Adelaide Fringe. Adriano Cappelletta. 25 Feb 2017
‘Cabaret gay rom-com’ is a slick, to the point, pitch line for what is indeed a great show, but it doesn’t quite encompass the depth on offer in an all-too-quick hour.
Adriano Cappelletta’s writing manages to simultaneously offer the quirky façade of a rom-com film with sharp observations about inner maturity, role models and lifestyle cliches.
Director Johann Walraven makes excellent use of Cappelletta’s clowning skills in play with a mix of live and recorded sound score and songs. The production moves with great pace as we join intelligent, affable and nerdy freelance actor Aldo, 35. He just has to find real love, the real Mr Right. Now. There’re plenty of hurdles to overcome not including the less than satisfactory online hook up scene.
Cappelletta offers the audience a wonderfully romantic wide eyed Aldo who bursts onstage from behind the audience, following three shirts he’s pitched there from the darkness. Aldo’s dance with each shirt in ‘which one’ mode reveals a sensibility far younger than 35, yet powered by a wit much older.
Meeting Felix, stylish human rights lawyer, changes everything.
Cleverly interweaved in the sharp comedy, one snarky on the money song is a line of personal awakening slowly growing beneath the surface of this snappy paced entertainment.
It’s both rewarding and deeply compelling for an audience who cannot fail but be both charmed and impressed with Cappelletta’s Aldo as he faces up to himself, and the real demands of love.
Cappelletta’s great achievement is producing a work of cabaret that sweetly entertains, and by unleashing the goodwill of laughter, uses the power of cabaret to question what is real and what is fantasy.
David O’Brien
When: 24 Feb to 5 March
Where: Royal Croquet Club, The Parlour
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Septuplet. Nexus Arts. 25 Feb 2017
Last week it was Tubular Bells performed by (only) two musicians! One week later Mike Oldfield’s iconic 1973 composition makes a return but this time put through its paces by an ensemble of seven, who prosaically call themselves…Septuplet.
Septuplet comprises Kate White (MD, vocals, piccolo), Dianne Davis (piano), Lisa Robinson (keyboards, vocals), Dennis Johnson (percussion, including tubular bells), Justin Hartwig (guitars, mandolin, vocals), Danny Gyory (guitars, bass and vocals), and Dave Tagg (bass, keyboard, vocals).
To a person the musicians were well disciplined and ‘tight’, with very few mistakes. In some respects, Tubular Bells inhabits the world of minimalist composition, and minimalism can become quite hypnotic and surreal, which makes it the perfect musical environment for performance errors to quietly slip in. However, White (and Davis) kept the outfit together.
The programme notes credit Tagg with the particular transcription that was used for the performance. It foregrounded particular riffs and counterpoint melodies more noticeably than what might have been expected, and the ‘all up’ mixing made this even more obvious. The ‘sound contour’ of the composition was at times lost. The famous ostinato bass line pattern that enters mid-way through Part 1 was especially prominent to the extent that one might have thought that Tubular Bells was ‘all about the bass’!
Nexus was almost full to capacity, and the audience was visibly enjoying what they were hearing. There weren’t too many hands or feet or nodding heads that were not discreetly beating in time. Tubular Bells is catchy, spine-tingling music, and after more than forty years it is still intriguing audiences as they allow the catchy melody lines, harmonies and complex polyrhythms to transport them to all manner of musical places.
The encore of the very catchy Portsmouth, featuring White on the piccolo, delighted the audience.
If you are curious about Tubular Bells, and perhaps have only heard it on recordings, this event is worth taking in.
Kym Clayton
When: 25 Feb to 19 Mar
Where: Nexus Arts
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. TB Arts. Odeon Theatre. 24 Feb 2017
Out and into the big league come the students of TB Arts with a great big musical production for the Fringe.
There’s a cast of thousands showing off their theatre skills in Singing in the Rain Jr at the Odeon and, with them, an audience which packs the theatre to the rafters long before the curtain comes up. Good seats in this General Admission house depend on early arrival. Be warned. Even 15 minutes before curtain, this ultra-punctual critic ended up in the lofty third-to-back row wherein audacious last-minute arrivals asked us to compromise the children's carefully-chosen sightlines by moving to fit them in.
As it was, one of the children still had trouble seeing, albeit she declared that she had seen sufficiently to enjoy the show and even make critical assessments, admiring the leads and ensemble work but noting “they need more bobby pins in the dancers’ hair”.
TB Arts uses the old alternating cast routine to give all their students a chance to shine and have the full production experience. Opening night was the “Gene Kelly Cast” which presented Gemma Caruana in the role of the ghastly silent movie star Lina Lamont whose vile voice brings sweet Kathy Seldon her big break to stardom by dubbing Lina behind the scenes. In a massive blonde wig, Caruana hams it up to the shrillest and most ear-splitting degree as awful Lena, playing it for laughs and getting them. Alongside her, another up-and-coming character actor is Josh Spiniello playing Cosmo, the good and vaudevillian funny offsider of heartthrob Don Lockwood. Spiniello mugs and hams all over the place. He is entirely appealing and his loony Make ‘Em Laugh performance is a treat. Oddly, compared to the other principals, he seems cruelly under-miked. Amelia Sanzo as Kathy is quite the opposite. Indeed the show’s sound needs quite a bit of tweaking. But, while over amplified on the opening night, Sanzo shows herself to be a very poised young performer with a good, strong singing voice. Opposite her in the Gene Kelly role of Don, Lachlan Zilm delivers matinee idol charm and braves some difficult tap routines.
Behind the scenes is a strong team under director, Michelle Davy. Some scene changes are a bit leisurely but the big numbers are nicely honed with choreography by Zak Vasiliou and Laura Brook and musical direction from Mitchell Smith. Costumes and lighting also are impressive but maybe not the big feature for which the audience waits, real rain falling for the title song.
It’s an underwhelming scene with just one line of water which is hard to see from the back. Zilm does his heroic tap dancing best to fill the stage.
The show shines on the big numbers, Broadway Melody particularly, and the massive chorus cast is ever effervescent.
The big high spot comes at the very end of the show when both stage and auditorium are filled with dancers under fairy-lit umbrellas giving a great big refrain of the title song. It’s a glorious, sparkling finale.
Samela Harris
Warning: The Fringe program gives this abridged show’s running time as 60 minutes but for whatever reason, TB has added an interval which brings the show down at 90 minutes.
When: 24 to 27 Feb
Where: Odeon Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Davine Interventionz Productions. Star Theatres. 24 Feb 2017
David Gauci once again brings a stunning premiere musical to Adelaide with his latest offering, Violet. The 2016 announcement of the production garnered much attention and excitement from local performers and as such an outstanding cast has been assembled to bring Gauci’s vision into reality.
The hype is true, this is a wonderful show, and at its epicentre, is one of the most exciting performances seen in local theatre for some time.
The central character Violet, played by Casmira Cullen, hails from a small farm on the side of a hill in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Violet seeks the miracle working prayers of a televangelist in Tulsa, Oklahoma to heal the scars on her face, caused by the head of a wayward axe as a child. On her journey, aboard a greyhound bus, she meets two young men – both soldiers – who change her life. They are black army sergeant, Grady ‘Flick’ Figgins played by Fahad Farooque, and white army paratrooper, Montgomery ‘Monty’ Harrell, played by Mitchell Smith.
Cullen, in the title role, plays the self-shaming, tomboyish Violet with absolute conviction, laced with a subtle underlying vulnerability and an air of hope. Cullen’s Violet is easy to warm to even when her character is completely cold towards others. She nuances over the lyric with ease and transitions effortlessly from dialogue to song. Cullen perfectly encapsulates the helplessness and desperate desires of an isolated and seemingly naive young woman into the warm shell of a down to earth country girl who just wants to be loved; and it is stunning to watch.
She is ably supported by a stellar cast, many leads in their own right, but it is Farooque and Smith who make Cullen’s journey as Violet all the more rich with Eloise Q. Valentine brilliantly echoing Cullen in flashbacks to her youth, weaving detail into the rich tapestry of the story. They all give lovely performances, balancing Violet in their own way; Flick is generous and caring, Monty is charming and self-confident. Both are tenacious in the pursuit of Violet’s love.
Valentine’s Young Violet makes visceral the anger and resentment of her older self, revealing the girl who becomes the woman behind the scar.
Adam Goodburn is Violet's father and brings both heart and guts, manifested in his struggle to relate to Violet and through the guilt he suffers for her disfigurement.
The whole cast sing beautifully, and most especially when they are harmonising in chorus. On My Way is particularly stirring – sending shivers down one’s spine - as are numbers which draw threads through the show such as Water In The Well, and All To Pieces. Musical Director, Peter Johns has clearly drilled the voices and the orchestra to note perfection, and the hard work of many is a massive reward for the audience.
Gauci’s production tackles the difficult task of playing scenes in multiple locations successively and in some cases concurrently quite well. For the most part the setting of individual scenes is wonderfully successful, adequately conveying time and place, but on the whole there is a feeling of disjointedness and patchiness in the set, which is not aided by some poorly-focussed lighting design which brings parts of the set into the fore when it should be receding from view. Whilst all aspects of the set add to the overall storytelling in their own way, this is certainly a production that could benefit from a less is more approach where lighting plays a bigger part in the transitions.
That being said the performances of the entire cast still surpass any grievances, and the production is supremely enjoyable to watch.
It is Cullen’s outstanding performance that really makes this show soar. The fact that she shines so bright above a cast of such high calibre is tribute to her superlative abilities.
Bravo!
Paul Rodda
When: 25 Feb to 4 Mar
Where: Star Theatres, Hilton
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Prospect Productions. The GC At the German Club
It is sad how some of the world’s colourful figures can fall into oblivion. Coral Browne was an outspoken and much-loved star in her day. While her career played out largely overseas, she found her way into her Australian homeland's consciousness most particularly when she married the Hollywood star, Vincent Price. But, in her day, Coral Browne was definitely a beloved name in the theatre.
She could have stayed lost in time had it not been for Maureen Sherlock who has penned a bio monologue which zips through the outspoken star’s life, complete with the loathed critical mother who seemed determined to outlive her.
Genevieve Mooy has braved the task of embodying Browne and bringing Sherlock’s lively script to life for the Fringe.
The GC’s intimate surrounds work well for such a venture, albeit the venue should please ban noisy potato crisps from performance spaces. In its 6pm slot, noise from the adjoining restaurant does not seem to impact on the one-hander.
It’s a simple and effective set, designed by Rob George and Carol Yelland and representing Browne’s Hollywood Hills home in the 1990s. There’s a red chaise lounge, table, chair, hatstand and telephone with a painting on the wall which accommodates assorted slides of the star’s childhood, her many famous lovers, and various movie posters. There are also packing boxes and scrap books; the props which reference the fact that everything in the script has come from Browne archives boxed up in Melbourne and Adelaide.
From the hatstand, Mooy whisks headpieces which illustrate moments and, most significantly, create the costume for the scenes in which she becomes Browne’s dreaded mother. While mother is very Australian, Coral Browne’s accent, polished over the decades in the UK, is frightfully British. Mooy segues between the two with ease.
The script is dense and demanding, a tough call in the memory department and, by season’s end, Mooy should have it fully streamlined. But she is such an elegant pro that, even when calling for a line, she remains comfortably in character.
And she looks superb. Most courageously, she has aged up to play Browne looking back from the end of her career. She wears a stunning silvery top over loose black slacks and subtly bling shoes to reflect the glitter of the red carpet.
The show opens with Browne accepting her BAFTA award and then rolls back through the star-studded career on the London stage. Play after play, character after character, lover after lover, Mooy rattles through them at high speed, ensuring that a massive life’s work fits into the Fringe schedule’s one hour. The script is peppered with the bright wit characteristic of Maureen Sherlock’s works, the likes of Alzheimers the Musical and Ada and Elsie. While Browne was a funny woman in her own right, Sherlock has ensured enhanced entertainment value with just enough added gags.
It’s a fine actress onstage playing a fine actress and looking every bit the beautiful part.
The show is still being born and it promises to run in as a classic and classy bio piece which will have legs to play all over the country, and give the world the gift of a wonderful, vivid, provocative and fearless Australian artiste rediscovered.
Samela Harris
When: 23 Feb to 19 Mar
Where: The GC At the German Club
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au