The Holden Street Theatres' Edinburgh Fringe Award in association with Redbeard Productions and Gilded Balloon. Holden Street Theatres. 28 Feb 2017
I'm a sucker for a play with a poster photo of a girl with a Kalashnikov and angel wings, but there are much better reasons to see English playwright Henry Naylor's Angel. Unfortunate you if you didn't see Naylor's Echoes in last year's Fringe, which won the BankSA Best Theatre Award. The show you're not going to miss this year - and which may win the BankSA award again - sold out in Edinburgh and won that festival's Fringe First Award. The Times in London nailed it onto its UK's Ten Best Plays list for 2016. More importantly, Angel won Holden Street Theatres Edinburgh Award, which means theatre impresario Martha Lott thought it good enough to help bring it to Adelaide.
Angel is the third instalment of a trilogy entitled Arabian Nightmares - Echoes being the second. A hallmark of at least these two productions is the painstaking research apparent in what might be called historical docu-drama set within the present and past conflicts of the Middle East. Another common theme is Naylor's uncanny ability to write intimate stories about women that seem to ring true with women (I had to ask around about this last bit). Whereas Echoes was a comparative study of the harrowing experiences of Victorian women joining the British occupation of Afghanistan, and western jihadi tale. This is the true-in-the-main-points-but-drawing-on-others's-contemporary-experiences biography of Rehana, who by circumstances is compelled to convert from pacifism to fight with her Kurdish comrades against ISIS during the latter's siege of Kobane in northern Syria in 2014.
The young Rehana is a cheeky child and then earnest law student dancing to Mariah Carey and imbued with the utopian dreams of Star Trek. The conversion of this innocence to the famous yet reluctant sniper is an absolute marvel to watch. Theatrically couched with exciting Lara Croft adventurism, actor Avital Lvova leaps away from bombed trucks and is thrown by mortar blasts, strips machine guns blindfolded and escapes rape attempts. She encounters - and superbly performs - a panoply of family, friends and odious foes along the way. It might be easy to get lost in the video game visuals of the action, except that Lvova emotionally brings you back to the visceral story - none of these characters leave this play alive. They die the horrible deaths of war, often after much suffering. And as Rehana actually did compile over 100 kills, this reality hits you like swamp gas and takes your breath away. A bit of her dies with every kill and Lvova makes us feel it. Bravo!
Naylor has written another exceptional play and tosses the distant war of the Middle East off the television right into our lap, still bleeding. Another Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 17 Feb to 19 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Circus Trick Tease. The Garden of Unearthly Delights – Corona Theatre. 26 Feb 2017
Perusing the Fringe Guide looking for a high brow, educational family show that everyone can enjoy? Well, Children Are Stinky may sink below the belt, but it sure is a lot of fun! All whilst reminding us that everyone farts and that's ok - even adults. Let's face it though, it comes as no surprise to anyone that Dads fart, and that they stink.
Children Are Stinky is presented by Circus Trick Tease, a Melbourne-borne company that is fast becoming a go-to for children’s theatre. They maintain their reputation with this show, which sees co-founder Malia Walsh and writer Chris Carlos join forces on stage to prove that children are lazy, unimaginative, uncoordinated and stinky. Using an unbeatable arsenal of slap stick, acrobatics and bottom humour, these two know how to make kids laugh. The show is funny and fast-paced, with jokes for parents and kids alike and lots of audience participation. Needless to say, there is no shortage of volunteers for the latter.
Whilst it turns out that children are a little bit smelly, they are also brave, clever, coordinated and awesome!
For a stinking good time, checkout this high energy duo in The Garden now.
Nicole Russo
When: 17 Feb to 19 Mar
Where: Corona Theatre at The Garden of Unearthly Delights
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
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