Fairly Lucid Productions. Channel Nine Kevin Crease Studios. 6 Mar 2015
The Reckoning is a one-man play about gay-hate crime. At its heart is an exploration of the case of the death of Scott Johnson, a talented 27-year-old American mathematics PhD student who was found dead at the base of a 50-metre cliff near Manly in December 1988. He was gay. His clothes were apparently left in a neat bundle on the cliff-top. Police assert his death was a suicide. Others believe he was a murdered – the tragic victim of a gay-hate crime.
The central tenet of the play is that Johnson was indeed murdered, that the police did not thoroughly investigate his death, and that there may even have been a cover up. It delves into key aspects that might have comprised a thorough investigation, especially whether there were witnesses who have not come forward, or whether there are other victims who managed to escape their tormentors who might be able to help shed light on Johnson’s case. Most chillingly, the play explores the possible motivation and psychological profile of someone who might commit such a crime.
The play is bold in its conception, but it suffers from a lack of coherence. The programme notes indicate that no fewer than twelve writers contributed to the script, and this results in a range of styles that the sole actor, Ben Noble, needs to negotiate. He has to work his way thorough various speech rhythms, grammatical styles, characterisations, and lexicons. Although these variations are appropriate to the range of characters he plays, he just doesn’t handle them well enough all the time.
Many scenes are separated by original songs that are sung by Noble to a recorded solo piano backing track, but they are mostly lack-lustre: the music is almost exclusively bogged down in common 4:4 time and comprises relentless use of block chords. Noble’s voice is pleasant, but it is very light and unable to extract the inherent pathos of the lyrics.
Noble handled several characters quite well: his portrayal of the bi-curious factory worker who ‘stumbled across’ a naked man sunning himself near a gay-beat was quite affecting, but his reading of the contemptible and vile poofter-basher was unnerving and totally absorbing. Bravo. This was the high point of the performance, and the rest of the play yearns for text of the same quality.
Kym Clayton
When: 4 Mar to 15 Mar
Where: Channel Nine Kevin Crease Studios
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Presented by the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Le Cascadeur. 5 Mar 2015
Max and Ivan have arrived for the first time on the Adelaide Fringe so loaded with stars, comedy awards and critical acclaim that one wonders how they made the trip.
But they are talented fellows and are probably going to drag themselves away with an even heavier load.
Their show, Max & Ivan: The End is a narrative comedy describing the hapless occupants of an English town called Sudley- on-Sea. It's a lovely awful place which brags carparks, a reef of detritus, a nuclear power plant and a rest home.
It also has its local aristocracy, its gay arts icons, classic disagreeing councillors, a misunderstood aspiring children's book writer and woeful lovelorn nerd - among others.
These characters whisk in and out of the story, swiftly embodied by Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez aka Max & Ivan.
They call the show "sketch comedy" and, indeed, there are myriad little vignettes embodied in the overall story which tells of the evacuation of poor Sudley due to power plant malfunction.
The performers are of high-energy and quick reflexes. They shift patter and accents to and fro and establish a panoply of characters, some endearing and some repulsive. Therein lies much of the comedy. But it is not all funny. There's a thread of serious satire and a certain lampooning of British stereotypes.
Bottom line is that these are highly-trained and highly-disciplined performers working with a beautifully-crafted script.
They engage with chosen audience members, most successfully on opening night with a front row beauty called Melody who turned out to be a star in her own right.
Samela Harris
When: 5 to 15 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Le Cascadeur
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Luminato Festival and others. Dunstan Playhouse. 4 Mar 2015
The title sounds ominous, like somebody or something must fail. But it's nothing like that at all. It's a love story - a gentle, heartfelt, sweet narrative of falling in love. There are no actors. There are puppeteers, live-screening their beer bottle-high creations performing in tiny sets under dim lights right there on stage - not too visible, but projected onto the big screen to a filmic effect. The Afiara String Quartet pries open your heart with compelling compositions; think of Yo-Yo Ma. But it's Kid Koala of Montreal at the keyboard, and making the necessary strange sound effects, who is pulling the strings - his creation and his musical score.
The lead puppet reminds me of Scott Adams's office-inhabiting cartoon engineer, Dilbert. What spell have they cast that this puppet of a robot, yearning for a fine looking lady puppet, should make me sigh? There is enchantment when he teaches himself to play a heart-shaped ukulele to woo his girl. There is magic in the air as we see them walk city streets in new lovers' rapture or sad disappointment. How quaint that a woman could fall for a robot with spider eyes, who could erase his memory by snipping the magnetic tape in his chest, and who lives in a flat furnished like it's the 1950s.
I had a lump in my throat the whole time, and I cannot be the only one, what with the standing ovation at the Australian premiere of this exclusive-to-Adelaide production. I still don't understand how I could feel so alive. How did they capture something so utterly human with such blatant make believe?
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 7 March
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Gareth Hart. The Edments Building. 3 March 2015
One of the things I love about the Fringe is novel venues. This one is a zinger. The audience meets front-of-house staff in Fisher Place. This back lane would be at home in New York. We are led to the front of The Edments Building, are ushered into the elevator and subsequently debouched onto the rooftop. Here we faced east and the final reflections of the setting sun decorated the hills for the forty minutes of dance performance. The audience removed shoes and followed a thin line of dirty mulch to form a semi-circle round the dancer who was lying on a large mound of mulch resembling a turkey nest.
Edward Willoughby's haunting soundtrack of samples, sounds and chords would be at home in a horror movie and turned out to be the most pleasurable aspect of the production. Gareth Hart's choreography and performance did not live up to the "Superb" comment in the Fringe guide - which I suspect was applied to one of Hart's previous creations - or even to the accompanying picture.
Hart's dance motif reminded me of a chicken, scratching away the mulch for grubs and worms. Angular movements and tableaus repeated in variation without respite, change of pace, or progression for the entire show. His objective "to acknowledge, dredge up and pay attention to the past" was incoherent and not realised. Instead of conjuring up some semblance of human experience, I saw an alien in unsuitable shorts.
The irony of having a show called 'Excavate' on a rooftop was not lost. Your hard-earned Fringe dough is better spent elsewhere.
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 7 Mar
Where: The Edments Building
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Skagen, Richard Jordan Productions and Theatre Royal Plymouth. Space Theatre. 2 Mar 2015
Valentijn Dhaenens's 'Bigmouth' - in which he re-created a number of history's most stirring addresses - was a hit of last year's Festival. He's back with an ultra-personal look at the consequences of some of those exhortations - the tragedies of war's aftermath.
Dhaenens grew up in the Belgian killing fields of World War I and long had a fascination with that conflict and its aftermath. The battles continue, long after the shooting stops, in the hospitals, and later, in repatriation centres. Here are men, some without limbs, who are an embarrassing reminder of the awful sacrifices asked by their leaders.
Dhaenens has collated the stories of soldiers, nurses, orderlies and doctors from throughout the ages, but with an emphasis on The Great War, and conjoins them in this gentle, sympathetic and humanistic production. Dhaenens began as a hospital orderly, weary and world-wise from seeing a parade of carnage that ends in body bags, eternal care, or a forgotten fading away. She tends to an image of the actor as an amputee who dreams of being whole again by cloning into multiple ghostly images. These other survivors are a damaged lot representing a sad array of psychological and physical disability.
There have been millions of small wars like these after the big ones. It's going on today. The beauty and simplicity of the narrative belies the technical virtuosity in the seamless interaction of the digital imagery with Dhaenens's orderly, and in the conjoining of the original testimonies. The result is an incredibly moving and intimate production. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 2 to 4 March
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au