★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. 0471 Acro Physical Theatre & Cluster Arts. The Bunker, Fool’s Paradise. 7 Mar 2024
Three performers introduce themselves to the audience by gesture, saying nothing. One woman, two men, the taller man plays at being uncoordinated in performing his forward roll. I suspect it fools no-one.
A great deal of latitude can be given to performers such as the Acro trio since their target audience is completely fixated on one thing and demand nothing else. Children from the age of 4 to 8 (or so) want to be entertained, they want fun. And they get it. The old routines reworked into new shows, the balancing acts, the feats of strength, the acrobatics, and the sinuous flexing of bodies as they contort and position. What these three do with their bodies is amazing. A pillow fight using the cushions from a sofa offer another opportunity for some audience participation, and the kids love it.
I Am The Boss paints a simple scene where the three are left at home with what appears to be strict instructions to clean house; the adults having departed in a revving of engine and squealing of tyres. This is the signal for so many things to go wrong, and the interest in cleaning cloths seems slightly absurd, but not to kids, I guess. The fact that feather dusters are offered to several children in audience participation – but only to little girls – is one of those things that irks me, an adult.
The Acro performers hail from Taiwan, and it may be some of their tropes miss the mark slightly; the fall guy, the clumsy guy is the odd-looking guy whose stock in trade expression is an open-mouthed gormless look. The slapstick is entirely slapstick and the music pantomime; for adult audiences it is nothing they haven’t seen before and overplayed. There’s the ‘I need a drink, who emptied the water bottle?’ routine, the ‘chase the mosquito’ routine, and various others from the time of Buster Keaton or The Three Stooges. And the kids love it.
The final routine involves a very large lollipop, and a young girl is brought onstage. As an idea to keep kids interested it is too drawn out, although she does get to be part of the act, spinning around the stage to everyone’s delight; when the lollipop is revealed as a prop (surprise!) with a very normal sized Chupa Chup within, the ten-year-old critic next to me opined that the little girl had been short-changed and deserved a big lollipop. Critics, eh?
As the kids filed out of The Bunker the three performers could be seen handing out lollipops to them all, so all’s well that ends well.
Alex Wheaton
When: 7 to 17 Mar
Where: The Bunker, Fool’s Paradise
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. The Basement. 6 Mar 2024
Virtuoso is a one-man comedic routine (it’s not really stand-up) performed by an actor who is playing the role of an actor who is auditioning for a role in a production. Simple really, and how on earth could it possibly be funny?
The performer is Melburnian Casey Filips who has had broad training as an actor including in France at the prestigious clowning school Ecole Philippe Gaulier, and it shows. As Filips struts his stuff playing Tobias Finlay-Fraser, it is clear that he is entirely comfortable on stage particularly when he is performing exaggerated caricatures, which Virtuoso is chock full of.
Tobias arrives for his audition and the audience are the casting directors, whether they want to be or not. Tobias addresses the audience directly and seeks feedback and inspiration to get him through. He is ambitious and doesn’t let any hurdle get in his way. Some of the repartee between performer and audience (casting directors) is fertile ground for improv, but some of it is allowed to gently pass through to the keeper. Improvisation is risky business, and Filips knows how to choose his marks. The two volunteers in the opening night performance proved to be excellent, with one in particular almost eclipsing Filips himself. (The mating ritual dance of the Manatees was just a virtuoso performance in mime and clowning…. but just so silly!). The nature of the show likely attracts an audience that is in tune with theatrics, so the chances of snagging showy volunteers is greatly increased.
The storyline is entirely fatuous, which is part of the appeal of the show, and gives every opportunity for Filips and his volunteers to do totally idiotic stuff, which they do, and with great humour. At times, the repartee struggles but Filips keeps the momentum of the show heading in the direction of the next laugh, which is never too far away, and the audience is constantly smiling and belly-laughing.
Kym Clayton
When: 6 to 10 Mar
Where: The Basement
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Diana Nguyen. Spiegel Zelt. 5 Mar 2024
Bodily functions (of various permutations) are easy pickings and grist to the mill for comedians and Diana Nguyen serves up a variety of them, with ovulating and snoring her primary targets.
Nguyen has an easy, unforced manner, and the audience warms to her immediately as she invites them into her life. The title of this show reflects her (or perhaps more rightly her mother’s) interest in her reproductive capacity. At 38, she is still single, and childless. We’re given a backstory on her most recent liaison, including her love of foetus duck eggs (just don’t) and how they featured in the relationship she likened to ‘Survivor’. Having successfully voted her erstwhile partner out of her life-show, she decides to recalibrate by walking 300km of the Camino de Santiago.
It is here that she describes the symphony of snoring that backgrounded her nights in Albergues along the way, sharing huge dormitories with up to 100 other pilgrims. With great aplomb, she conducted the ‘Symphony of Snore’ guiding the self-confessed snorers in the audience through a rousing rendition of Strauss’s Blue Danube. It’s an easy get but still very funny.
The upshot of Nguyen’s sabbatical (with a trip to Italy added on, replete with aging Italian would-be lovers) was that she decided to listen to her mother and her clanging body clock, and have her eggs harvested and frozen. Just in case.
Nguyen’s portrayal of her mother is hilarious and bar the Vietnamese accent, she’s just like mothers everywhere who are waiting fruitlessly (see what I did there?) for grandchildren to be produced by aging daughters. She takes us through the process of medical retrieval (she preferred the term ‘scoop’ in regard to her precious eggs) and is now just waiting for the right fertiliser to turn up.
Just in case we’ve forgotten anything, Nguyen recites a condensed version of the entire show, only this time she plays her ukulele (the cutest green Kala soprano) to the tune of Taylor Swift’s Love Song and manages to cram the whole lot in!
Diana Nguyen is a charming character, a bit crude, a bit prissy, a bit tragic and a bit joyful. And very, very funny.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 5 to 10 Mar
Where: Spiegel Zelt
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Berliner Ensemble. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 6 Mar 2024
No longer the “Wunderkind”, our one-time, oh so vivid Festival director, Barrie Kosky, is now in “Oberboss" territory and still, oh so vivid.
He shines in this production of The Threepenny Opera, the great Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill cultural-landmark anti-opera which has pleased and intrigued the arts world since 1928. Kosky’s program acknowledges also the Elisabeth Hauptmann collaboration in the original adaptation of The Beggar’s Opera on which this work is based.
Kosky has done what he does, his own thing. He has stepped far away from German cabaret cliches and set the work on a great big industrial jungle gym of a set. The actors crawl and clamber through it and pose and perform. On opening night there was a problem with the hydraulics and the audience was informed that the cast had spent the day re-blocking the production to compensate. They succeeded. The performance was a triumph. And, the production is the sort of masterpiece we always expected of Kosky who has been resident in Germany for decades now and producing ever more extraordinary works.
The Adelaide Festival opening night audience was simply purring the words “our Barrie” as it dispersed from the Her Maj foyer. Kosky was not in town, but parochial pride minded not.
The Threepenny Opera tells a grim and nasty story about London criminals, greedy businessmen, and infidelity. It is ferociously anti-capitalist, a Brechtian stance. And it is gloriously and absurdly farcical.
Kosky’s cast is sublime. One falls in love with one after another of them.
The production is in German with translation screens flanking the stage, somewhat awkwardly for those in front stalls seating.
The orchestra pit has been elevated because the orchestra's musicians are very much part of the action. This element is a part of the breaking of the fourth wall which characterises the “opera’s" style. Actors cue the orchestra and appeal directly to the audience, while musicians, from time to time, stand as patsies.
The show opens with the white and sparkle-faced head of Dennis Jankowiak as The Moon over Soho peeking through the vast drop of loose glitter curtains. He introduces the first of the of the Weill refrains in a to-die-for tenor voice. Wickedly ethereal. And a taste of the cabaret imagery into which tradition has cast The Threepenny Opera.
The main protagonist, Macheath, aka Mac the Knife, is played by lithe and limber Gabriel Schneider. He seduces not only his women but the audience also. It’s an exhaustingly vigorous and outrageous performance. His bride, Polly Peachum, is delivered by Cynthia Micas who negotiates the giant scaffolds of the set clad in terrifyingly high platform shoes and sings like an angel. Her besuited father, Jonathan Peachum, in the form of respected German actor, Tilo Nest, expounds in Brechtian sprechgesang, the dark and selfish spirit of business; capitalist bastard that he is.
It is the Browns who bring the house down. As Brown, the London Police Chief, Kathrin Wehlisch is neatly in drag-king mode and playing her character with Chaplinesque panache. It is a feast of over-the-top reactive ham exemplifying the almost slapstick flavour with which Kosky has imbued the production and it is hard to take one's eye off her, unless it is to celebrate the actress playing Brown’s daughter, Lucy Brown, another Mac amorata. In this role, Laura Balzer steals the stage in a glorious impudence of wild physicality. There are beggars and prostitutes and, significantly, stage crew who perform their chores amid the actors in another demonstration of the fallen fourth wall.
Despite sound and hydraulic issues, the effusive orchestra of Adam Benzwi, the grotesqueries of makeup and the bright lighting of Ulrich Eh with the professionalism of a creamy cast ensured that Adelaide Festival’s big Kosky opener was absolutely all right on the night.
Brava!
Samela Harris
When: 6 to 10 Mar
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Marcel Cole. Star Theatres. 5 Mar 2024
In his heyday, the music and antics of George Formby made him the highest paid entertainer in the UK. He did world tours (including Australia) made movies and performed in countless concert halls and radio shows and was awarded an OBE post his gruelling WW2 entertainment tours for the troops.
There is such a rich history here, and Marcel Cole does well to tell us as much of the story as he does. Born George Booth in Wigan, Lancashire in 1904, his father, under the stage name George Formby, was one of the great music hall performers of the day. Charlie Chaplin even borrowed the costume and cane look for his character of The Tramp.
Young George was dissuaded from the theatre and became a jockey, but after the death of his father (at 45, of tuberculosis), he took on his father’s stage name and followed him onto the boards.
Cole, in the character of George, narrates the rise, fall, and rise of Formby, in the most delicious of Lancashire accents, accompanied by Kate at the piano. There’s no fourth wall here, he invites the audience in, chatting away about his life as a performer, and as a man. It’s riveting stuff; as I said, the history is rich and Cole has done an amazing job with this production.
While Formby initially used his father’s act with the same songs, jokes, and characters, it was his meeting and marrying Beryl Ingham that changed his life and his act. She had him dress formally and introduced the ukulele. While the marriage was very successful for his career, it was not personally satisfying, and George takes us through his relationship with Beryl, with her stage character taken on by accompanist Kate (who also, with quick wig changes, becomes a BBC newsreader and his mother).
Cole is no slouch when it comes to the music. Formby had quite an appetite for innuendo and songs like When I’m Cleaning Windows (initially banned by the BBC) showcases this beautifully. Formby’s play on words is quite remarkable when one considers that he was almost illiterate (which explains some of Beryl). Playing a Goldtone banjolele (a copy of the original Gibson that George played) and a Kala Jazz tenor uke, we were treated to songs such as It Serves You Right, I’m Shy and Standing At The Corner Of The Street, accompanied by Kate at various times on U-bass, violin and piano. There is so much gold to be mined here, but Cole keeps it concise and entertaining from start to finish (including some fine tap-dancing in-between).
This is a polished, professional, and highly enjoyable production. Marcus Cole is a stunner, and when he finishes with the audience singalong Leaning On A Lamp Post and introduces Kate as his mother, well, that’s just icing on the cake. Don’t miss this.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 5 to 9 Mar
Where: Star Theatre Two
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au