★★
Denzo, Ron-Diggity Dawg and Eric Tinker. The Jade. 24 Feb 2021
The Jade is a great venue. Cheap beers, an uncluttered wine list, and curries are available to sip and savour on the old-school parlour furniture in the sitting room of the former manse. The venue, accessed by an adjacent door, is spacious with cabaret sitting under the chandeliers and stools all-around next to the walls. There is ample outdoor seating for pre- and apres show under the fairy lights - all right in the heart of the city.
On offer is a night of three comic acts. The show opened with a weak introduction for the trio and then straight into a threesome act led by Eric Tinker and his few chords. The generational gap was the theme - Tinker and Denzo could remember dialing a phone and R-DD never saw one. The Boomers vs Millennials song written by Tinker is quite good in comparing the lingo. Totally under-rehearsed, the song was re-formatted into a competition that didn’t quite work as the other two comics floundered trying to cheerlead the audience. The Boomers took two direct hits. Tinker fumbled a bit about a missing page of the song, and then a Boomer in the audience had no idea that his phone was running on with an audible podcast until another audience member pointed it out. It took him two goes to turn it off. It was right on cue.
Ron-Diggity Dawg – identifying as a woman I should let you know, and there was no doubt about that – fell on some sharp quartz with her act. While lewd and overt sexual references probably play very well after 11 o’clock on a Friday night at the Roxby Downs Tavern, the small Wednesday night crowd didn’t have enough alcohol or too much inhibition for R-DD to get the ball rolling, and she was caught between a rock and a hard place. Nonetheless, it was an education and I’ll never again take oral sex for granite. (PS – she’s a geologist when not going on about her wet lettuce.)
Eric Tinker - or Derek Ticker as the MC introduced him, or Eric Tickner as Denzo called him - had more success. Just the fact that there is a guitar involved gets your attention. Tinker is whacky and so unabashed that when things go wrong or even a bit not good, he just keeps on keeping on and it all seems part of the show. Perhaps simply being a trier and just out there is the secret. Whatever, he is his own man with novel ideas, like the pros and cons of mermaids and reversed mermaids and the ramifications of husbandry in Amy Married A Horse. He twice demonstrated that the opening chords of Smoke On The Water are very difficult.
Denzo called COVID the Boomer Remover, but it hasn’t got to him, yet. His schtick is very much about a Senior Card Holder’s life – living alone, RSL meals, and pension day delights. His idea of safe sex is having a defibrillator next to the bed. Denzo’s got something there, but he’s running out of time to get it right. Back to the Sunshine Coast’s retirement homes to research more material.
The show ended with another tinker by Tinker which put a pleasant end to it. Maybe on subsequent nights it will be 3 Stars.
David Grybowski
When: 24 Feb to 3 Mar
Where: The Jade
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. Gill Hicks. Black Box Theatre. 24 Feb 2021
If there is one thing worth doing this Fringe, it is spending an hour in a darkened room with Gill Hicks.
Hers is no average theatre performance. It is an experience, a life-enhancing and endorsing experience.
It is a narrative of unutterable darkness told with exquisite lightness.
Gill Hicks is she of the 2005 London underground suicide bombing, the Adelaide woman pulled legless and nigh-lifeless from the wreckage of that doomed commuter carriage. There is no way such a tale should be funny, but Hicks is one of those charmed souls who can find a bright edge against the odds.
And, she can sing.
Hence, she has turned her gruelling tale of survival into a very engaging and well-structured performance piece.
Hicks sits on a stool onstage, her big black tutu a glory of tulle which exposes, quite perfectly, her prosthetic ankles and the delicate bare feet she has had created with the idea of being “earthed".
An expanse of screen behind her reveals not only background images but, importantly, the footage of the beauties of life, images which drew her away from the arms of death: champagne, sunflowers, the sea, pasta, glamour, city pavements. It is a serene and soothing sequence, uplifting and meditative. Rather like Hicks herself, as it turns out.
Flanking the stage, she has two musicians, Dylan Paul on double bass and Julian Ferraretto on violin and, of all wondrous and unexpected things, the hand saw. Oh, what exquisite sounds he elicits from that common tool.
Together, the musicians provide the cool jazz beats to which Hicks adds her soft and airy alto voice. She interposes reflective songs such as Bye Bye Blackbird, Staying Alive, and Summertime, sung gently and slowly before rising to powerful crescendos which belie the fact that she also lost a lung in the bombing.
Her speaking voice is also easy on the ear and, ever understated, and with a sense of celebratory wonderment at the glorious absurdity of human existence, she relates her story of coming to what she calls “Gill’s second life”. Love reigns high in her monologue and, indeed, in her world. She has felt the love of strangers as few people ever will. She survived because of the loving care of police, paramedics, and medical professionals. She carries this love within her and seems to breathe it from the stage.
And her audience leaves feeling enriched by a rare encounter.
Samela Harris
When: 24 Feb to 14 Mar
Where: Black Box Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. Treasury 1860. 24 Feb 2021
Well, well, well. Suddenly, we have an academy of specious absurdity and, in a torrent of eloquent explanatory bafflegab, it all makes absolute sense. If you don’t think too hard.
It is run by a Professor Longsword of the MBA School of MBA and he will do the thinking for you. He may be familiar to Fringe-goers from a former season with Becky Blake in the show Innuendo Everywhere. Then, he was a mere headmaster, albeit something of a disciplinarian. Now, in his magnificently tailored flowing academic robes and snappy mortar board, he has reached realms of far greater power and authority and he is almost beneficent in his munificence.
His course for the Fringe is, as advertised, a lunchtime Masters in Business Administration. Eligibility for the course seems dependent upon the ability to wine, dine, or perchance coffee at gorgeous Treasury 1860 and, indeed, having something of a taste for Longsword’s pun-lectable long words. A sense of humour helps, too.
Then again, one seriously must pay attention to the good professor since what he has to say about business administration, education, and academia is actually intensely clever. The devil is in the detail.
Of course, the Professor is marketing guru, standup comic and man-about-town Steve Davis and, in writing this show he has collaborated with his director Glynn Nicholas. Both men are seasoned in the humour department and old enough to have wide terms of reference. Hence this absolutely silly show is full of really clever and apposite commentary.
Not only but also, it is the most refreshingly original show in the Fringe. A lunchtime MBA? What a concept. In itself, it makes a pithy wee jab at the ubiquity of MBAs. And if audience members don’t have an MBA, Professor Longsword provides them on the spot, well, on graduation from the performance.
The professor is assisted by one Paige Turner, a woman with an epic laugh. And, among segments of the show, they turn on some audience participation with marketing research with novel foods. Oh yes, they’ve thought of everything.
And, while one has had a good laugh at the expense of academic pretensions, one also has been provoked to quite profound depths of contemplation. For instance, this critic may remain forever deeply concerned at how on earth to leverage the value of a paradigm shift.
Samela Harris
When: 24 Feb to 19 Mar
Where: Treasury 1860
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Disclaimer: Steve Davis appears with Samela Harris as a resident critic on ABC 891 Smart Arts on Sunday mornings.
★ ½ Adelaide Fringe Festival. The Garage International, Adelaide Town Hall. 22 Feb 2021
Chopin’s Last Tour is an homage to the man behind some of the most treasured music ever composed for piano. The man is Fryderyk Chopin, and he needs no further introduction, or does he? Phillip Aughey knows that Chopin’s music stands on its own merits, and that back-stories are not really needed to enjoy his music, but a little knowledge about Chopin himself does enhance the listening experience.
Written and performed by Aughey, Chopin’s Last Tour is the story of the composer’s life: his upbringing and family, his nationalistic pride, his battle with illness, and his relationships. The play is set in Scotland in October 1848 during Chopin’s last tour abroad, one year before his death. At this point, Chopin’s life was in disarray: he was emerging from the dramatic ending of his relationship with his lover Amantine Dupin (best known by her pen name George Sand), he was desperately short of money and reliant on benefactors and fees from concerts that he was loath to perform, and he was dangerously ill with tuberculosis. In short, Chopin was desperately unhappy and felt that his life was little more than a misery from which he ached to be released.
The script tries to bring all this to life through a well-constructed and interesting monologue interspersed with performances of some of Chopin’s popular piano music played by Aughey. The pieces are representative of a different phase of Chopin’s life.
The fundamental concept and design of the show is sound, but the execution is tired. Aughey’s acting and pianistic talents are modest but waning, and neither is adequate to make the show really work.
The most poignant moment of the performance is at the end, when Aughey plays the Nocturne in C sharp minor, No.20, which was published posthumously. The lights are dimmed and the monologue concludes with the announcement of Chopin’s death.
Kym Clayton
When: 22 to 24 Feb
Where: The Garage International, Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Octagon, Gluttony. 21 Feb 2021
A fast moving one hour show featuring various performers all for the kids? Excellent. On this Sunday afternoon of the first Fringe weekend the kids were primed for excitement and the crowd was noisy, especially when whipped into a small-scale frenzy by the MC.
Don’t Mess With The Dummies are a perfect opening act, the three women setting the tone and keeping the kids on a high. “They are weird campers!” said the seven year old. Not to be outdone his five year old brother added “They are silly!”. The nine year old, transfixed, thought they were great. And fun, with juggling and hula hoops and tents and sleeping bags which morphed into singing sleeping bags for Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight).
Act 2: Lisa from Big Tops Tiny Tots Circus is just excellent for the pre-teen crowd, who don’t seem to mind a lecture on good diet and the food groups built into their entertainment routine. Lisa balances spinning plates on sticks. That’s pretty much it, apart from the way in which she keeps the plates spinning through her performance and uses the audience to keep her informed. It’s all inclusive action and good stuff.
The final act were The Diamond Duo, brother and sister jugglers and trapezists Calin and Arwen, who contrive to match each other catch-for-catch in seeing whom is the best juggler of the two. They keep the kids entertained with trickier and more difficult scenarios, culminating in Calin escaping from a straitjacket while balancing on a tall unicycle.
Interest is maintained to the end, even with the bolshie five year old who was shouting a random “No, no no!” at the performance whilst his brother yells a more subdued “Yes, yes yes!”. Make of that what you will; I think they were engaged.
Overall, an outstanding hour of fun.
Alex Wheaton
When: 21 Feb to 21 Mar
Where: The Octagon, Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au