Erth. Norwood Concert Hall. 27 Feb 2016
The kids will love this. I was interested in dinosaurs since I was a young'un - I learned all their names and went to the museum myself on Saturday morning to look at their skeletons. So I loved it. Parents will love it.
Australian designer and creator Scott Wright knows his audience too well and winds them at the beginning of the show to their delight, starting with dinos in nappies and promising to bring out the big dinos later. While the show has been around for some time, what's on offer in the Festival is the version developed for Broadway. You will see the same show that Alicia Keys, Jerry Seinfeld and Sarah Jessica Parker and their kids enjoyed in The Big Apple. Up until that point, Wright's original show was true dinky-di, sporting only Australian dinosaurs, but now the world favourites are included, like triceratops and T.rex.
Wright advocates responsible behaviour around dinosaurs. Useful information is eased in even as the kids squeal in delight. Some lucky kids (very helpful to sit near the front) get on stage to pet the baby critters after some brief instruction useful to dealing with any pet. Lots of quasi-scary and fun audience participation as well. And anyone who has been to Cape Otway Lighthouse will be delighted to confront a couple of emu-size Laeallynasaura that were discovered nearby in Dinosaur Cove.
The engine room of the show is the technology of the puppets, the largest whole creatures are larger than SUVs, and there were two of them. And golly gosh, don't they look real! Their skin, their growl, head and jaw operations and the way the puppeteers manipulate large body movements. They are curious and intelligent. We don't see wild dinosaurs, we see very large pets.
I would have sworn Wright promised a dinosaur that would be capable of eating the seven bales of hay that were on stage in one go, so while a 'five-year old' juvenile T.rex was produced, I thought there would be a big surprise at the end of the show with a giant. No such luck.
Erth's Dinosaur Zoo is the next best thing to being in the Cretaceous, even better, because your toddler would have been the meal, not the master, of these magnificent and skillfully operated avatars.
P.S. See the article on Erth and their show in The Weekend Australian Review February 27-28, 2016.
David Grybowski
When: 27 Feb to 6 Mar
Where: Norwood Concert Hall
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
State Theatre Company, Belvoir and Malthouse Theatre in association with Adelaide Festival. Her Majesty's Theatre. 26 Feb 2016
David Greig is a fulsomely credentialed and amazingly prolific Scottish playwright and dramatist, with works commissioned and performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre of Scotland. So why did The Events just leave me feeling glum?
The Events premiered in Edinburgh in 2013 and is set in a small Scottish town, although you will find little of Scotland in the play and it could have been set anywhere. The work is Greig's response to the Norwegian mass murder of two years before. Claire, an Anglican minister, is leading a choir in a plainly staged rehearsal space. Played by Catherine McClements, she is impossibly cheery, chatty and friendly. The choir sings and the energy level is right up there. Claire coaxes a young man - or as the programme refers to him, The Boy - up onto the stage to participate. Thanks to Johnny Carr's performance, the energy evaporates and never really recovers. Besides you know who, Carr is also charged with playing multiple roles - father, friend, politician - who are associated with the gunman, and as Claire interviews all who the gunman knew, she sees the gunman. There he is again as Claire's partner, Katrina, and her counselor. I just see Carr struggling to differentiate these characters, or maybe he wasn't supposed to - I don't know what director Clare Watson required, it's not clear.
Claire is searching for answers, but we already know there aren't any that satisfy. Peter Shaffer provided this exploration much more effectively in Equus in a time when we weren't inundated with mass murders. Bob Geldof wrote about it in I Don't Like Mondays. So the play plods on with a metronomic evenness. A rare bright spot is a scene demonstrating how Claire's obsession is out of control with partner Katrina.
A consistent theme of Greig's work is to foster a connectedness between the characters in spite of huge gulfs. The choir is different every performance but that didn't mean much to me as I'm only seeing the show once, and that was one time too many. Chorus members weren't even given the script until just before walking onstage, so we could have their genuine reactions, but this was a failed device because their wasn't terribly much to react to, and if it was worth watching, I wasn't looking at the choir. The few lines chorus members had were woodenly read as they just got the script and they're not actors anyways. Unlike a Greek chorus.
After seeing Go Down, Moses the night before, the production values were utterly plain. Mostly lit by the bright lights one would find in a gym, Claire was busy putting chairs out and restacking them for no dramatic worth. The Boy annoyingly kept returning to the coffee urn set stage left.
In the end, evil is banal, like this play and production.
David Grybowski
When: 25 Feb to 5 Mar
Where: Her Majesty's Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Presented by Michael Burgos. Tuxedo Cat. 25 Feb 2016.
As an alumni of the prestigious French clown school École Philippe Gaulier, Michael Burgos is in the same company as Sacha Baron Cohen, Emma Thompson, and Helena Bonham Carter. It is therefore no surprise that Burgos can make you laugh heartily with a gesture, a look, a word.
His one man show, The Eulogy, is set in a funeral home at which the funeral of his friend Thomas is underway. Thomas was morbidly obese and died from the diseases of excess that come from a lifetime of absolute gluttony. Thomas was the object of ridicule and snide remarks, and at his funeral there is a veritable zoo of weird and diverse ‘friends’ and acquaintances who clamor to offer eulogies. Burgos plays them all and successfully gives them all highly individual personas that scream out for attention and likely rival Thomas’s ability to draw attention to himself.
Burgos is captivating as he plays everything from a pall bearer to a child whose first experience of death was the demise of his goldfish, to a guilty cake-stealing child caught with his mouth stuffed full of chocolate, to a fire-and-brimstone evangelical preacher from the deep South, to a ballerina with an unhealthy penchant for fire, and others I can no longer remember.
Each characterisation is compelling, and at times quite touching despite the grotesqueness of many of the characters.
At the end of his opening night, which was sold out, he offered each member of the audience a delicious cupcake – chocolate of course! – on their way out of the almost-stiflingly hot venue (get some air conditioners!).
Funerals are often solemn affairs, but not this one. It was a hoot!
Kym Clayton
When: 25 Feb to 14 Mar
Where: The Tuxedo Cat
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Presented by Martin Dockery. Tuxedo Cat. 25 Feb 2016.
Martin Dockery is possibly the most mesmerising story teller that I have ever seen or am likely to ever see. From the moment he first assumes the stage and flashes his piercing eyes in your direction you are hostage to his wit, comedic flair and magnetic personality. Above all, you are spellbound by his consummate writing – a model lesson in the use of adverbs and adjectives – and by his exquisite and athletic body language where he uses every muscle and sinew to proclaim a message and embroider every word.
He is singular. He is an artist and his paint is a lavish palate of words.
The Bike Trip is Dockery’s re-telling of a story by Albert Hoffman, who was the accidental discoverer of LSD. On the day Hoffman ‘invented’ LSD he first tested it on laboratory rats and and observed they became more energetic but appeared to suffer no ill-effect. He then tested it on himself and took what he thought was a small amount which turned out to be a HUGE dose; his bike ride home that afternoon was more exciting than usual to say the least! Hoffman wrote an account of his journey home and Dockery has used it as the basis of his one man show in which he also describes his own experiences on psychotropic drugs.
Through the telling of the story you really want to believe Dockery’s idea that mind altering drugs can have the impact of reawakening in us all the yearning to connect with each other ‘minus the bullshit’.
I have never known an hour to pass so quickly and for a smile to be etched so deeply on my face.
The Bike Trip is a must see show.
Kym Clayton
When: 25 Feb to 14 Mar
Where: Tuxedo Cat
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Studio Flamenco. La Boheme. 24 Feb 2016
Peña Flamenca is small club in Andalusia where one sits with a drink and enjoys flamenco dance up close. Studio Flamenco’s choice of French style club La Boheme perfectly highlighted the distinctive spirit and character of Flamenco dance chosen for an evening to relax at a table with a beverage.
Five dance forms and a song filled the hour. Dance styles from Extremeños, Galicia, Jerez and Cádiz are featured, some being solo pieces.
Be it the exciting ensemble opening piece Tangos Extremeños, or solos such as Susi Masi’s Siguiriyas, filled with the darkness of unrequited love or Emma Fernee’s Farruca, a rich, fantastically intense ‘chair dance’ normally performed by a male, there isn’t really a sense the production’s tempo breaks as such, or has an ‘off’ switch to it anywhere.
While obviously lost in their work, giving their all to faithfully serve a culture’s passion condensed so tightly in such rigorous, demanding forms of physical expression, the ensemble do not forget to have fun. There is great colour and joy in the production, first explosively expressed in the opening dance and reaffirmed in the closing piece, Fin de Fiesta (Bulerias), from burlar, meaning to mock or make fun of.
Each dancer whips off a solo moment as form of physical jest about a pose or turn of the flamenco form. You could rightly call it ‘showing off’.
David O’Brien
When: 24 to 26 Feb
Where: La Boheme
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au