★★★
The Green Guys Company. The Arch , Holden Street Theatres. 20 Feb 2021
The parlour room set was exquisite and belonged to a teahouse called Monkwell Manor, not to be confused with Monkswell Manor. The usual suspects arrive, the power is dodgy, the storm is stormy, and the phone line is cut. Sounds a bit like The Mousetrap. This time, Agatha Christie herself is the guest of honour – but alas, she is gone missing yet the seven guests and bewildered host are hopeful she’ll turn up anyway. Will Agatha Christie arrive? To pass the time, Dr McQueen suggests a macabre parlour game that is a melange of The Mousetrap and Clue. Will the menace turn into malice? Aw, shucks, the subtitle of the play is Who Killed Agatha Christie? It’s a convoluted whodunnit, but I guess that’s the point.
Playwright Neale Irwin has a lot of fun with Agatha Christie by combining her life and her oeuvre. An epilogue provided some context for the narrative – a fictitious guess about the ten days of her real-life disappearance in December 1926 (her mother died in April and her husband left her in August). One of the characters is Major Belcher, a friend of the husband’s lover. And the husband’s lover was named Neele. Wait, isn’t the author also named Neale? Spooky. And I think I saw the makings of Miss Marple in the parlour?
Irwin, director Zoe Tidemann and the players channel the Christie catalogue with alacrity and verve, with the help of stunningly detailed costuming. The characterisations are bright and intriguing even if stereotyped and familiar. Tidemann gives each their star turn but the overplay inherent in a spoof was successful only to varying degrees. A difficult balance indeed.
Near the end of the play, audience members are invited to guess who the culprit is via a website vote accessed with a QR code - a useless gesture as it is subsequently unmentioned.
Charming idea to weave the author into one of her murderous plots in this world premiere production.
David Grybowski
When: 19 to 28 Feb
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Preachrs Podcast Online & Onstage. Grayson’s Room, Mercure Grosvenor Hotel. 19 Feb 2021
The Mercure Grosvenor Hotel Adelaide is as grim as a deceased estate with everything on the ground floor closed, while it was party-time next door at the Strathmore. One proceeds up the stairs to the first floor which had the hush of a funeral home. A hostess directs you to your viewing room. But wake for it; the Mercure is actually abuzz with Fringe shows, yet maybe due to COVID, nothing is happening in the ample common space. A perfect situation for MURDER!
Great Detectives did such great box office in Australian tours in 2016, 2017 and 2018 that a sequel was needed to keep a good thing going. Dressed in snappy black in front of 1950s mics, Benjamin Maio Mackay, Eden Trebilco, Julia Sciacca, and Jennifer Barry return to voice a couple of murder intrigues in an adventure each for reprised female ‘frisco private eye, Candy Matson, and insurance investigator, Johnny Dollar. Aside from our heroes are a plethora of hard-boiled voice portraits harking back to the popularity of American mystery radio drama of mid last century. The audience is invited into the recording studio and enjoys the normally unseen physical interactions.
With a satirical bent and scripts in hand, the performers convey the energy, risk, spontaneity and excitement of improvisation with versatile vocal virtuosity. Some accented characterisations are crackers. You are right there on a San Francisco tram or in some eccentric’s mansion with them. The plotlines are twisted and unguessable, yet thematically familiar of the genre.
If you need introduction to live radio serial drama or crave another fix, this is the ticket. And if you like what you see, this production company has another ten shows on in the Fringe.
David Grybowski
When: 19 to 28 Feb
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe Festival. The Studio at Holden Street Theatres. 20 Feb 2021
Lost Lives is a new play for two actors written by Spencer Scholz and is presented by the relatively new company Safari Street Creative. The company’s promotional material states they are committed to theatre that is “dangerous, exhilarating and unpretentious”. Lost Lives is a solid attempt to rise to that mission, but it would benefit from being workshopped to bring the grittier themes to the surface.
The action of the play centres on a bedroom that is the scene of a murder that has happened sometime in the recent past, and it’s a bloody mess, literally. A forensic cleaning crew of two is assigned to the scene, and both have back stories: ‘she’ (played by Esther Michelsen) has a former association with the murder victim, and ‘he’ (Ceejay Singh) is on his first assignment, wants to impress, and is keen for a positive recommendation from her. He is muslim and nervous that because the alleged perpetrator of the crime was also muslim this might somehow impact on her perception of how well he does his job. In a world where people are often unjustly ‘guilty’ by association, this theme might have been explored more deeply than it was. As the action unfolds, we learn more about the two characters, particularly her, but not enough of it contributes to shoring up the central story line, that the clean-up is happening the same day as the culmination of the trial of the alleged murderer.
Michelsen and Singh at times underplayed their characters but this is more likely the consequence of a text that, with few exceptions, didn’t demand heightened and more nuanced responses. The resonant ambience of The Studio at times combined with the distinct spoken accents of the two actors to impact vocal clarity. Speaking from behind masks and face shields, which were part of the realistic costuming, compounded this problem on occasion.
Scholz directed the production and capably moved his cast around the minimalist but effectively designed set.
Kym Clayton
When: 20 to 27 Feb
Where: The Studio, Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★ Adelaide Fringe Festival. The Piglet (open-air) at Gluttony - Rymill Park. 19 Feb 2021
Like many comedy events, its advertising cashes in on either the name of its star performer or on a catchy and provocative title. Pretending Things are a Cock (PTAAC) is obviously an example of the latter, and unfortunately it doesn’t have much more going for it.
If you are unaware of the history of the show – and this one has previously appeared in the Adelaide Fringe as well as other major festivals throughout the world – and you purchased tickets on the basis of its advertising, pedigree, and previous rave reviews – you’d think you were in for a hoot of an evening, but it just doesn’t happen.
PTAAC is basically a slide show, with narration. The photos are of comedian Jon Bennett posing often in a contorted position in front of a famous monument or other natural phenomenon pretending they are his penis. They have been taken and collected over many years of travel. Some of them are cliché (such as Eiffel Tower) but many others are hilarious, inventive and funny, but after dozens and dozens and dozens of them it all gets rather tedious.
The success of the show ultimately depends on the quality of the narration, and in previous seasons it seems that Bennett himself performed the show, and reputedly his patter linking one phallus photo to the next was hilarious. Not so tonight, where the show was presented by someone else – his girlfriend we believe – and it fell flat. Her story telling comes across as being very studied and over-rehearsed – it lacked spontaneity, and any potential for humour slowly evaporated in the warm balmy air of the open air performance space, as did the audience.
Kym Clayton
When: 19 Feb to 2 Mar
Where: The Piglet, Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★ Adelaide Fringe Festival. Space Theatre. 18 Feb 2021
Sea Wall is a one man play written by the celebrated Simon Stephens (stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, Heisenberg) and performed by Renato Musolino, who is rapidly becoming an Adelaide favourite (if he isn’t already). It is essentially about one man’s grief at the death of his child and the inevitable discussion of some of life’s big questions: what is the point of life? Is there a God? Do human beings need organised religion in the face of overwhelming tragedy?
In typical Fringe style, the setting of Sea Wall is minimalistic, and its design is credited to Kathryn Sproule. It comprises nothing more than an empty stage with a monolithic grey stage-block as a backdrop, and a single chair. Sparse. Empty. Achingly cavernous like the man’s pain.
Lighting by Chris Petridis is effective, and much of the play is performed with the house lights half-up. The performer sees the audience, and interacts with them at times engaging in direct but brief dialogue. The imaginary wall that separates the story from the real world – the so-called ‘fourth wall’ – is therefore broken, even if only temporarily. This is a deliberate choice by the playwright or director and its use typically signals the story becoming ‘aware of itself’, and this perhaps is the main problem with the play that director David Mealor has to deal with. The text is a lengthy and chaotic sequence of thoughts and reminiscences that almost border on tedium. The director and performer are faced with the task of making unmotivated text come to life. But it all leads to a key moment late in the play and the audience comes to an understanding. What has been previously said now makes sense and it does have motivation, but the earlier confusion still weighs heavily on the audience. The imagery in Stephens’ text at this key movement is savage and affecting, and from this point the performance becomes quite arresting. Quincy Grant’s underscore injects gravitas, and lightness when needed, and Musolino almost uses it as a prop. Clever.
Kym Clayton
When: 18 to 21 Feb
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au