Nick Enright. ACJ Productions. Tandanya Theatre. 24 Feb 16
Blackrock is a play written by Nick Enright which, some may argue, is based on the real life rape and murder of Leigh Leigh in Stockton, Newcastle on the 3rd of November 1989. The play, originally written in under the title A Property of the Clan in 1992 and then adapted to Blackrock in 1995, was also made into a film of the same name. Neither the play nor the film state that their stories are based on actual events and much of the contents has since been debunked as fiction.
It is, nonetheless, a compelling story, which explores the many and varied themes of mateship, sexual violence, patriarchy, misogyny, substance abuse, masculinity, teen angst, parenting, and privilege – no small feat for a cast of young actors.
The script is action packed, but the colloquial language initially jars and creates a barrier to the delivery of meaning. Did teens really talk that way in the 90s? Do they talk that way now? Repent to the grammar gods before it is too late!
The production company, ACJ appears to be relatively new on the scene with little info available on who they are or where they have come from. Many of the cast appear to be current students of, or alumni to, Westminster School. The director, Dana Cropley, and Production Manager, Olivia Cromarty, take roles in the show as Diane Kirby and Glenys Milenko respectively; the parents of central characters Jared and Cherie.
Cropley places the action relatively well on stage, and the performers demonstrate a fairly strong understanding of placement, stillness and focus. The whole cast is very young (one would be prepared to guess there wasn’t a player over 20 years of age), so their youth and immaturity is evident, but not distracting.
There are strong performances by Josh Rayner, as Jared, and Patrick Dodd as Ricko; a well measured and solid characterisation from Amy Bower as Tiffany Owens; and a considered performance from Matthew Cropley in the role of Toby. Brittany Matters and Christina Devetzidis in the younger, key female roles take the honours with their standout performances as Cherie Milenko and Rachel Ackland.
The sound and lighting operators could do with comparing cue notes – unfortunately the lights regularly faded out too slowly, leaving the actors (whose pace was otherwise excellent) standing in silence waiting for the blackout; whereas the musical interludes between scenes were often cut off at full volume when they would have benefited from a gentle fade.
The set has been designed by the cast; with the ‘rock’ central to the theme. The stage is otherwise left bare, with only two upstage entrances and a sign used to delineate time and location. It is effective, even though the prominent rock is used in less than one third of the scenes.
There are certainly a few up-and-coming performers amongst this cast, and the energetic and appreciative audience of family and peers gave solid applause at the efforts. ACJ Productions’ Blackrock has all the right ingredients.
Paul Rodda
When: 24 to 28 Feb
Where: Tandanya Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Presented by Offending Shadows. Tandanya Café. 24 Feb 2016.
This show has been positively received everywhere in the world it is performed, including in last year’s Adelaide Fringe. It’s easy to understand why, and it’s tempting – perhaps expected – to jump on the same bandwagon and add to the canon of rave reviews, but I won’t. Before explaining why, a little about the story.
Eleanor’s Story is an account of surviving World War II Nazi Germany. Not new I hear you say, but it has a twist. Eleanor Ramrath Garner is a young American girl who moves with her family from the USA in 1939 to Berlin to allow her father to take up desirable employment. Wrong place, wrong time. He intends them to stay only for two years but Hitler’s insanity puts an end to that, and they become involved in an increasingly desperate struggle to survive while all the time trying to escape, which they eventually do at the end of the war and return to state-side.
The story is actually a true one and is based on Garner’s autobiography. What makes the performance special is that her granddaughter, Ingrid Garner, performs it, and it is a one person show.
The whole thing is an emotional roller coaster, and the narrative is compelling. It is funny and sad. It is at times disturbing, and at other times it reassures us that decency and humanity survive the horrors of war. Ingrid Garner plays multiple characters – her brother, her parents, her school teacher – and importantly she plays her own character over a time span of some 5-6 years from an innocent girl to a budding young woman.
So, why don’t I rave about it? I enjoyed it very much and enthusiastically joined in the extended ovation at the end of the performance, but it could have been so much better. Fringe venues are notoriously Spartan in the facilities they offer, but this show demands a much more sympathetic lighting design and a larger stage. The performer was quite restricted in how she ‘took the stage’ and the few furniture properties were in fact too many. They became a distraction and although the idea behind their use was at times well thought out – such as placing a trunk on top of two chairs to create a hiding place in a cellar for shelter during an air raid – they could just have easily been dispensed with and lights (and sound) used to place the focus on the contorted body of a terrified child in fear of her life. The acoustics of the venue were also poor, and being seated on the mezzanine only added to the difficulties in clearly hearing the performer.
Ingrid Garner is clearly a talented actress, and I would have greatly enjoyed seeing her perform the piece free from the shackles of properties and a small stage so that she could extend her art and truly astound us.
This show is worth seeing.
Kym Clayton
When: 24 Feb to 12 Mar
Where: Tandanya Café
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Presented by Offending Shadows. Tandanya Café. 24 Feb 2016.
Sound & Fury are a trio of… well, they’re orators, actors, singers (one of them is), comedians, writers, and all round sophisticated lovable idiots. They hail from the US of A and Adelaide Fringe audiences love ‘em – they are 3-time winners of the Adelaide People’s Choice Award. They’ve been coming to our shores for years and may they long continue to do so.
Richard welcomes the audience and asks for a show of hands of those who have been to a S&F show before. Quite a few hands go up, sometimes two from the same person because they think a Mexican Wave is about to happen. He then asks who has never been to a S&F show before, observing some more hands go up. Richard then asks who is seeing their first S&F show, and as almost all the same hands go up as for the previous question he mimes that alcohol might be their problem. It’s simple stuff, but it revs the audience up and we are already butter in the trio’s hands, ready for a fun night out.
Lord of the Thrones, as it’s title suggests, is a comedic and irreverent mash-up of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. If you know nothing about either of the well-known literary works, or you haven’t seen the films, don’t worry because it doesn’t matter a scrap, and by the end of the performance you’ll still be none the wiser!
There’s audience participation, but don’t let that put you off. Prior to curtain up, the trio choose a member of the crowd to become an integral part of the show – in fact the hero! Our hero is on stage the whole time, in costume, and with dialogue but its all recorded into a dizzying array of sound cues so there’s no learning. Hero just mouths anything when prodded by one of the trio and it’s oh so funny! However, a Fringe show with so much tech, a myriad of oh-so-funny costume changes, and a bizarre collection of hand properties is bound to go awry, and it did. Sound ‘died’ but the trio took it in their stride and gave a hilarious display of their ad lib skills while one of the number scurried to fix it up.
S&F can take such problems in their stride, and use it as an unscripted opportunity for even more humour; if that’s possible. They are a class act.
Kym Clayton
When: 24 Feb to 12 Mar
Where: Tandanya Cafe
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Treading Players. Melbourne Street Laundromat. 25 Feb 2016
Happy Ending is a somewhat contorted comic theatrical creation.
As a piece of writing focusing on the complex issues the business of professional massage therapy encounters when sex intrudes, there isn’t much new offered that hasn’t already been dealt with across multiple mediums. At best, playwright Gemma O’Neil offers a reasonably plausible TV sitcom level set of intertwined character story lines involving two massage therapists and their clients who unknown to therapists Gemma (Eva Justine Torkolla) and Melissa (Danae Swinburne) are connected in one way or another. At worst, the writing comes across as still needing several more drafts to find and develop some genuinely challenging depth to issues merely noted, rather than explored so there’s greater structural complexity to the work.
As a production, it's stripped back nature - bare stage, massage table, simple costuming and minimal props - does great service to a number of performances which point clearly to the greater potential in the piece not found.
Danae Swinburne’s Melissa, caught up in the bind of financial, emotional and sexual issues posed by ‘dating’ a client, gives a performance imbuing the writing with everything it lacked - humour with a buck each way’s worth of intelligent, questioning pathos.
Happy Ending’s promise as a work of gutsy comic drama will one day deliver when much more work is dedicated to it.
David O’Brien
When: 25 to 28 Feb
Where: Melbourne St Laundromat and Gluttony – The Carry-On
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Royal Croquet Club & Last Great Hunt. Royal Croquet Club - The Menagerie. 24 Feb 2016
I was attracted to this show by the omnipresent and enigmatic poster imagery of a man in black with a ukulele and a lamp on his head, next to a cartoon of a what's-it and a who's-it, also with a lamp on his head. And the gongs! Best puppetry, original show, theatre production, outstanding solo show awards from all around the globe.
But poor Alvin. Global warming has created a water world and his wife's soul, in a rather macabre deathbed scene, heads for the deeps of the blue sea. Whether Alvin is determined to save the world or to die by the bends to meet the missus is not altogether clear in this fishy tale.
Perth-based Tim Watts's creation is an elegant blend of the visual and performance arts. After watching Alvin in the opening cartoon sequences don a diver's helmet for his long descent, he suddenly appears outside the round screen and I say to myself, "Oh, there he is. He really exists!" and all he was, was a hand-in-glove and a softball-sized sphere with a light in it. Yet I believed. The performer, perhaps Watt himself, has us swimming along with Alvin, searching ever deeper. We are voyeur and voyager. Light and sound are scarce commodities in the ocean and the experience is dreamy and ethereal.
While charming and beguiling and ingenious and all that other stuff said on the flyer, I also found it a bit soporific. For all ages.
David Grybowski
When: 12 Feb - 14 Mar
Where: Royal Croquet Club - The Menagerie
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au