England & Son

★★★★★

Adelaide Fringe. The Studio, Holden Street Theatres. 17 Feb 2024

England & Son finishes abruptly. The auditorium is plunged into inky blackness with a single ghostly green exit light our only link to what might be next. The audience momentarily and collectively holds its breath. What’s happened? What’s next? And then the lights snap, and the sole actor (Mark Thomas) is re-revealed. He takes his bows to enthusiastic applause and whistling and leaves the auditorium quickly not to be seen again. Refreshingly, there is no speech to an adoring crowd along the lines of: thanks for coming, if you enjoyed it tell your friends, and if you didn’t then tell ‘em you saw something else. None of that. The spell is not broken.

Mark Thomas is spent. He’s given his all in an enthralling performance that cuts close to the bone and the issues and emotions it exposes need to be considered. Left to our private thoughts, we quietly leave the auditorium, and ponder further, knowing we have experienced something special.

The action of England & Son follows key events in the life of a young boy (surname England, and this becomes increasingly significant as the narrative unfolds) as he grows up in an anarchistic household exposed to petty crime, drug taking, domestic violence and graphic stories about his own father’s experiences in colonial Malaysia at the time the country was being exploited (looted?) by England (the country). These influences on the boy’s formative years inevitably must leave a mark, scars even, and predictably, but sadly, he spirals into his own lawless adult life with periods spent in and out of youth detention centres, a caring foster family, and ultimately into adult prison following a tragic event.

It all sounds grim, and the fundamental story is, but England & Son is told with stark humour and performed with immense skill, empathy, and drama. Mark Thomas is an experienced performer of many years, and he is also a writer and a comic. He brings this depth of experience to a bare stage in the Studio space at Holden Street Theatres and uses a highly effective and tightly controlled lighting plot and evocative soundscape to help him create a detailed and vivid mental image of the boy’s unfolding world. Thomas understands the power of purposeful movement on stage, gesture, and body attitude, how to use space and shadow, and how to personally engage individual audience members almost making them believe they are alone, and this is a private performance just for them. It’s a rare gift. The acoustics of the Studio are however uncompromising, especially when the stage is empty, and so when Thomas turns away from the audience and briefly speaks to the upstage wall, there are brief moments when clarity is lost. But even though he is not looking at the audience, he still has them in his hand.

Like much good writing, the narrative of England & Son can be appreciated at a number of levels. At its simplest, it can be appreciated as a shocking, sad, and at times humorous, story about the fall-out and tragic human consequences of growing up in a relentlessly underprivileged household. One can ponder issues such as the extent to which we are masters of our own fate: is the die cast, or with sufficient will and strength of character, is anything is possible? At a deeper level, the unfolding of young master England’s life is an ugly metaphor for how colonial powers like England have plundered and subjugated less developed countries. If it’s OK for a country to do that at a macro political and geographical level, why is it not OK for a mere pawn like young master England to grab what he can from those who are better off.

It's much food for thought, and it’s the stuff of compelling theatre. England & Son is a triumph.

Kym Clayton

When: 17 Feb to 17 Mar

Where: The Studio, Holden Street Theatres

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au

Trail’s End

★★★

Jannali Jones. Adelaide Fringe. Domain Theatre. 16 Feb 2024

Trail’s End is a story about a young Aboriginal man , Sam (played by Dylan Miller) who is struggling to find positive cultural visibility in a mixed family, and not to be seen as or feel alien in his own country. Sam and his half-brother Jamie (James Goodlife) have faced family upheaval and are struggling. Sam and Jamie share a bond, but they have grown up differently, and Sam feels Jamie is the favoured son because he is ‘white’. They decide to go on a hike in the country to clear their heads and to reconnect with each other, but it doesn’t turn out well for either of them, though for different reasons.

Trail’s End is written by Jannali Jones who is an award-winning Gunai/Kurnai writer, and she has surrounded herself with a production team of mostly indigenous creatives. Their commitment and passion to the project is palpable.

At a time when the outcome of the Voice referendum is still so disturbing to many, the plot of Trail’s End should have been fertile territory for some powerful storytelling, but it just skims the surface of many issues. Coming in at only 45 minutes, a number of plot ideas could have been more thoroughly developed to make the characters more complex and interesting. Essentially the story is underwritten, which results in the actors frequently struggling to make dramatic impact. There are moments when one senses the action is going to “kick off”, but such moments are brief and infrequent.

Trail’s End is Charlie Barwa ‘s directing debut, and she has perhaps tried to include too many special effects (especially lighting) which don’t always land a punch and in some ways deprive the actors of opportunities to flex their acting muscles.

Miller and Goodlife both have a natural and uncomplicated style on stage and mostly handle conflicting emotions well.

Kym Clayton

When: 16 Feb to 3 Mar

Where: Domain Theatre and Goodwood Theatre and Studios

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au

Grav

★★★★

Adelaide Fringe. Holden Street Theatres, Ruby’s Room. 15 Feb 2024

It might be the most intimate performance space in the 2024 Fringe. Indeed, even as mens’ locker rooms go, it is a tight fit. But, somehow, thirty audience members manage to perch on benches in a quaintly retro style reminiscent of the old Red Shed days. 

Ah, such is our true hunger for theatre and memorable arts experiences.

The divine irony here is that, while set in a mens’ locker room, the play is about the wild physicality of rugby and the wide mountain landscape of Wales.

It is a journey of the imagination which is guided by an accomplished Welsh actor, Gareth J.Bale.

Wondering where the Woke boundaries lie when writing of such things, it has to be acknowledged that the Welsh are celebrated for their vocal prowess and said actor is possessed of a wonderful, rich, resonant voice, complete with a beautifully lilting Welsh accent. He’s a joy to the ear.

And, despite the tiny wee performance area, he shines as a beautiful mover. He’s an extremely fine actor.

As for the script by Owen Thomas, it delivers a non-linear biography of a legendary, much-worshipped Welsh rugby player called Ray Gravell.

Grav would seem to have been a colourful man and a particularly revered icon.

Did I mention that he was a massive Welsh pinup?

The show opens with a delicious anecdote about Peter O’Toole meeting Grav on a film set. 

Ever with his graceful body work, Bale sets the scene of the Welsh cultural appetite for rugby and the passions of competitive rivalry. He has a rugby ball prop and a fine kicking mime style, so imaginary balls fly through the darkness to mighty goal destinations. 

Grav had a full and varied life, some of it a decidedly grim. There are moments of immense poignancy in the play. There are moments, many of them, of raucous rivalry and jubilation.

The timeline is at times confusing, and the scoring is a challenge for those of us who have never been near a rugby match.

One can only respect the passion that so much of the world has for this form of football and believe in the verité of a very skilled piece of dramatic writing delivered by a simply superb actor.

At media day, the room went wild when it came to Bales’s curtain call.

This critic also applauded enthusiastically. For the production: lovely writing, sublime acting, and fun venue.

Samela Harris

When: 15 Feb to 17 Mar

Where: Holden Street Theatres

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au

The Portable Dorothy Parker

★★★★

Adelaide Fringe. Holden Street Theatres, The Arch. 15 Feb 2024

She was not a very nice person. She was an irredeemable drunk, in fact. With a  seriously bitchy bent. She used to quip that she’d start the day by brushing her teeth and sharpening her tongue.
Nonetheless, they gave this New Yorker a plum job as a drama critic to which end she worked at both the prestigious publications of Vogue and Vanity Fair. It didn’t hurt that she was born a Rothschild. Nor that these were days before critics had to tiptoe through the minefields of potential litigation. Mind you, she did write some fine poems, plays, screenplays, and book reviews and she was staunchly a part of the anti-Nazi league and even, under the McCarthy era, a suspected communist.  She knew everybody who was anybody but left her literary estate to a man she had never met, Martin Luther King. 

She was a tiny, feisty, caustic, woman who adorned the world with a litany of one-liners which have never lost currency. "You can lead a horticulture but you can never make her think"; “Men seldom make passes at women in glasses”; "That woman speaks eighteen languages but can never say ‘no' in any of them" and, for her tombstone: “It was against her better judgement”.
And so Mrs Parker comes to Adelaide in the form of American actress Margot Avery.

Avery plays Dorothy as from the writer's collected The Portable Dorothy Parker and, sitting in a comfortable armchair by pleasant lamplight on stage, she sifts through her famous works, reading them out with a caustic commentary to an invisible companion while slugging down drink after drink.  It is 1943 but she drinks “brown”, which is a lingering reference to the era of prohibition

Annie Lux is author of this well-wrought manifestation of Dorothy Parker, her life and works.  It is a good script, peppered with those famous lines. It has already been a popular Fringe one-hander, having won a Best Show in Pittsburgh’s Fringe in 2017.

American director Lee Costello joins the team in Adelaide, and like Avery is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre in LA.

The show is presented in Holden Street Theatre’s intimate The Arch wherein the sightlines are superb.
At the Media Day performance, however, audibility was a stretch for some, albeit the guffaws were plentiful.

Dorothy Parker was not a comedienne and nor is Avery. This is a narrative show, a bio-play and it ranges through some very interesting American literary history rich with Parker's personal anecdotes about Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway among others.
It’s well worth a look and an attentive listen. One’s chuckles are accompanied by a lovely learning curve.

Samela Harris

When: 15 Feb to 17 Mar

Where: Holden Street Theatres

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au