★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Neylon & Peel (WA). Holden Street Theatres. 25 Feb 2023
The “Beep Test” is a “thing” familiar to most school children. It is a crucial fitness measure which is counted in their overall school achievements. A lousy showing in the beep test can bring down the school dux. Such is the premise of this fast and furious home-grown Aussie musical.
Thus does Sandra (Jo Jabalde), the top student of Year 7C, struggle against the odds of the sports-star students to keep her high marks and, importantly, to please her demanding but demeaning mother.
She is up against Zach (Josh Reckless) and Jane (Sara Reed) who are super sporty rivals desperate to come out on top. There is also hapless Cooper (Jack Keen) who, with his interest in computer gaming, is the outsider and general victim of school teasing. Shamelessly favouring his footy-mad pet, Zach, the PE teacher (Lachie Hewson) pushes the cause of fitness with the hero-worship of champions. For anyone who is not a school sports fan, this psychology rubs in a very wrong direction. But, Naylon & Peel have squeezed a goodly dose of humour out of it, as well as an old fashioned tale of compassion and moral values. Yep, it is cornball. But it is irresistibly high energy and fun-filled, the cast, when not jogging through songs, performing some very creditable dance routines. The choreography is extremely slick and good looking and the cast members are fit as proverbial fiddles and very well-rehearsed and able as hoofers, especially Hewson as the hulking big coach fellow. For all his muscular bulk, this young actor moves like a dream. He’s a very expressive actor, too. Indeed, all characters are clearly and compassionately evoked. It’s an extremely competent production all round.
Connor Neylon and Jackson Peele are products of WAAPA. The Beep Test is not their first musical and one hopes not their last. It is an appealing show, impeccably enhanced by the obviously formally-trained cast and a fabulous accompanist.
The production has been earning five-star reviews wherever it has been performed - and here’s five more.
Samela Harris
NOTE: Programs available only by QR codes on the phone are the critic’s nightmare. One cannot and must not look at them during performance and definitely not take notes on them. Dropbox is an app. For heaven’s sake. Accept cookies. QR programs are odious and detract from a good impression of a young company.
When: 25 Feb to 5 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Flying Bridge Theatre Company (UK) via Joanne Hartstone. The Bally, Gluttony. 24 Feb 2023
They tout it as “a surrealist comedy”. It is far more. It is like a deep dive into Beckett, Sartre and Kafka. Written by American satirist C.J. Hopkins, it is absurdist, existential, satirical, and deliciously manic with a nod in the direction of Laurel and Hardy. Most importantly, it is a rivetingly good piece of theatre superbly performed in impeccable American accents by a couple of ace actors from a Welsh theatre company.
Here, just to add to the descriptive melange, it is presented in a seriously cute round tent called The Bally set beneath trees on the verdant slopes of Guttony in Rymill Park.
Tousle-haired Sam in denim bib-overalls is the innocent hick parrying with sleek straight man, Bob, who wears shirt and tie. Both are lost in torrents of verbiage, sometimes puzzled, sometimes combative, sometimes political. Ostensibly, they are sharing a bottle of bourbon after a game of cards which was abandoned because of the loss of the nine of diamonds. Their subjects segue in discursive circles touching on seals and fishing, capitalism and crime. Yes, even horses. They are anarchists who hate anarchists. They express the best and worst of American nationalistic sentiments. They talk ceaselessly, incessantly, desperately, furiously. They are trapped in frenetic, meaningless discourse bringing to mind the predicaments of Godot and Endgame and NoExit.
But these are the prisoners of Horse Country, performed with peerless vociferance by Daniel Lllewelyn-Williams and Michael Edwards and directed by Mark Bell,.
The play’s humour is lateral with surprise throwaways. The audience concentrates to keep up. This is not hard, since it is rivetingly intense - but only for 65 breathtaking minutes.
It was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe and it is destined to be a hit here.
A sensationally satisfying dose of transfixing bafflegab.
Samela Harris
When: 24 Feb to 10 Mar
Where: The Bally, Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Goodwood Theatre. 25 Feb 2023
Done To Death, By Jove! is a hoot! It’s a two hander where at least six are needed (actors that is, not six hands!). It’s a who dunnit and borrows from the style of The 39 Steps, The Play that Goes Wrong, segments from the TV series The Two Ronnies, and arguably from the Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society etc formula. We have on stage two consummate award-winning actors – Nicholas Collett and Gavin Robertson – who both give an object lesson in physical humour and general stagecraft. It’s a delight, especially in the last fifteen minutes of the sixty minute show when the pace hots up and its bordering on chaos (of the best kind!).
So, what’s it all about?
Collett and Robertson take to the stage as Sir Nicholas and Sir Gavin, both mainstays of a touring theatre company that has experienced a major mishap. The truck carrying the cast, crew, set, properties – the whole box and dice so to speak – has broken down en route to the theatre. What to do? Because the show must go on, the two Sirs valiantly travel on to the theatre and hastily cobble together what they can by way of costumes and properties and perform the show, playing all roles by themselves. You get the picture. There are lots of madcap costume changes, sound effects that go wrong, missed lines, false starts, and a set that doesn’t entirely work. Yes, it’s a hoot!
In an attempt to solve the case and find out who murdered Lady Fanshawe, the two Sirs play the roles of Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, as well as numerous witnesses, including two hilarious Scottish twin sisters, and a florist who could also be a flautist depending on your accent! Because the tech crew is stuck on the broken down truck, the two Sirs operate the laptop that has the sound effects on it, but it all gets hopelessly out of order which adds to the comedy.
But it could have been funnier, if the script was as strong as it was in the last fifteen minutes or so. Earlier in the play, the script calls for the two characters to break the fourth wall a little too often and to have side conversations between themselves as they sort out the myriad problems they need to solve. Initially its funny, but the script seems to rely a little too much on this stratagem, and the gag starts to wear thin. But, in the last quarter hour the style of the script comes into itself, and it is oh-so-funny!
Nicholas Collett and Gavin Robertson are an absolute delight, and it is obvious that they are having the time of their lives presenting this very silly but very funny play … that all goes wrong!
Kym Clayton
When: 25 to 26 Feb
Where: Goodwood Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Theatre Travels and Olivia Ruggiero. 23 Feb 2023
Vocal artist Olivia Ruggiero sings like an angel. The title of the show announces her two musical interests: Broadway for American musicals and diva for opera. Olivia performs in Adelaide already well-awarded. Her collaboration with director Carly Fisher resulted in Puppets which won Broadway World Sydney’s Best New Play, and Olivia receiving the best solo performance award last year.
Together, they created a syllabus of musical favourites and some less known but more fun numbers for Broadway Diva. When you are not lulled into a submissive buzz, you are enchanted by Olivia’s expressions or empathising with her prodigious love of her craft. Hers is a family story with Gran introducing her to musical theatre and Mum handing out flyers. Olivia presented a balanced mix of medleys and complete songs, all ably accompanied by Thomas Saunders on the keyboard. I Don’t Know How to Love Him of Jesus Christ Superstar was a moving emotional introspection. Jeanine Tesori’s (the most prolific and honoured female theatrical composer in history) very funny song about the frustrated Girl in 14B is a highlight of lively interpretation. A couple of short arias including an animated rendition of Puccini’s O Mio Babbino Caro were a very welcome change-up from Broadway.
Olivia looked fantastic in a firm-fitting sequined gown and she stayed cool in the evening heat. While her songs are imbued with heartfelt meaning and interpretation, her conversational tone with the audience, while honest, is a little too practiced. That slight fault is overwhelmed by her talent, love of craft and gumption. Brava!
PS – The show is presented in the lovely sunken gardens behind the cottage on the Holden Street Theatres premises. Being outdoors, the black vinyl seats cooked in the 40 degree sun for eight hours. Even at 7 pm, my bum was boiling, like a steak sizzling on a hot rock.
David Grybowski
When: 21 to 25 Feb
Where: The Barbara Hardy Garden – Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★
Palmerston Project Pty Ltd. 24 Feb 2023
The White Mouse was Peter Maddern’s “twice-over sold-out” – whatever that means – 2020 Fringe hit, but that’s not the case this year. The story of Nancy Wake certainly deserves attention and better treatment than in Peter Maddern’s script. Maddern’s play postdates Russell Braddon’s 1956 biography and Wake’s autobiography in 1985. She got the Peter FitzSimons treatment in 2001 and the German point of view in 2012. There was even an Australian mini-series in 1987. And now Maddern’s play.
Who was she? Kiwi-born and Sydney-bred, she got francophiled though her marriage to a French industrialist before WWII. Wake bravely parachuted into central France and fought with and lead some French Resistance prior to and after D-Day. She received medals from France, the UK, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Everybody wanted a piece of her action.
Maddern’s script is maddeningly crammed with background information that disrupts the narrative. There is way more exposition than action. We use our imagination to accept that a bare stage is actually a forest hide-out in central France. Often the direction doesn’t make any sense. People inexplicably sit away from the representational campfire instead of around it. Or can you imagine Nancy Wake turning her back on a captured rabid Nazi Youth-now Panzer tank crewman she’s interrogating, alone, after she casually puts down her revolver and picks up a cup of tea? Or turning off the radio in the midst of an announcement that the Allies have landed on France’s Mediterranean coast, like it was boring? How about Nancy returning from operations in a bright white blouse? It was rather confusing that Wake’s fellow fighter and her husband in a flashback in Paris were played by the same guy in exactly the same way.
Maddern’s and Emily-Jo Davidson’s Nancy is constantly heroic and a natural leader, so no drama there. And the French seem to be doing quite well against the Nazis, so, oh well, good on’em. I’m not surprised there is no directorial credit, but the other two cast members go unmentioned in Palmerston Projects’ media.
While the education about this amazing war hero is most welcome, the production is flaccid.
David Grybowski
When: 17 to 26 Feb
Where: Goodwood Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au