★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Studio at Holden Street Theatres. 18 Feb 2022
Afghanistan is Not Funny is an outstanding piece of theatre written and performed by playwright Henry Naylor. In previous Fringe Festivals, Naylor has presented plays from his Arabian Nightmares series to critical acclaim, and this show is no exception.
Afghanistan is Not Funny is almost a return to Naylor’s roots – he started out as a stand-up comedian before becoming a serious and much lauded playwright. The text is beautifully written, as we have come to expect from him, with no word wasted. It is autobiographical and is about some authentic field research for a play he wrote for an Edinburgh Fringe festival in the early 2000s. It is about the war in Afghanistan, or more particularly about how it was being reported by the mainstream media. One wouldn’t have thought there was much comedy in this, but one can be mistaken!
Naylor’s research took him to the actual warzone, and the text recounts his time there, the events he witnessed, and his knack for getting himself into trouble. The things he witnessed gnawed at his guts and upset his equilibrium, but eventually resulted in a play and a screenplay that was of interest to no less than Hugh Grant!
Naylor brings a number of key elements to his play and performance: he is a skilled writer who keenly and incisively observes and reflects upon the human condition; he is a consummate storyteller; and he is a practised performer who knows how to wring every last emotional response from his audience. Crucially, he has a deep understanding of the fine line between comedy and tragedy. He is able to cross backwards and forwards between them with consummate ease, and his audience does not feel guilty at laughing at things that are downright sad. Indeed, Naylor gives permission for this to happen.
In typical Fringe fashion, Afghanistan is Not Funny is set on a bare stage with the barest minimum of properties, and other theatrical elements are also pared down. The blocking is a little clumsy at times and is a (very) minor distraction at times, but the absolute focus is upon a writer and his text. Everything else is extraneous.
Afghanistan is Not Funny is funny, at times, and always deeply moving. It is a triumph and not to be missed.
Kym Clayton
When: 18 Feb to 13 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Studio at Holden Street Theatres. 18 Feb 2022
Meet Me At Dawn is an unsettling piece of theatre, on a range of levels.
Two women, Helen and Robin, are washed up on an unknown shore after having survived the sinking of their rented pleasure boat. They are understandably bordering on panic and irrationality, but they pull themselves together quickly and start looking after themselves and tending to basic needs, and they start working through how they might get rescued.
They are drenched, cold, scared, and they are alone, or are they? They soon discover there is another person nearby, but they are not sure who it is or whether they should approach her. Is it safe? Something doesn’t seem quite right.
Playwright Zannie Harris often gives both characters convoluted dialogue to explore their predicament, the state of the relationship, and what the future may hold for them. In some ways their discussions are almost academic because of their complexity and the existential topics they discuss. At times it stretches believability that two people in such a terrible predicament would converse in the way that they do. Arguably, Harris has overworked and overwritten the dialogue and given the two actors (Sarah Bos and Wendy Bos) an almost impossible task of bridging the gap between a sound storyline and engaging the audience in a theatrically positive way. About forty minutes into the performance there is a significant moment in the plot where a number of things become clear, but it should have been written in much sooner.
The production elements are pleasing. The cast come on stage absolutely drenched, and we feel their cold and discomfort. A nice touch by director Nescha Jelk. The soundscape by Sascha Budimski is ominous and does the job in convincing you that all as not as it seems. Mark Oakley’s lighting is evocative and punctuates the action well.
Kym Clayton
When: 18 to 27 Feb
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★
Electric Dreams. SA Museum Front Lawns. 19 Feb 2022
Producer Electric Dreams from Britain creates dynamic amusements using interactive virtual reality (VR) technology originated by London’s StudioGoGo. There are a number of VR shows at the Fringe and Electric Dreams is presenting two of them, as well as a day-long conference on immersive storytelling and a film with sonified data.
VR Swings “Volo: Dreams of Flight” is a swing park on the lawns of the SA Museum on North Terrace. On offer are four VR experiences, so I suppose you can see all four if you stump up $10 four times. The shows are thematically linked celebrating the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of aerial machines: Chute, Glider, Thopter and Copter. Your kids won’t care about that.
I was directed to a swing associated with one of the four visual experiences. Although publicity suggests I can make a choice, I was not offered a choice. A nice man helped me on with the eye-gear and I started swinging.
The first thing I noticed was that I don’t like swinging any more, but I give it a go, for my editor. I’m moving through space as abstracted trees and scenery of artificial colours rush past me then, whoosh! I have a stomach-dislocating rapid descent. You can hardly believe you are only on a swing! After a while, I noticed that the graphics are not fully developed and seem more like a sketch or an outline, and just aren’t very interesting.
In VR world, you are always moving forward, but a swing, of course, takes you alternatively forward and backward. My body and brain badly handled these two bits of conflicting information. I stopped swinging, but the VR stops moving, so that was no fun. Now I started dragging my feet on the ground, waiting for the whole thing to be over, like when you are on a bad weather cruise. Thankfully it ended after only 5 minutes as indicated in the printed Fringe program, and not the 15 minutes promised online. Yet, before I started, the eight-year-old girl next to me was swinging hammer and tong, maybe having the time of her life. Maybe she should have written the review.
David Grybowski
When: 19 Feb to 20 March
Where: SA Museum Front Lawns
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Henry Naylor and Holden Street Theatres. Holden Street Theatres. 16 February 2022
English playwright, comedian and actor Henry Naylor is back with a world premiere (that’s code for a trial run before Edinburgh) at Holden Street Theatres. If you haven’t yet seen a Henry Naylor play in the Fringe, you can’t be interested in theatre. Since 2016, Naylor has brought us Echoes, Angel, Borders, Games and The Nights by Henry Naylor (very clever putting your name in the title). These have earned eight Adelaide Critics’ Circle awards, four Fringe awards for best theatre, a Pick of the Fringe award, and a fistful of Edinburgh Fringe awards. And let’s add Finding Bin Laden to the list.
There is a strong thematic link between most of these plays. They are compelling, hour-long action-packed thrillers often set in the miasma of the Middle East from Afghanistan to Syria to Mediterranean refugees, focusing on local heroes and hapless victims under a Western gaze. And when they are not, there is still a combative or martial theme comparing past with current events. But where did all this stuff come from?
AFGHANISTAN IS NOT FUNNY… is an autobiographical prequel to Naylor’s playwriting and a peek behind the curtain of theatrical creation. Naylor is a formidable storyteller in composition, oration, expression and compelling vocalisation.
It begins with 9/11. Naylor wants some photos as a backdrop to the first play on the theme, so he and Sam the photographer fly Kazakhstan Airlines to Kabul to meet a fixer organised by Phil, a friend at the BBC. As you do. What these guys do and see, and the risks they take, makes this the trip of a lifetime! It’s post-US invasion and after Kabul is “secured,” but the Taliban are still hanging around like ghosts. Our trio befriend some and steer clear of others. They visit hospitals, refugee camps, bombed-out neighbourhoods and a tank graveyard. Without a hint of irony, Naylor recounts how they drove up to the gates of Bagram air base and simply announce they want to take some pictures. As if, “they’re for our play. What’s the problem?”
In performance, Naylor expounds in a clear and commanding voice while Sam’s sepia-toned photos are displayed on an ample backscreen. The pics are a fascinating record of 20 years ago when this whole catastrophe was still fresh.
Naylor organises the anecdotes of his adventure through brief dialogues with his therapist who identifies four stages of project management maturation: unconscious incompetency, conscious incompetency, unconscious competency and conscious competency. Thankfully, Naylor flashes these labels on a screen because even he gets them muddled in monologue. These stages give structure to judgements like foolhardy, brave, naïve, conceited and dedicated. Director Martha Lott has Naylor moving between two desks with chairs and pub scenes, which establish some sense of place, but it’s the remarkable photos that leave you incredulous.
Back in London, Finding Bin Laden is re-written with new-found veracity and it’s a hit! The praise is noticed by Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, My Beautiful Laundrette, The Grifters, etc) and Hugh Grant, and the to-and-fro of nearly getting a movie underway is hysterically funny but ends with palpable disappointment. But with 34 international awards and off-Broadway runs in the bag, the Naylor juggernaut found its way.
Among all the things that happened to the tourists is a story of a girl rushing towards them with a bundle in her arms of unknown content at a hospital or camp. At the conclusion of the play and after lights out, Sam’s photo of this girl is shown. The image is far more horrific than the telling, and there is an uncomfortable juxtaposition of applause, Naylor’s curtain call and the photo. I recalled a scene from the play where Henry’s mate Sam says, “…you’re just interested in your story, not their story.” It’s all out there, honestly.
Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 15 to 27 Feb
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Gavin Roach Presents. Holden Street Theatres. 16 Feb 2022
What a very strange and haunting piece of theatre.
Zinnie Harris has written a time-and-place-warp play about love, posthumous recrimination and a somewhere-nowhere world of existential plurality.
It begins with two sea-drenched women on a beach. Their hired boat has sunk. Where are they? Is this a sand bar or an island?
And thus begins the exploration of time and place and, indeed, the variable possibilities of reality.
The women, Helen and Robyn, are partners; one is a geologist and the other an academic. They are anxious for rescue because they are dog-sitting at home. Helen, the geologist is charged with energy and positivity. She makes an SOS with their discarded wet clothes.
Rescue is inevitable because the owners of the sunken boat will want to find out where it went. Robyn is having dreamscape flashbacks of a flooding sink and doomful messages from her mother. Helen sees this as symptomatic of concussion.
There is a woman on the island with whom they try to communicate. It is all very enigmatic and they make no effort to follow her. Why, wonders the audience.
From English playwright Zannie Harris this is a plucky plunge into an underworld of existential theatre. One thinks of Godot and also Pinter as Robyn becomes immersed in a puzzle of repetitive sentence fragments, tearing at the soft edges of recollection.
And, one ponders how hard it must be for an actor to memorise these contemplative torrents of broken dialogue. There is a thread and it leads to a denouement. But nothing is easy in this work. It is perchance rather overwritten.
One may or may not agree with its sense of mystical possibilities or the philosophic wrist-wringing of this play, but one can’t deny that it is taking one into an oddly dangerous headspace.
It is delivered through the absolute commitment of the actors in a dark setting where just a crumpled stretch of plastics suggests the shore (Meg Wilson) and an evocative soundscape imposes the threats of an inimical sea (Sascha Budimski).
Under Nescha Jelk’s direction, the two actors define finely the contrasting psychologies which make up that strange beast called human love. Sarah Bos is admirable as right-brained Helen while Wendy Bos, possessed of a sublime stage voice, skilfully delivers the emotional motherlode of the play.
And, one gives those two actors an extra salute because they have performed for an arduous hour in wet clothes with wet hair on a wet stage.
Ah, but under a sublime lighting plot by Mark Oakley.
Samela Harris
When: 16 to 27 Feb
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au