★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Holden Street Theatres, Barbara Hardy Garden. 18 Feb 2024
No one loved to play with plays and plays in plays more than Shakespeare - until Peter Goers came along.
He has taken the old Tom Stoppard concept of distilling Hamlet into a merry morsel and given it a thorough shaking in a madness mixer. The Goers Hamlet in Fifteen Minutes includes the play in a play and also a bonus variation of Hamlet in One Minute and then, hold down those eyebrows, an encore of Hamlet in Ten Seconds.
Short, sharp and exhausting to behold.
There are at least six colourful actors, and not always the same ones and often in multiple roles. Among them are Brian Wellington, Christopher Cordeaux, David O’Brien, Lyn Wilson, Kym Mackenzie, Ariel Dzino and Josh White.
Some of them play it straight. Ish. Cordeaux, so young and handsome and with such a lovely voice, fronts the cast as Hamlet. Wellington and Wilson are rather grandly bedecked as king and queen while Dzino, a fearless comic, leaps from role to role, bringing the house down as stricken Ophelia. She is a striking new discovery.
Goers is narrator. Sometimes. Rob Cusenza delights in alternate casting sessions. Very funny if you catch him.
Constant as flailing ghost and lurching gravedigger is O’Brien with some unforgettable shtick.
Audience members may be called upon. Everyone dies at least once. Except for Goers in his red silk kimono.
Chaos rains, reigns and is unreined.
If good acting there is, this lovely sunken garden setting is not its stage.
This is about arrant silliness. It is ham and stunts, high energy fun, and epic themes on a micro-molecular scale.
Oh, yes. The Bard’s pen is recognisable for, after all, the play’s the thing.
And, perchance, it might even pass for art.
It does pass the time, between the many shows at Holden Street Theatres. This brave troupe is playing it three times a night for the duration of Fringe.
Get thee thence and tell ‘em I sent you.
Samela Harris
When: 18 Feb to 17 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres, Barbara Hardy Garden
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Holden Street Theatres, The Arch
Peter Goers is back doing the ninth of his trilogy of Fringe shows.
It’s the same old shtick. Just different.
Goers has a lot of material - personal archives, showbiz archives, archive archives…
He’s a living diarist with perfect diction and that familiar gravelly voice.
His life is an open book - and, he announces, his retirement will deliver us more books in print form.
Not shy of giving the old plug, our Peter.
And he has another show on in the Fringe, right there in the sunken garden next door.
In his sleek yellow jacket and vivid orange sneakers, he’s a link chain of anecdotes.
He’s the “ham".
The Wills sisters, Anne and Susan, are the titular “pineapple".
They materialise in spectacular pineapple costumes for a bit of soft shoe pizzazz.
They’re a hit.
Later, they return in black and silver bling for some nice old-school harmonies. Anne is razzle but Susan’s melodic lower registers shine forth. As for their comic patter. It’s so old it is new again.
The wonderful Robin Schmeltzkopf completes the variety lineup. Since there is a ham and pineapple pizza theme about the place, he sings the ultimate "pizza-pie" serenade. Oh, that voice.
But that is not all. The show ticks in exactly on the hour but it also contains a big, long, sentimental monologue. Not from Peter Goers, but from Sandy Stone.
Goers has written this Humphries-esque piece as a tribute. Sandy was ever the sweetest and most beloved of the Humphries stable.
Peter dons his Onkaparinga dressing gown, clutches his knit-covered hottie to his lap, and reflects a la Sandy on life in retirement. Unhurried, poignant, pure period Australiana. It is a shamelessly sentimental journey into the charmed old world of Chester Squares and Jubilee cakes and bakelite smokers’ companions. Humphries might just tip his fedora. Nice work, Goers.
And, of course, every audience member had to be thanked personally at the venue exit, another piece of olde worlde theatre trad Goers insists must not die on his watch…and it is quite the lineup at the door.
Sadly, the years are thinning out his famously "pre-dead” audience. There are under-50s in the house.
Isn’t it lucky that Goers is still only 48!
Samela Harris
Disclaimer: Samela Harris and Peter Goers are old colleagues and friends.
When: 17 Feb to 17 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres, The Arch
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. SAYarts. The Gallery at The Courtyard of Curiosities, Migration Museum. 17 Feb 2024
Sci Fi nuts will love this quirky off beat show with roots in time travel, time crime and a light dash of Matrix-like darkness.
You may recall films referencing time as a travel company enterprise, life experiences in the past experienced and mediated by cryogenic freezing. Evil greed of a controlling nemesis. It’s all in this show!
Josh and his brother Harry, the science genius, stumble discover time travel. They build a time travel empire. Josh is fixated on getting girlfriend and company CFO Steph back. Therein lies a paradox of temptation, bad decisions, feisty investigative journalism and unpaid interns boiling on revolt amidst a whodunnit scenario.
Playwright Jamie Hornsby’s script isn’t all rip ‘n’ tear comedy. There’s a subtle sub textual undertone of observation about the meaning of living in time, human value and relationships in time with others and the greater world.
That subtlety is brilliantly managed by Director Alby Grace. The cast of 10 artfully play the comedy off darker undertones with great aplomb. You think serious stuff while laughing. Slowly being prompted to ponder what ‘all the time in the world means.’ A damn serious issue in sci fi.
On a tiny stage, featuring brilliant tie dye come psychedelic costumes, the production rips along with the slick pace of a noir sci-fi flick. The funny lines are so deftly delivered by the three hapless interns. Steph is at once deeply serious and fantastically hilarious. The fine line between the evil in Josh and something better is brilliantly delivered.
Comedy has always been the perfect vehicle to get serious issues across. Combine that with the allure of science fiction, you double the power to achieve that aim.
Mission accomplished!
David O’Brien
When: 16 to 18 Feb
Where: The Gallery at The Courtyard of Curiosities, Migration Museum
Bookings: Closed
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Studio, Holden Street Theatres. 17 Feb 2024
England & Son finishes abruptly. The auditorium is plunged into inky blackness with a single ghostly green exit light our only link to what might be next. The audience momentarily and collectively holds its breath. What’s happened? What’s next? And then the lights snap, and the sole actor (Mark Thomas) is re-revealed. He takes his bows to enthusiastic applause and whistling and leaves the auditorium quickly not to be seen again. Refreshingly, there is no speech to an adoring crowd along the lines of: thanks for coming, if you enjoyed it tell your friends, and if you didn’t then tell ‘em you saw something else. None of that. The spell is not broken.
Mark Thomas is spent. He’s given his all in an enthralling performance that cuts close to the bone and the issues and emotions it exposes need to be considered. Left to our private thoughts, we quietly leave the auditorium, and ponder further, knowing we have experienced something special.
The action of England & Son follows key events in the life of a young boy (surname England, and this becomes increasingly significant as the narrative unfolds) as he grows up in an anarchistic household exposed to petty crime, drug taking, domestic violence and graphic stories about his own father’s experiences in colonial Malaysia at the time the country was being exploited (looted?) by England (the country). These influences on the boy’s formative years inevitably must leave a mark, scars even, and predictably, but sadly, he spirals into his own lawless adult life with periods spent in and out of youth detention centres, a caring foster family, and ultimately into adult prison following a tragic event.
It all sounds grim, and the fundamental story is, but England & Son is told with stark humour and performed with immense skill, empathy, and drama. Mark Thomas is an experienced performer of many years, and he is also a writer and a comic. He brings this depth of experience to a bare stage in the Studio space at Holden Street Theatres and uses a highly effective and tightly controlled lighting plot and evocative soundscape to help him create a detailed and vivid mental image of the boy’s unfolding world. Thomas understands the power of purposeful movement on stage, gesture, and body attitude, how to use space and shadow, and how to personally engage individual audience members almost making them believe they are alone, and this is a private performance just for them. It’s a rare gift. The acoustics of the Studio are however uncompromising, especially when the stage is empty, and so when Thomas turns away from the audience and briefly speaks to the upstage wall, there are brief moments when clarity is lost. But even though he is not looking at the audience, he still has them in his hand.
Like much good writing, the narrative of England & Son can be appreciated at a number of levels. At its simplest, it can be appreciated as a shocking, sad, and at times humorous, story about the fall-out and tragic human consequences of growing up in a relentlessly underprivileged household. One can ponder issues such as the extent to which we are masters of our own fate: is the die cast, or with sufficient will and strength of character, is anything is possible? At a deeper level, the unfolding of young master England’s life is an ugly metaphor for how colonial powers like England have plundered and subjugated less developed countries. If it’s OK for a country to do that at a macro political and geographical level, why is it not OK for a mere pawn like young master England to grab what he can from those who are better off.
It's much food for thought, and it’s the stuff of compelling theatre. England & Son is a triumph.
Kym Clayton
When: 17 Feb to 17 Mar
Where: The Studio, Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Jannali Jones. Adelaide Fringe. Domain Theatre. 16 Feb 2024
Trail’s End is a story about a young Aboriginal man , Sam (played by Dylan Miller) who is struggling to find positive cultural visibility in a mixed family, and not to be seen as or feel alien in his own country. Sam and his half-brother Jamie (James Goodlife) have faced family upheaval and are struggling. Sam and Jamie share a bond, but they have grown up differently, and Sam feels Jamie is the favoured son because he is ‘white’. They decide to go on a hike in the country to clear their heads and to reconnect with each other, but it doesn’t turn out well for either of them, though for different reasons.
Trail’s End is written by Jannali Jones who is an award-winning Gunai/Kurnai writer, and she has surrounded herself with a production team of mostly indigenous creatives. Their commitment and passion to the project is palpable.
At a time when the outcome of the Voice referendum is still so disturbing to many, the plot of Trail’s End should have been fertile territory for some powerful storytelling, but it just skims the surface of many issues. Coming in at only 45 minutes, a number of plot ideas could have been more thoroughly developed to make the characters more complex and interesting. Essentially the story is underwritten, which results in the actors frequently struggling to make dramatic impact. There are moments when one senses the action is going to “kick off”, but such moments are brief and infrequent.
Trail’s End is Charlie Barwa ‘s directing debut, and she has perhaps tried to include too many special effects (especially lighting) which don’t always land a punch and in some ways deprive the actors of opportunities to flex their acting muscles.
Miller and Goodlife both have a natural and uncomplicated style on stage and mostly handle conflicting emotions well.
Kym Clayton
When: 16 Feb to 3 Mar
Where: Domain Theatre and Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au