On the Fly Impro. Nexus Cabaret. 7 Mar 2015
Nexus Cabaret Adelaide, a suave cabaret setting with a bar to keep things moving, jazz beats coming through the speakers, and a row of grey plastic chairs in a line across the stage, ready for the improv participants. The prize? A gold star trophy (not real gold), sitting unpretentiously on yet another grey plastic chair at the side of the stage.
The lights dim and the quixotic but immensely practical Eugene Suleau enters as compere/ scorekeeper. It’s on for young and old. A PG rated performance without boundaries for the next 90 minutes. Thirteen competitors, twelve of whom will be eliminated, and one awarded the title of 2015 Australian Maestro Impro Champion.
Suleau runs a tight ship and with directors Patti Stiles and Esther Longhurst sets sail for a fine afternoon of in the moment entertainment as the improve performers strut their stuff. The audiences provide sound effects, key words and emotions, and applause (on a scale of 1 to 5) that determine the scores and thus the process of elimination.
Stiles and Longhurst provide the scene elements and in some cases worked through the detailed impro directions that the performers must interpret singly or in groups.
The hardest round is the first one, where the thirteen competitors come fresh to the challenge. Gradually the tension eases as a strange bond develops between everyone on stage. If you are playing a tree in one sketch and then the main role in another, you really need to get on well with each and every performer, even though they, in the end, are your competition. This is the fun side for performers and audience alike. This is a real competition but done with such good will and in-the-moment performance expertise that its almost like losing a member of the family each time there is an elimination.
The thirteen improvisers come from across Australia: the ACT, NSW, QLD, SA, VIC and WA.
There is a lot more to this show than first meets the eye. There is a very subtle interaction between the performers. The lights and sound are manipulated via hand gestures from the two directors, and at the side of the stage, live music by David Wells on keyboard or guitar.
One small glitch came early in the competition when the musical soundscape seemed a tad loud to one of the directors who called for a softer approach. Instantly, Wells was on it. This aspect of many ears and eyes being in the moment was the making of this quirky show. But that’s what improvisation is all about. Being in the moment... on the fly... and this includes the audience.
After Interval the eliminations came thick and fast until only Rik Brown (ACT) and Tom Dunstan (QLD) were still standing. During a breath taking sequence of who could swipe the others’ hat first fast vocal and physically agile slight of hands improvs, Tom Dunstan became outright winner, and this year’s National Maestro Impro Champion. A tenacious, dogged, but very, very funny performer who well deserved the gold star. At the end of the show, a comment from the youngest member of the audience said it all: “I liked the music and loud fun”. Astute praise from this three year old summed it up for all of us.
Martin Christmas
When: 7 to 15 Mar 2015
Where: Nexus Cabaret Club
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Scottish Comedy Awards and Ha Ha Comedy. Sugar. 7 Mar 2015
His real name is Lawrence, which he tells us is Scottish for gay, although he thinks ‘poofter’ is a better word because it is clearly manlier and less gay! ‘Larry’ seems less obvious, and it’s not at all obvious that Larry Dean is gay – happy yes, but not gay!
And so the show begins in the intimate and middle-classy upstairs-club confines of Sugar, and sweet it is.
Larry Dean is one of the nicest and most personable stand-ups you could meet, and he has the most dis-arming eyes. In an instant he looks right through you, grabs you, and sucks you into whatever gag he wants to deliver. Even the très risqué ones are all of sudden inoffensive - almost!
As the title of Dean’s show suggests - Out Now - it’s all about him being a gay man and the oh-so-funny aspects of his coming out.
The audience dissolves in laughter when in an almost matter-of-fact voice he tells us that his sister is a lesbian and his brother is a catholic priest and he was his parent’s last hope for grandchildren!
The laughs come thick and fast, and it’s all inoffensive and light hearted stuff. We come to know about his family, his African flat mate, his disastrous first (and only) heterosexual experience, his love life, his first stand-up gig that could have gone better and his first impressions of Hindley Street! It’s a whirlwind 60 minutes and then it’s over. We now want to spend some real time with him, with laughs put to one side, if that’s indeed possible!
Good fun.
Kym Clayton
When: 3 Mar to 15 Mar
Where: Sugar
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. Festival Theatre. 6 Mar 2015
The stage is shrouded in pitch black darkness as the dancers of the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, illuminated only by shafts of light, open their Adelaide Festival season performance of Mixed Rep to an almost full house. They are as light as a feather and as soft as a cloud. Leaping gracefully into the air they land without a sound.
The first of three pieces, choreographed by European, Jiří Kylián, is called Indigo Rose. The pace is frenetic, at times playful and always youthful. We open with first once dancer, then two and eventually three bouncing off each other with frantic energy. The sound track is metronomic. The playfulness in sync with one’s beating heart. There are slower, more lyrical, sections in which couples tussle and cavort. A high energy collaboration between the dancers and a huge white fabric sail allows for silhouette work and visual metaphors of sinking tides and crashing waves. It is spectacular, but disjointed. The sections don’t seem to have a commonality or linking thread. The concluding video projection adds little.
Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue, with choreography by North American, Crystal Pite, is up next. A somewhat calming composition, it evokes images of what earth might sound like if it had a song. The music underscores paradoxically energetic choreography which is hugely evocative. There is urgency, danger, jarring and angular movement not dissimilar to a person having a fit or episode. One is completely drawn in by the work; eyes sting from lack of blinking through immense concentration. The setting, like an open mine or night works in a field evokes a literal theme of ‘rescue’. But is this rescue metaphorical? Like an exorcism of one’s demons, salvation from the mind, or emotional rescue from a damaging relationship. It is visually stunning.
The third and final piece is entitled Violet Kid, and has choreography and music by Israeli (now UK based) Hofesh Shechter. It opens with 14 dancers standing across the front of the stage. They are perfectly still. The recorded voice of Shechter himself comes over the speakers, asking “Do I talk too much? Maybe if I didn’t talk so much, I’d have more friends”. The audience enjoy the irony as he goes on. What follows are tribal and almost ritualistic vignettes as the dancers move separately, in groups and then all together, like a living, breathing, organism. The soundscape, a dense instrumentation of strings and drums penetrates your whole being. One feels their breath sitting high in their chest and the overwhelming need to grab a hold of something. For a full 34 minutes the company ebbs and flows through rising levels of intensity. The stage is vast, like an abandoned warehouse. Shafts of light cut through a dense haze as the rituals continue in repetitive succession. It is uncomfortable, but you can’t take your eyes off it. There are themes of a post-apocalyptic struggle bubbling under the surface.
And it ends. The audience leap to their feet for a standing ovation as the dancers take their third and final bow of the performance. It is a tight race between the evocative Ten Duets.. and the arresting Violet Kid. But there is no doubt about Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. They are the real stars. And we are the real winners.
Paul Rodda
When: 6 to 8 Mar
Where: Adelaide Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
On the Fly Impro. Grace Emily Hotel. 7 Mar 2015
Dashing Nick Byrne rightly brags that he was born in Adelaide. If we didn't like him before, that seals the deal. He's the quick-witted host of the On The Fly Improv Fringe presentation and he has brought it from Canberra, so to speak. It's actually pretty much home-grown since it is all about the people in the audience.
There's no picking on the audience, though. Audience members must volunteer or, at worst, be peer-pressured on stage to be a subject of In-Person-8. Therein they are thoroughly interviewed and then impersonated in a little improv drama.
There's a cast of thousands quietly screened off at the side of the tiny stage - young improv performers waiting for a cue or honing up on the mannerisms of the interviewees.
Nick brings some of them onstage to illustrate points with his subjects - one to be "painted", another to play a bike shop owner...
The audience members, however, are the stars.
It is extraordinary how well Nick eases them into being themselves. At first the women, certainly, are reticent.
Jenny, for instance, seems to have "don't know" as the answer to everything - until she is standing, confident, in the limelight giving a micro lecture on memes. We don't want her to stop. She is very interesting.
Then there is Karen, very softly spoken and shy. She has been forced up by an audience shout-out because of a slogan on her oversized t-shirt mini dress. She says she likes going to the movies. Cornered up there in the spotlight, she can't come up with the names of the movies she either likes or dislikes. But, as it happens, she, herself, has made a little Adelaide Indie movie. And suddenly she is on home ground and the audience is with her.
The blokes are showier. Shouted up by his mate Mike, Jim seems rather nonplussed. But Nick Byrne isn't letting dobber Mike off the hook, so he brings him up, too. And there we have two Fringe-going men who chummed up around the sporting prowess of their cycle-racing children. This is eked out into an hilarious exaggeration of teenage love and Olympian ambitions ending up in a take-over of the world's bike shops, made easier, Jim saying that... OK, we won't go there. But it was funny.
Last audience participant under the Nick Byrne microscope is James, who turns out to be one of the Matt Byrne musicals performers. He sings a few bars of a Mary Poppins song and plugs the show upcoming at The Arts Theatre.
Intermission consists of some Improv skits performed by the young crew, responding to audience suggestions. And then comes the denouement - the Improv play about Jenny, Karen, Jim, Mike and James.
The two actors who impersonate Jenny and Karen are stunning. They have picked up on expressions, gestures, voice intonations, laughs...They even seem to look like their subjects. The boys used broader brush strokes and ham it up beautifully. It is clear who is who, albeit the Jim impersonator completely overlooks that Jim’ has a Canadian accent.
Thus is it all a very merry hour at the Grace Emily, one fuelled perhaps by the odd vino, but most significantly, by the good nature of the audience participants and the on-the-spot skills of good Improv artistes.
Samela Harris
When: 7 and 9 Mar
Where: Grace Emily Hotel
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Eastend Cabaret. The Garden of Unearthly Delights - The Deluxe. 6 Mar 2015
What an entrance! That got the show onto a fine start. Every male in the house became very nervous about what high jinx they could be in for if vamp and temptress Bernadette singled them out for some sexual harassment. Always new to new audiences, the show harks back to post-modern experimentation exemplified by the Weimar cabaret. Irresistible in black, the Gothic Bernadette is foiled by her less statuesque comic sidekick, Victor-Victoria - a split name for a split personality dressed with a gender boundary down the middle in a bisexual bisection. To Victor-Victoria's accomplished accompaniment and asides, Bernadette sings ballads of sexual misadventures and songs of self-pleasure with frankness. They tag team the humour in a mood of subtle tension. But it's Bernadette’s sojourns amongst the smiling patrons that gives the show an added delicious risk factor and edge. It was the first time I was afraid yet internally screaming, "Pick me!" The show was so salacious you could taste it.
Eastend Cabaret won Best Cabaret at the 2012 Adelaide Fringe and the show I attended was sold out, so success continues to chase this dynamic duo. Go get titillated.
David Grybowski
When: 2 to 15 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights - The Deluxe
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au