrella Revolution
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Not Suitable for Drinking. Holden Street Theatres – The Arch. 19 Feb 2015
Personal stories are becoming quite the thing in Fringe 2015. Here’s another one. Thom Jordan’s mother called him “miracle child” because he survived childhood leukaemia, so he re-invented the disease to summon up miracles as an adult.
What a dishonest man he became. But that’s okay because he was in the dishonesty business. He had become an evangelical preacher. He preached about truth while enacting a great big lie. Problem was that lies eventually are found out and if you lie that you are dying of a terrible disease, sooner or later you have to die.
This liar was hale as can be.
So he cut his losses and quit living the lie.
To tell this tale, Jordan brings a rack of clothes onstage, dons an oxygen cord, and bounds around very vigorously setting up the story with a bit of stage shtick moving chairs about the place to depict his move from Brisbane to Sydney as a teenager. No matter how much energy and sparkling emphasis he puts into this, it is a boring bit of narrative. Worse, the performer seems rigidly over-rehearsed. Writer/Director Julia Patey needs to cut him some slack.
He winds the clock back to his childhood, living in a manse with his strict minister father and his embarrassingly mushy mother. Oh, he was born in the NT and then lived in Toowoomba. Then he got the leukaemia and they moved to Brisbane for treatments. Then he wasn’t special and he moved to sleep on his friend’s kitchen floor in Sydney. Then he discovered preaching.
And, to prove the point, he preaches. And he preaches. He struts and gestures and jumps about waving his arms. He quotes gospel. He repeats and repeats phrases, as they do. And he shouts and shouts and shouts.
When the end comes, it is a relief. One understands that, by default, he found truth himself. And he gave up the lie.
This production is too long and tedious in the delivery of this message. The message is indistinct. Is the man still God-fearing or did he realise that his own fake illness was not the only lie in the business?
The idea of the show is good, but it needs a very serious re-working. It bills itself as “dark new comedy”...“about the nature of religion”. It needs to become that. And cut the preaching.
Just because the theatre venue was once a church does not mean the audience has come to hear a revivalist sermon.
Samela Harris
NOTE: Since writing this review, new information on the performance comes to hand indicating the show is not a personal account. This is not on the program notes. It muddies the water in a whole new way.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/pastor-with-cancer-spun-a-gospel-of-lies...
When: 14 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Arch
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
The Neo-Futurists. The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Le Cascadeur. 19 Feb 2015
A troupe of six very interesting and diverse young American thespians and a wonderfully eccentric concept borne of the traditions of good old improv.
This is a very Fringey Fringe show.
The actors attempt to perform 30 plays within one hour. The plays are chosen from numbers hanging on a line across the stage. Audience can call out a number and an actor will leap up, grab the number and a mini play or vignette will be enacted. There are some wonderful ideas and some screwball ideas in the lineup: ‘What not to bring to a party (Kale Chips)’; ‘A neo-futurist 12 1.2 question meta-survey’; ‘Erectile Dysfunction’; ‘Why women aren’t funny’, and more.
There is a Saturday-Night-Live feeling of American humour taking risks in this show. Some things fall flat. Some are highly lateral. Some are utterly daring. There is lots to choose from.
‘What I assumed people think I do when I tell them I’m a performance artist’ is a bit of a gem. The realisation of the thought is very fifties beatnik crazy.
‘The Neo-Futurists Demonstrate the World’s Most Bitchin’ Handshake’ showcases some pretty deft inter-actor co-ordination.
‘This and That’ is a brilliant little tongue-twisting variation on the Who’s-on-First routine.
And the audience is wooed and won by ‘An ever-changing collection of our experiences in Australia so far’. Those Americans are learning fast.
There is plenty of audience interaction. In one case, an audience member has to sit alone on stage and more or less emote.
But these shows are not consistent. No two performances are meant to be the same. The little playlets are swapped around and there is a general air of speed and spontaneity, although one knows a lot of care and workshopping has gone into the work which, overall, has been created by one Greg Allen.
The performers show the proper skills of the trade. We learn a little about each of them. They are not ordinary - but neither is the Fringe.
Why we are given names on arrival, though, beats me. I sat there wondering what Ali Baba was supposed to do. Nothing, as it turned out. Phew.
The troupe managed to get through 29 of their 30 little playlets, some lasting a few minutes and some being quick gags.
It is an hour of surprises, fun, laughs, raised eyebrows and general good spirit.
Samela Harris
When: 13 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Le Cascadeur
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Organised Pandemonium. The Garden of Unearthly Delights - The Vagabond. 18 Feb 2015
Organised Pandemonium indeed! Adelaide, meet Las Vegas, in this world premiere disco-circus extravaganza! Craig Ilott directed the award-winning glitz shows 'Smoke and Mirrors' and 'La Clique Royale' and he has outdone himself here. Disco is re-imagined with an impossible array of laser lights and shimmering sequins, and the beats are pounded out with the savagery of a high tech nightclub.
Ilott has assembled an impossibly talented cast combining singing and circus with burlesque and vaudeville. Crooner Brendan Maclean from 'The Great Gatsby' issues a dancing version of Gordon Lightfoot's '70s ballad, 'If You Could Read My Mind' that would have him turning in his grave. Wait a minute, he's not even dead! And while the disco tunes are flying out the door, he reverses things by slowing down The Bee Gees' 'Stayin' Alive' with a ukulele into a thought-provoking anthem to show biz.
Let's be frank about this, there was a hint of sexual liberation about the show. Stephen Williams wowed them on the aerial straps and Mirko Köckenberger dressed and undressed upside down on a stack of suitcases. The girls loved these guys when their ripples were revealed as the clobber was shed. Smiling Craig Reid bulged his tights in all the wrong places, looking more like an adolescent and unlikely cartoon hero, but he's not known as 'the incredible hula boy' for nothing; one, two, four, eight, more, so many he transformed into a human slinky!
Emma Goh defied gravity more than once high above the runway in dreamy tableaus that accompanied many of the songs. Perle Noire's strip tease won me over, but it suddenly became an African tribal affair with shimmering buttocks and swirling nipple tassels. Yabba dabba do! Gosh, Chaska Halliday and Rechelle Mansour showed they aren't just chorus girls with a sizzling "Turn The Beat Around.' The accomplished Joe
Accaria hid behind sunglasses way up back and mixed his live percussion with favourite songs. There was no expense spared for the outrageous costumes or anything else for that matter.
And then there was Marcia Hines. Decades as a pop and disco diva, she was the first black woman in 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' inducted in the ARIA Hall of Fame, and passed on her wisdom on 'Australian Idol.' Trussed up in a shimmering tight dress of gold lame, she was a paradigm of dignity and beauty, giving the audience the disco soul they came to see and hear.
This is a must-see show of non-stop stunning amazement. Double bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 13 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights - The Vagabond
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Don't Be Lonely. The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Le Cascadeur. 18 Feb 2015
Squidboy has now grown into a ‘Kraken’. A kraken is a mythical sea monster thought to inhabit the ocean between Norway and Greenland. Trygve Wakenshaw is a legendary physical movement comedian sighted regularly in a sea of audiences at festivals and fringes around the world, catching a swag of ‘best-of’ awards, and there are many that got away.
I was giddy from the very start. Wakenshaw is a rubber man with an uncanny ability to physicalise and vocalise character, animals, events, and objects. He is also a master of lateral thinking. Sizzling BBQ meat morphs into the hiss of a snake lulled by a snake charmer controlling the tune with a radio volume dial of compliant audience participation. A confident weightlifter transmogrifies into a mother and baby that magically becomes a drama on TV and then the birth of a horse. His human characters are hilariously hapless and naff.
Imaginary objects in his hands are easily suggested and are used in supernatural and surreal tasks. I was reminded of Robin Williams in ‘Mork and Mindy’ or even Williams' role model, Jonathan Winters. Wakenshaw loves to be looked at and could not finish the show. After an encore of embarrassing (if I was doing it) free style dance to a popular tune, he was imitating a stage hand changing over the set for the next show as the last audience member filed out; yes, that was me. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 13 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Le Cascadeur
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au