Adelaide Festival. Space Theatre. 26 Feb 2025
This show is remarkable and should be seen. It’s not standup comedy, but it feels like it, and the audience treats it that way. It’s fully scripted and there is no extemporisation. It comprises one-liner after one-liner and the audience are in stitches of laughter, almost constantly. The one-liners are deliciously written – the English language never sounded better in a standup routine - but … it’s not standup although the physical antics of the actor are easily the equal of the best stand-up comedian.
So, who is the actor, and what’s it all about? The ‘play’, for that’s what it is, is written by Marcelo Dos Santos and is possibly autobiographical. It’s about a stand-up comedian who is trapped in a world of one-night stands and doomed relationships, because the comedian – our unnamed protagonist – has a self-destructive approach to life: he’s not good enough for anyone, so he might as well kill off a relationship himself before his partner does. It’s simpler that way. Except, he meets someone – an American – who really seems to be Mr Right. However, the American suffers from cataplexy, which is a disorder whereby laughter causes dangerous muscular paralysis that can quickly lead to death. So, we have a comedian falling in love with someone who can never laugh at his jokes. It’s a narrative that any quality standup comedian could milk for a million dollars. And that’s exactly what Samuel Barnett does in the role of the comedian.
Barnett is a master of timing, gesture, and tonality, but above all he understands the importance of silence and volume modulation. He delivers the text at breakneck speed and every word is heard with crystal clarity; such is his superb articulation. The lighting is simple but effective, and it is the set: a series of fluorescent tubes that change colour as needed. The lighting changes are tied to changes in the narrative and Barnett synchronises superbly. Really, it’s quite masterful.
Listening to the storyline unfold is like wading into quicksand – it consumes you and you know that one grubby description of a sexual exploit is inexorably leading to another, but its compelling. You need to hear what’s coming next, and even you ‘know’ how it’s all going to end, you still need to hear it because you can’t really be sure. Dos Santos is overflowing with ambiguities, but that’s what makes it funny, and, under the astute and tight direction of Matthew Xia, Barnett knows how to milk it for everything it has, and then some.
Just superb.
Kym Clayton
When: 26 Feb to 2 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Queens Theatre. 26 Feb 2025
This is a cult show. And without a doubt, followers of Hedwig were in massed attendance tonight; the mere bat of an eyelash was enough to set them off, cheering and catcalling with gay abandon.
For those of us who hadn’t seen the show or the film previously (all over YouTube), it seemed to take a while to kick in. At the Queen’s Theatre, a surprisingly small stage was set in the half round (the crescent?), covered with a circular shimmering silver tube curtain.
Hedwig (Seann Miley Moore) is an East German refugee, having escaped to the United States with their then US soldier husband. They haven’t escaped unscathed; they had to ‘leave something behind’ and a botched operation leaves them with ‘an angry inch’ for genitals “where my penis used to be, where my vagina never was”. Collecting and losing another lover (the rock star playing next door) they are now married to Yitzhak (Adam Noviello) who sings back-up in the punk band The Angry Inch.
The show opens with Tear Me Down which places the narrative firmly into the anger space as they recall their life as Hansel Schmidt in Berlin in the early 1960s. Much of the narrative of the show is based on their search for their ‘other half’, which is inspired by Aristophane’s speech in Plato’s Symposium, who opines that humans were once attached to another – the angry gods split them in two, and they spend their lives looking for their other half, their soul mate. This is Hedwig’s mission, as it is articulated in The Origin of Love.
The rock musical was written by two Americans (Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell) in the 1990s, and some of the references, including musically, are dated and America-centric. There’s also the double entendres common to every drag cabaret show, “I do love a warm hand on my entrance”. Occasionally however, Miley Moore kicks it into 2025 with pointed references to contemporary issues – unsurprisingly, JK Rowling gets a name check (and Hedwig the Owl gets a hoot check).
Hedwig’s anger propels the show, and while I’d hesitate to describe the band as having a punk ethos, they certainly perform the songs with an energy and enthusiasm that keeps the whole thing rocking (sound design by Jamie Mensworth, musical director Victoria Falconer).
While initially Jeremy Allen’s sparse set seemed a little limiting, it quickly revealed its ‘nooks and crannies’ as it were; ladders leading to flyovers, walls becoming doors to a rock stadium and Geoff Cobham’s lighting design brought depth and angularity to the dark design.
In the tradition of the pub gig vs the theatre show, the fourth wall is a flimsy construct, with Hedwig using the audience as part of the show, chatting directly, running through the crowd, and using audience members as props.
There’s a lot to see and take in here, and what at first seems like a paean to Rocky Horror develops into a thought provoking look at when to let go and what to leave behind, beyond the physical.
There are still some loose ends here, not least some of the linking narratives that don’t quite hit the mark, but there is still relevance to be had in this quietly aging production; while it’s not a knockout, it still packs a punch.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 26 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Queens Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Holden Street Theatres Edinburgh Fringe Award 2024 in association with Roxydog, Joshua Beaumont and Matthew Emeny. Holden Street Theatres. 26 Feb 2025
Sensibly, Alex Hill, a talented Brit, went to acting school at Chiswick and soon demonstrated a flair for writing and flamboyant acting with this cracker good show!
With the Euro 2020 Final fresh in his mind (when Italy beat England in a 3-2 penalty shoot-out!), Hill reimagines the life of football fanatic tragic Charlie Perry who brought English fans together for the biggest day in English football in 55 years by sticking a lit flare up his crack in Leicester Square. Which end you may well ask?
Hill concocts a fictional backstory of Perry’s football fanaticism since sixth form to the aforementioned big game - to a surprisingly elegiac epilogue. Hill narrates and performs his story through Billy, a football weekend warrior who is taken down the highway to hooliganism by a mongrel warlord called Winegum, another of Hill’s characters. Best though to keep your eye on Adam, Billy’s bestie from school days.
Against an emblematic backdrop of English ensigns, Billy bursts onto the scene with vim and vigour and is an instant celebrity for his fan flare. Under the direction of Sean Turner, Hill’s Billy hoists himself around the stage taking us into cafes, pubs, his dad’s salon and even a matinee of Les Mis with girlfriend Daisy (where oddly he doesn’t have an ear piece to hear the play of the day’s game). He seems too middle class to be a yob, but his transition into cult capture and manipulation is part of the story. Billy increasingly brims with beer and copilots with coke - Hill does exuberance magnificently. The tribal rituals are seductive and fun… until they are not.
Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Ar** For England won this year’s Holden Street Theatres Edinburgh Fringe Award which provides funding for the recipient to come to the Adelaide Fringe. A great pick by Martha Lott.
David Grybowski
When: 18 Feb to 23 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Richard Jordan Productions UK. The Arch, Holden Street Theatres. 26 Feb 2025
Who is more ravaged by Shellshocked? The characters or the audience?
This “explosive new play” is from the pen of British playwright Philip Stokes who has rattled our cultural cage in previous Fringes: Heroin(e) for Breakfast and Jesus, Jane, Mother and Me.
And, it features his son, Jack Stokes, whose dramatic perspicacity won him an enthusiastic Adelaide Critics Circle Award in 2023.
Naturally, expectations for this work were high, especially since it comes out of the production stable of the highly distinguished Richard Jordan.
Shellshocked fulfils those expectations with its quality of professionalism and, without a doubt, its promise as simply unforgettable. But it is not easy theatre. Strikingly Pinteresque, it is a very strange and gruelling ordeal with some raspingly shrill vocal work by senior actor Lee Bainbridge.
He plays Mr Lupine, the mysteriously famous artist to whom young Wesley, urged by his mother, applies for an apprenticeship. Having survived the trenches of WWI, 19-year-old Wesley has shown immense promise in his cathartic charcoal drawings. Having been rendered the man of the family, the rake-thin lad wears his dead father’s oversized clothes as he applies for work to support his poor mother and sisters. Slovenly old Lupine knows all about them. They live down the road. But, he has a game of cat and mouse to play with the young soldier. He, too, is a damaged soul. Not a very nice one. He plies the boy with cognac and plays power games which have the audience pondering his motives. Is he a sexual predator, perhaps? Or just a sad old loser?
Is Wesley as naive as he seems?
Their interactions evolve through some breathtaking and disturbing scenes. Stokes delivers a beautifully contained performance against the bombastic aural assaults of Bainbridge. There are some momentous interactions.
The little Arch theatre houses this production well, the stage draped generously with artists’ drop sheets and adorned with period bar and desk plus, dominantly, a huge white spotlit canvas.
This is the artist’s studio wherein the play opens with him listening to the radio. A strange soundscape thereafter comes and goes, with filmic suggestions of rising drama. It is perhaps unnecessary since the play not only speaks for itself, it literally bellows. And twists and turns rather satisfyingly. One is left with all sorts of quaint loose ends to ponder along with a piercing reminder of the appalling collateral damage that war imparts upon individuals and society.
Samela Harris
Warning: the theatre’s new airconditioning is fierce. Take a wrap,
When: 18 Feb to 23 Mar
Where: The Arch, Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. The Lark @ Gluttony. 23 Feb 2025
James Barr is a genuine storyteller, and his show Sorry I Hurt Your Son (Said My Ex To My Mum) is an autobiographical journey through and safely out the other side of an abusive relationship (sort of!). It hurts to say it, but it is oh so funny! The one liners flow thick and fast, and if you don’t know much about the ins and outs of gay relationships, your education is fast and furious, whether you like it or not!
It’s almost shameful that Barr should mercilessly and incessantly joke about domestic violence for almost fifty minutes, and even worse that we the audience should laugh at it. But that’s exactly what happens: Barr does it so well and we laugh and laugh, and squirm.
Barr is clever, witty, calculating, risky, and he slaughters all manner of sacred cows in his wake. He seduces his audience and makes us feel safe, then shatters it all with an ugly reminiscence that stuns us into a silence for what feels like an eternity, before following it up with a funny quip that comes as a release. He’s clever.
Barr’s show is disarming. He subliminally challenges us to consider our own relationships with persons known and unknown. And we do. We each fight briefly with our own demons but then give in to his superbly timed gags and laugh. Above all, Barr is a stand-up comic, but this show is more than that.
The title of the show derives from a Christmas card his ex sent to Barr’s mother of whom he was fond. “Sorry I hurt your son.” Why didn’t he say it to James? A further extension of the abuse.
Kym Clayton
When: 23 Feb to 2 Mar
Where: The Lark @ Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au