Never Never Theatre Co. White Queen. 3 Mar 2016
It wasn't a publicity stunt. It was just uncanny happenstance that there was a fire alarm at the Old Queen's Theatre just as a play about a massive fire was about to open.
The fire of the drama is set in Sydney's Botanic Gardens in the year 2020. In the production, it is depicted by a long row of orange fluorescent light tubes stretching above the performance space like a blazing sky. This is a brilliant piece of design.
It is almost a star in the play, so potently does it play its part - the tubes going out one or two at a time as the play progresses and smoke eclipses the sky.
The soundscape works less well. It makes its point and then some. It is a droning rush of ambient thrum, ever-present, sometimes rising. It is like agonising tinnitus. The actors have to play over this city din and the audience members have to deal with it. It is a comment, perhaps, on the ugliness of urban noise pollution as well as a heavy-handed sound effect. It is too oppressive and for some audience members it undermines the lucidity of the words on stage.
Not that the play is exactly about lucidity.
It is more Brechtian than Brecht.
It is an absurdist fantasy about two survivors who colonise a park bench like specks in a calamity. They are just Woman 1 and Woman 2, argumentative abstractions from the imagination of playwright Harry Black. He's an Adelaidean and, while this play premiered in Sydney, it has come to Adelaide with strong Adelaide links, including the brilliant designer, Jeremy Allen.
Black's women toss about acrimonious exchanges, ponder possessions, survival, the point of things or lack thereof. The waters boil around them. The sky darkens. Their nasty little park-bench-island world shrinks.
Mix Godot and Endgame, throw in some Ray Bradbury, Neville Shute and a spectrum of apocalypse dreamers. Add some captivating prose from an interesting new young Australian writer, and you have the picture.
Perhaps director Jessica Arthur could have eked a bit more vocal light and dark from the dialogue to better play against the drone of the soundscape, but the performances by both Eliza Scott and Emma Harvie are strong and the characters they play are memorable.
It is hard to imagine a more intensely atmospheric venue for such a work than the rustic old demolition-dodge survivor we are now calling the White Queen.
And, we can only look forward with curiosity to what next the lively pen of playwright Harry Black may deliver.
Samela Harris
When: 3 to 6 Mar
Where: White Queen
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Presented by Strindberg Stages. La Bohème - Upstairs. 3 Mar 2016.
Cougar Morrison is a nearly-thirty androgynous cabaret performer with striking looks who channels stars of today, yesterday and yesteryear of similar ilk. He is scantily dressed in exotic cabaret costumes, replete with stilettos in which he is quite at home. At times Morrison has the air of Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf, David Bowie or Annie Lennox, and some of his vocal numbers even mash together the styles (and even the song lyrics) of these iconic chanteurs.
His fusion of Dream A Little Dream of Me (written around 1931, and made especially popular by The Mamas and the Papas in 1968) and Sweet Dreams (by the Eurythmics) is particularly well done and suited his range darling, his range! When he began Somewhere over the Rainbow one was ready to be underwhelmed but was quite blown away by his performance of what was quite an idiosyncratic arrangement that breathed new life into something that can be, well, somewhat tired.
In essence, Cougar’s almost fleeting show – a tad over 45 minutes – is a story about loneliness, but the touching narrative is almost derailed by the less than witty patter that connects the musical numbers. In fact, it detracts at times, as does his accent that can’t make its mind up about what side of the Pacific ocean it wants to be on (despite the fact that he is a citizen of the world and moves freely between the USA and … WA). However, Cougar’s performance exudes honesty and the mediocre attempts at humour are quickly forgotten.
The show reaches quite different heights when Cougar keeps it real and focusses on anecdotes from his own experience. He relates stories about being different, coming out, being lonely, and patiently waiting for the love of his life to come into his life, that will make the loneliness that precedes it all the more worthwhile. In fact, it is such anecdotes and their skillful underscoring with careful song selections that keeps one connected to the act and completely on his side.
Cougar is an engaging performer and his show is a diamond in the making.
Kym Clayton
When: 2 to 6 Mar
Where: La Bohème
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
In Helvetica. Tuxedo Cat – Cusack Theatre. 3 Mar 2016
So many words, so many actions to wonderfully give life to the notion of being speechless in the myriad of whacked out situations Sara and Toni find themselves in.
It’s too much fun, how excellent!
Toni Main and Sara Di Segna crash together in a union of hope from seemingly hopeless circumstances and do their very best for each other as life coaches, after a sort, for their sense of being absurd to the world and getting life wrong.
As third eye, Georgina Capper has ensured that the performance is wonderfully fluid. The blend of improv contemporary choreography, surreal conversation and pained effort to ‘get it right’ is crystal clear to an audience and unfailingly pleasing as much as it is mad in such a polite way. The text is deliciously absurd, as it is understandable as a big, deep and meaningful discourse between two women trapped in comically absurd circumstances and preconceptions of themselves they hate.
These artists are acutely aware of their audience. Speechless is about an audience and hoping to goodness they like you, that you say the right things, and aren’t ridiculous in the process. Being ridiculous is so wonderfully much better for the soul.
David O’Brien
When: 3 to 8 March
Where: Tuxedo Cat – Cusack Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
She Said Theatre. Live From TandanyaTheatre. 2 Mar 2016
“We were brought up to believe we were orphans.”
Brought up to believe living, breathing, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers were strangers or dead. Brought up to believe a connection to flesh and blood family and community did not exist. Brought up to forget what memories there were.
HART leaves the politics of this issue at the door, instead inviting inside very human social realities, experiences, and value of family which are absolutely universal. Performer/co writer Ian Michael’s solo performance gives voice to the stories and experiences of three Noongar men, including Michael’s.
A point to consider: This reality applied to young English children sent to Australia during World War II, who never returned to England in many cases. Those that did on realising their family were still alive, heading back to reunite, were too late.
The reality of those young English children from one small parcel of history is still being dealt with by children of Australia’s first peoples.
The Stolen Generation ‘label’, rightly describing a cyclical process of destructive social engineering experienced over decades, has limited capability to encapsulate fully the evil resulting from the destruction of family bonds, community union and a secure sense of place and being. It is something all people and cultures take as a central right of their existence, as evidence of the wholeness of life. HART fills that need.
Designer Chloe Greaves’ simple but so powerful set of a white ochre circle with a chair in the middle, and Shannah McDonald’s exquisitely balanced lighting, gives the production a uniquely blended sense of traditional ceremonial space and Greek amphitheatre.
Herein Michael’s proudly and passionately clothes his being in the stories of others and his own.
The Greek theatre allusion continues, in that this production offers one of the most brilliant prologues to the main body of work. It allows Michael to directly invite the audience into an experience, give them permission to catch the sense of feeling and loss he is charged with communicating, and to allow themselves not to worry about what point in time, or whose story is being related.
Michael’s and co-writer Seanna van Helten’s text is respectfully and beautifully crafted. In performance, Michael is so strong, so true, so giving and spiritually honest. He marries his experiences and those whose lives of which he tells with a sense of the common value of family shared by all.
There is no hate. There is anger tempered sadness - as there should be. There is hope as well, and above all, an invitation for his family, his community to be at one with ours as we can together heal the wounds of this shameful time in history not yet fully dealt with.
David O’Brien
When: 2 to 13 March
Where: Live From TandanyaTheatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Ms Chamberlain. Holden Street Theatres. 2 Mar 2016
Anne Chamberlain of New Zealand found in Eglantyne Jebb of Shropshire a soulmate and fellow traveller. And Jebb lead a life so inspiring as to prompt Chamberlain to research and write this one-person biographical play. You may not have heard of Eglantyne but you are likely familiar with her legacy - Save The Children. Those three words have made the difference between comfort and misery, even life and death, since Jebb and her sister, Dorothy Buxton, founded the charity in 1919 to support the children of Europe in the aftermath of World War I and the Spanish Flu.
Playwright and performer Anne Chamberlain takes us back to Anne's beginnings and pioneering presence in Oxford, where she realised a well lived life is a life of action and not words. Anne poignantly portrays the parallels in their lives - in relationships lost and perseverance. Jebb strives for meaning in her life and finds it in the children she never had. We share with Eglantyne and Dorothy their fundraising triumph at Albert Hall and their push for funds and awareness, up to and beyond Eglantyne's authorship of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
In a big life, there is a lot of ground to cover. Chamberlain's script is chockers with accurate historical information and while key emotional moments are noted, they could benefit from additional dramatic illustration. The whole thing is rather straightforward. Nonetheless, the roles of herself and the sisters are vividly portrayed. I imagine now that I saw Eglantyne and Dorothy discussing some aspect of boosting the fund, yet there was only one performer. The show's main objective was achieved - Eglantyne is now forever mapped on my consciousness, and I better get my wallet out because a good life is a life in action.
PS A proportion of the show's proceeds will be donated to Save The Children.
David Grybowski
When: 1 to 6 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au