Mettle

★★★★★

Adelaide Fringe. Cirkidz. The Peacock @ Gluttony. 5 Mar 2023

 

Wow. Just wow. This is Cirkidz?

 

They were good in previous productions, for instance last Fringe’s offering Ropeable, but this is next level. Cirkidz is not just speaking up; it’s speaking a whole new language. It’s a harder, sharper language, working on that nebulous area between the body and the brain. The conversation is big, bold and at times brassy. It’s vulnerable, and it’s questioning.

 

Mettle is a new circus show and apparently “explores the mental toughness and passion that propels you toward achieving your vision for life”.

 

I’m never sure about these vague descriptions of shows – if you didn’t see them written down you would be clueless half the time, and just enjoy the production for the visual performances. Because there is certainly plenty of that!

 

But this time, there is a spoken narrative. It comes after you’ve settled down a bit, after you’ve noted that this is a step beyond what you’ve seen them do before. It all starts to shift shape a little, to make its own sense, to cement your suspicion that you’re seeing something special. The body and the brain. The connections. The disconnections. The pain. The passion. The laughter. The despair.

 

The ensemble work is exemplary. While there are some standout performers, there are no stars. The troupe work together, each forming part of the whole – there are no passengers here. And the athleticism is remarkable. They have honed their craft; movements are not left to dangle in the air or slide to a slow stop, they are sharp, clean, precise. Feet and arms stop when and where they should, incising the space before moving on.

 

Mettle also notes “that if you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, you will light that sucker up yourself”. The light is used as motif for a number of the vignettes and the strength of these performers’ - body and brain – just shines through.

 

There’s plenty of humour to be had here as well – the ‘don’t touch the sweets’ routine is both hilarious and impressive, as the artists contort those bodies under and over themselves. Musical skills are also on show, as some of the cast take to the bass, keyboard and percussion for a beautifully performed vocal piece.

 

There is so much more to be said here – the seesaw routine is exciting, thrilling and unmissable. Towers of chairs have you holding your breath, and red cotton string will have you chuckling.

 

One often hears young people described as the performers (or audience) of the future. Forget that. These are the performers of now. They’re match fit, and the show is exemplary. Congratulations Cirkidz. With reference to another of the amazing routines, you’ve nailed it!

 

Arna Eyers-White

 

When: 13 Mar

Where: The Peacock at Gluttony

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au

The Divine Loveys

★★★★

Adelaide Fringe. Holden Street Theatres. 4 Mar 2023

 

Having seen Janet Swain’s solo show last week (Delphi Goes Bassooning is a singular triumph) it comes as no surprise that I should follow up with a viewing of her band performance, four women of sequins and sass from the Northern Rivers region of NSW who go by the name of The Loveys.

 

It is worth noting that the bassoon does make an appearance! There is a fabulous moment when Janet performs a solo, propping her foot up on the fold-back front of stage, flashing legs and channeling the like of Hole’s Courtney Love. Not often noted as an instrument of cabaret performance its place in The Loveys’ line-up appears ridiculously natural alongside the bass guitar (Pamela), percussion (Belinda) and beautiful white ukulele (Jenny). These days there is always a ukulele, though Janet rounds the sound out with keyboard. There is also, of course, a full complement of vocals, subject to a few vagaries and blurts in the sound before being largely sorted.

 

And the show itself? A loose take on life as a mature woman, seeking love and seeking friends and seeking sex. Three of the four have been divorced or outlived their partners, so rich experiences form part of the between-song patter, and more intimate reflections are used to build the narrative of the songs themselves. Songs of love and loss, all beautifully rendered, some hilariously so.

 

Spinster Daughter reclaims the term as a positive; Daddy Joined the Circus sees Belinda joining Jenny on the uke for some lovely picking; Sex at 72 has a number of mature women in the audience cackling with recognition. There’s a cover song in there as well; The Loveys pay homage to Sia Furler and the brilliant Chandelier – the song of freedom gets the twin uke attack and some complex vocal harmonics.

 

It is almost exactly what one might expect from four women (aging up to 72, if you’re asking) and their take on the personal side of life. There is no politics, no particular world-view, it is not that sort of cabaret. But the insights, the humour, the camaraderie are all real and powerful.

 

Have I Left It Too Late? they opine in one of their songs. Judging by this performance, absolutely not.

 

Arna Eyers-White

 

When: Closed

Where: Holden Street Theatres

Bookings: Closed

Uke Springsteen - Nebraska

★★★★1/2

Adelaide Fringe. Grace Emily Hotel. 3 Mar 2023

 

Ben Roberts, founder of the Ukulele Death Squad, has performed a Fringe Springsteen show previously, pulling songs from various stages of the Boss’s lengthy career, leaving few punters unsatisfied with his choices.

 

He’s taken a risk this time, performing the entirety of Springsteen’s 1982 Nebraska album on the ukulele. The album itself was a risk; recorded on a four track TEAC in Springsteen’s rented house as a bunch of demos, most of the songs didn’t work for the E-Street band. While the ‘Electric Nebraska Sessions’ are apparently out there, most of those tracks have never seen the light of day. A few, such as Born in the USA, Glory Days and I’m On Fire survived the addition of the band, and went on to 1984’s Born in the USA. For the most part however, the songs were too raw, too personal, and Springsteen and manager Jon Landeau decided to release the demos as the album.

 

Nebraska appears constantly in critic’s choices, but it never really sold well, didn’t get airplay and, bar for Atlantic City, the songs rarely get an airing. Yet it remains an essential part of Springsteen folklore and, for the tragics (comme moi), a vital component of the lexicon.

 

There need be no concern here; Roberts has grasped Nebraska with both hands, and held it victoriously aloft. From the start, he takes control of the songs, making them his own, yet never strays from the essence of Springsteen’s intent. Introducing the album, he acknowledges the song writing, the storytelling, and notes the lack of traditional forms: choruses, bridges, the singalong hooks. And death. The album is full of death – of people, of love, of relationships – and a dog.

 

In introducing each track, Roberts contextualises with a potted social and song history, a bit of opinion, and often shares some of the difficulties he had in getting the songs down. The voice reverb is a tad heavy, which could make the lyrics a bit fuzzy and the uke a little sharp at times, but overall Roberts brings an unmistakeable Springsteen vibe to the room, no mean feat. The audience is deathly quiet as he works his way through this most sombre of set lists. Bass and tambourine percussion come via cannily played foot pedals, and he manages to fill out the sound while giving the songs the space they need.

 

State Trooper, for example, is about as sparse as they come on Nebraska. Two chords, over and over and over. Roberts adds to it with some stunning fret picking and slide, but allows it to remain the tragic cry for help that it is. Ah, please don’t stop me.

 

To close the show, Roberts plays his own composition Glass of Water, acknowledging that it’s essentially homage to the style of song writing Springsteen employed on the album: a well told story, no lyrical repeats, no choruses. He takes the opportunity to showcase his uke playing and if you’re still thinking that the uke is about the jangle of Tiny Tim (or worse, Scott Morrison), you need to see this to understand.

 

Some people were there to hear Springsteen’s Nebraska, others to hear a remarkable uke player; they both came away richer.

Arna Eyers-White

 

When: 9 and 16 Mara

Where: Grace Emily Hotel

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Adelaide Festival. Kip Williams/Sydney Theatre Company. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 4 Mar 2023

 

If ever a plot could thicken, it is that of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

It is a dense and convoluted plot of switching identities and drugs.

 

Australian new-age theatre maestro Kip Williams has taken the now classic 19th Century novella and, following the success of his extraordinary one-actor multi-media stage triumph The Picture of Dorian Gray, delivered The Strange Case as a two-actor,  mega-crew,  multi-screened artwork this critic dubs a stage “techtacular”. 

 

Not only but also, as is the vogue these days, Williams has “reimagined” the intention of the author and reinterpreted the nature, not of Jekyll and Hyde, but of Jekyll/Hyde’s relationship with his/their London-lawyer friend Gabriel Utterson, who is narrator of this wild and wonderful Gothic story. As Williams extrapolates in his excellent, must-read Director’s Notes, there are some important “binaries” inherent in the Stevenson story. And, indeed, Williams works upon them in this eye-popping, eye-rolling contemporary production.

 

The two actors, Matthew Backer and Ewan Leslie, are consummate professionals with the sort of exquisite voices one relishes hearing in the theatre. Their skills of articulation are sorely but successfully tested by the rapid-fire delivery required to fit the Stevenson text into the constraints of production time. The audience concentrates madly to keep up. 

 

The show is “techtacular” insofar as it is aesthetically and physically multi-layered; the actors visible, working at their craft onstage, while simultaneously live-videoed by black-clad camera operators moving around them. Their video images are delivered to the audience in black and white on a series of screens above the stage, leaving the colours of the tangible world in a muted miniature perspective below.  Indeed, it is fascinating to be able to see those two realities: the filmic scene and behind the scene. It surely is wondrously clever theatre, albeit with perhaps too many screens. How did actors down on the stage climb those vivid non-existent stairs? How come there are more faces on the screens than there are on the actors onstage? 

 

Festival audiences are swarming to witness this emergent “techtacular” theatre.

 

But what of the content and the intent?

Here, the critic must step back into the original intentions of a Victorian author and ponder the old-school known against the newly-assumed possibilities.  It is a ripe field. 

The director reiterates the word “binary” in his notes - and the Stevenson concept of Jekyll and Hyde as a schizophrenic, two-in-one, personality-disorder phenomenon sings forth as understood Freudian logic. 

But, Williams suggests one can be more than two. Human nature is as chaotic as nature itself and, indeed, people keep huge parts of themselves secret. We all have multiple facets.

 

So it comes that Dr Jeckyll, under the influence of his chemicals, besports in the dark worlds of sleaze and night life deviation, being not the same straight man that his old friend Utterson has assumed.

 

And thus, with a splendour of artful inventiveness, does Williams take his audience into an otherworld of drug-fuelled psychotic and carnal passions.

 

From the crimes of evil Hyde, his theatrical imaginings soar to manic triumph and tragedy, all the while, on many screens, described in machine-gun torrents of dialogue by STC’s brilliant actors. Theirs are bravura performances and then some.

 

From the classic elegance of filmic monochrome, the rising denouement is something akin to an acid trip and the binaries take flight.

 

The audience either claps or gapes.

 

At the end of the night, the audience is satisfied that this had been a festival-worthy experience, but its members wander off contemplating where film ends and theatre begins. It is a challenging melange of genres. 

 

Lights, cameras, action, suspense and sophisticated effects.

 

This show has the lot.

 

Samela Harris

 

When: 4 to 12 Mar

Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre

Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au