★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Lane Hinchcliffe. Hartstone-Kitney Productions. Black Box Theatre online. 1 Mar 2022
It’s best to have a big screen and good sound for this online show because, oh my, here comes the singing doctor.
Known to his patients simply as "Dr Lane”, Hinchcliffe is a medical maestro with a mission.
As he points out, on one hand he’s a GP and on the other, he’s a musician. He’s highly trained in both arts and now is using one to service the other.
He devised this autobiographical cabaret performance as an outreach to those, especially the young, who have struggled with mental health, identity, and self-esteem issues.
He was 25 years old, he says, before he could say that he was a “gay” man. Coming to terms with it consumed a vast chunk of his emotional and psychological life and he has emerged happily married and confident, determined to be there for youth in distress. That’s his day job.
As for his night job. He is one very serious musical theatre talent.
He is a one-man package because he arranges music, plays the piano sublimely and is a gifted singer with a daunting range.
In this Black Box show directed by Amelia Ryan, he illustrates his life story in hits from the musicals he encountered, breaking them nicely into a timeline. He sings snippets of Showboat, Hair, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Rent, Cats, and Chess.
The frustration one may feel as an audience member is that he gives short change on some songs and too much of others, which of course is the prerogative of someone telling their personal song history.
But, therein he dismisses Jellical Cats after an exquisite wee light tenor snippet and gives Old Man River short shrift having just proven that he is really at home in that bass baritone range and it is sublime on the ear.
Of course, he can’t sing all of everything and he does seem rather to like a spot of religion in his repertoire, which completes the ticket of something-for-everyone.
His costume is fancy stage scrubs and he pops some humour into his patter and a bit of medico yuk for good measure. Oddly, his speaking voice is light. But there’s a whole world in those tubes of his and one looks forward to hearing more.
Meanwhile, The Black Box works fabulously well. Tom Kitney with Joanne Hartstone have worked out the best tech for sound and image so that audiences can comfortably relish a quality theatre piece in a state of absolute domestic bliss.
It is a covid gift which can keep on giving, and for the Fringe their Black Box Theatre offers a suite of shows.
They have always been cutting edge good theatre and this comes highly recommended.
Samela Harris
When: On Demand
Where: On Demand at Black Box Live
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. State Theatre Company South Australia. Odeon Theatre. 1 Mar 2022
One thing playwright Dennis Kelly impressed upon director Mitchell Butel and the State Theatre team was that this play worked best if the audience was not forewarned about where it was heading.
Respecting his wish, this critic will try to refrain from spoilers.
Ironically, the first instinct of one who has just seen Girls & Boys is to erupt into discussion mode. One has emerged from the theatre feeling stunned and stricken. One wants to share.
This is an extraordinary work and with Butel directing the magnificent Justine Clarke, it sings tour de force in all directions. Let’s add the very pleasing aesthetic of Ailsa Paterson's design and Nigel Levings’s ever-apt lighting. The production is sleekly professional all round.
Clarke captivates her audience from the first word. She’s cheeky, provocative, and funny as she outlines meeting her husband, raising small children with eyes in the back of her head, juxtaposing her career and her husband's changing place in their world order. It’s a roller coaster, Clarke in torrents of dialogue, hilarious, smart and vivid and then, oh, so gripping.
As for the play’s curtain-drop final moment. Such a small thing. So simple. Such dramatic perfection. One of those indelible theatre moments!
Standing ovation.
Samela Harris
When: 1 to 12 Mar
Where: Odeon Theatre
Bookings: statetheatre.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Interactive Theatre International. The Flamingo, Gluttony. 27 Feb 2022
From way back when boomers were babies, to those born in the 20-teens, Roald Dahl books have featured on the bedside bookshelf - or, judging by the excited responses from the audience, in the toilet!
Nerine Skinner and Robbie Capaldi as Brenda and Terry respectively are members of The Ancient Guild of Tale Tenders. If you’ve read/seen Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, you’ll get the gist of this literary preservation, although the Tale Tenders are not so dystopian. For them, forgetting is the danger. The Tenders must read the books daily, keeping them alive and on the page, preserving them for generations to come.
In this tale, Terry is the Tender and Brenda his assistant, and the books he must preserve are the works of Roald Dahl. Terry’s father and grandfather were Dahl tenders, and it would seem Terry has become, well, a little perfunctory with his charges, and not tending them as well as he should have. Challenged by Brenda to read a work, he eventually agrees with her that the Wurble Gobblers have infiltrated and taken the words off the pages while he wasn’t looking. The mission: get the words back so that children in the future can read the books!
This is a brilliantly interactive show, and the heart warmed that so many children in the audience were avid fans of books. On request, they screamed out their Dahl favourites, and so did their parents! The Twits was a big favourite and prompted an ‘ugly-off’, bringing the audience right into the action, facing each other and screaming wild insults – brilliant!
A bit of magic / sleight of hand is always welcome, and it was utilised here with notes in bottles, and words appearing and disappearing from pages. Most delightful was the improv scene created by the audience: for this performance Terry was in a boat on a red honey lake that was a hundred degrees and smelled of fairy floss!
The show obviously changes with each performance, such is the interactive nature of it, but one would hope that Terry’s “comfort song” is a constant – no spoilers here!
The venue is perhaps a little large for this production; a lot of room echo made it a little difficult to understand what was being said at times. But such are the skills of Skinner and Capaldi that it didn’t really matter; not much could have made this show any less enjoyable.
And what happens in the end? Well that would be telling, but we are left with a literary homily: A new word a day keeps the Wurble Gobblers at bay. And you can’t argue with that.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 5 to 20 Mar
Where: The Flamingo, Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Flamingo, Gluttony. 26 Feb 2022
Circus is a broad church these days, and 360 Allstars occupies a niche that is ideally suited to millennials, with a nod to Gen Y. I add the latter, as the break-dancing, beat boxing, rapping performers seem to have centred themselves pretty firmly in the ‘nineties’ (as in last century). It’s nonetheless appealing, as breakdancing in particular has joined the lexicon of dance and is dangerously close to mainstream.
The urban circus has been touring for a number of years, and this iteration features a female MC and vocalist, Mirrah, who wastes no time in getting the crowd pumped from her riser above the action. It’s loud and it’s fast (which does provoke a bit of ear covering by younger members of the audience), and the back of stage screen introduces the players for today’s production.
Heru Anwari is the BMX Flatlander and he’s quick out of the blocks. He’s a three time Australian champion and spins around the stage area on his seat, on his bars, on his front and rear wheels. Unfortunately, as the stage doesn’t rise above the sight lines of the flat floor seating, a bit of this is missed, but those at the front seemed happy!
Director and drummer Gene Paterson is in and out the action – also on his own riser above the stage, he patters and raps and hypes the crowd.
Breakdancers B-Boy Fongo and B-Boy Sette strut their stuff; they’re good, they’re rhythmic and they come up with some great moves. Again though, ground moves like helicopter and spider were lost to most of the crowd, but the boys were clearly skilled and having fun with it! The headspins and handstand freezes were wild and later on the moon walk proved its evergreen ‘crowd favourite’ status.
Gene Peterson treated the crowd to a solo drum performance with a head-cam screening his moves onto the stage backscreen; the image appeared a bit low res but it was effective.
Highlights of the show are basketball free styler Bavo Delbeke and Daniel Price on Cyr wheel. Bavo, prompted by the crowd to press the Do Not Press button, starts off with one basketball and ends up juggling five, much to the delight of the younger audience, none of whom would have ever heard of the Harlem Globetrotters and their pioneering style. Pops, arm rolls, spinning, juggling – he had it all and was amazing to watch.
The relatively recent Cyr wheel is always a crowd pleaser, and this was no exception. Price had the gyroscopic 360 waltzing moving across the stage to the pulsating beat drawing excited oohs and ahs from the audience. Again, with moves such as the Coin, it was difficult to see as the spin flattened to ground level.
The ending seemed a little disjointed as performers moved in and out, and it appeared that the cupboard of tricks was a bit bare, but some great choreographed breaks from the boys kept it together. Given the high energy intricacy of many of the acts in 360 Allstars, better staging with good sightlines is essential. This was a five star performance in a three star setting.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 26 Feb to 20 Mar
Where: The Flamingo, Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Head First Acrobats. The Vault @ Garden of Unearthly Delights. 27 Feb 2022
Three Neanderthals walk into a cave…
In PreHysterical there is no dialogue apart from “Roc”, “Ugh”, and “Oww” which by incredible coincidence are the names of the three. The first named is a woman, who is clearly smarter than the two men, so there is the first of the cultural jokes, not that a target audience of kids aged 5 to 12 care that much.
Before the acrobatics then, a brief sojourn into culture, since the references are there. We see the beginning of language (Roc, Ugh, Oww), the need for food (fruit) and hunting and gathering, and shelter including warmth from the fire. Fire may also be for protection as there’s a loud hungry tiger prowling around backstage.
As quickly as the three introduce themselves it’s into the action. Handstands become backflips and contortions; as the three meet each other the contortions become a sniffing circle (just like dogs). Yes, there’s a fart joke or two.
The quest for food involves crossing a river and avoiding the electric eels, and the use of a trapeze to get across the river was screamingly funny for many of the audience. Slapstick and acrobatics; highlights of an advanced culture. Hula hoops and a large [pretend] animal skull introduce a section on the development of ball games and sports. Did primitive soccer evolve from three Neanderthal kicking a skull around a cave?
Urg performs a brilliant routine on the Cyr wheel as the performance draws to a close, then has a dream sequence rudely interrupted by the tiger’s loud roar. A plan to trap the tiger with ropes leads to the introduction of the suspended slings, and on this apparatus Roc is superb. She is sinuous, lithe in motion.
We never do see the tiger but the way culture, communication (from performers to audience) and performance skills are combined make this show a winner. It moves and challenges, it scarcely pauses to draw breath, it keeps the kids engrossed.
Alex Wheaton
When : 27 Feb to 20 Mar
Where: The Vault/GOUD
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au