★★★
Grist To The Mill. The Bakehouse Theatre. 2 Mar 2020
“Thar she blows!” One of the most famous lines in literature comes from American Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby-Dick: or, The Whale. And it’s thrillingly the first line of Ishmael in Ross Ericson’s re-scripting of the tall whale tale from the novel to the stage in his one-man show.
The set comprised a few of the sea farer’s needs and a bit of sail. Ericson is an imposing whale of a man who commands attention; he is dressed in interesting clothing of the day and is bursting to tell the tale. The text is taut as a hemp rope on a whaler and he admirably rips through the long novel with amazing detail, but Ericson’s energy gets the best of him. While we are evocatively aboard ship on the high seas, chasing and harpooning large whales from small boats, and enthralled and fascinated with the obsessed Captain Ahab and his malevolent white whale, loudness seems suitable to convey the excitement yet Ericson is too often yelling. When employed, his dulcet tones were a relief, but alas, we didn’t hear enough of them until after the show when he was himself, spruiking his other show, Gratiano. Too frequently, lines were recalled after a short brain search, and sometimes a wrong word was followed by the similarly sounding correct one, rather cutely, like, “Queequeg,” and then, “Pequod.” Diction and clarity also got trampled in the rush.
Director Michelle Yim maybe didn’t notice these things, or opening night was far too exciting for Ericson. The creative team might also have included more evocative sounds like creaking blocks and tackles, high winds and seas, and the cries of violent deaths. Ericson pursued a great script and then harpooned it.
David Grybowski
When: 2 to 11 Mar
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Nick Power. Lion Arts Factory. 2 Mar 2020
The Lion Arts Factory was the perfect venue to attend a hip hop dance event. However, the ghetto-like brick walls and ten metre diameter cypher circle weren’t enough to convince that Nick Power could fake spontaneity with his choreography. Hip hop was born in New York and its popularity is proven in this production culminating from four years of collaboration bringing together Aaron Lim from Darwin and Erak Mith of Phnom Penh. The young men begin like fighting cocks – posing for fearful effects and faking the first move. Once cred is shown, the game of one-upmanship challenges is on. Some of the moves are astonishing for their suddenness and adroitness. Hip hoppers spend a lot of time close to the ground, upside down and on their head. After challenging each other to exhaustion, Lim and Mith take a deserved break and bottle of water while the audience watches wondering what will happen next. A new challenge begins but this time it’s a bromance with the dancers entwined in dynamic couplings of great accomplishment, but none as gravity-defying as in the picture in the Festival program. It becomes clear that Mith is the mentor and Lim the student.
While a great demonstration of the genre, the show opens the question once more if it’s possible to take hip hop, or street art for that matter, out of the spontaneity of the street - where so much more is at stake for the participants and audience - and enjoy the same thrill in a controlled environment. This wasn’t so much dancing with wolves – more like owning a clever dog.
David Grybowski
When: 28 Feb to 4 Mar
Where: Lions Arts Factory
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Bally, Gluttony. 28 Feb 20
In her first solo show, Phi Theodoros posits the question, who is the ukulele dream girl? I’m not certain this question is ever answered definitively for us, but we are certainly taken on an exploratory journey of who she would like the Ukulele Dream Girl to be.
Standing barefoot in a red floral dress, the magenta haired ukulele girl is a striking figure who lets us know immediately that she is not there just to entertain, but to educate. She talks about binary extremes, climate change, mental health, and the woes of the millennial, gently taking the mickey out of spending money on smashed avocado, while noting that they’ll never afford their own home, so why not?
She uses song to illustrate particular points; Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise becomes a three part crowd sing-along. Four Non Blondes What’s Up also gets the small crowd going.
Theodoros can certainly play the ukulele, and has a pleasant voice which suits much of the material. She sticks rigidly to her script, and at times the language is unnatural, and veers dangerously close to polemic.
Clearly her heart is in the right place, but does this make a theatre show? It can and does in some circumstances, and during this show, the approach works in part. But her earnest appeals to our more enlightened selves and the ‘one size fits all’ solution, particularly when she is discussing mental health issues, is overly simplistic at best.
Theodoros urges us at the end of the show to think about self-empowerment, to re-frame our expectations, and to build community. All laudable goals, and for much of the audience, more than enough to be getting on with.
Arna Eyers-White
When: Closed
Where: The Bally, Gluttony
Bookings: Closed
★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Chris Henry. Belgian Beer Café Oostende. 1 Mar 2020
Balloon tricks is almost an iron-clad guarantee to entertain kids, and Balloonatics (pronounced to rhyme with lunatics) is no exception. Start winding those long pencil shaped balloons into animals, and you’ve won.
Scottish comedian Chris Henry (who let the adults know that he also does a show at night, which is a little less polite) welcomed the kids with some good patter from the mobile phone attached to his wrist, although the notion of a pre-recorded script and the concomitant jokes was somewhat lost on the younger audience members, who just wanted to get the balloon action going.
‘Favourite animals’ was of course the theme to get them going, and luckily the usual pets came up, the dog, the cat, the giraffe. You don’t have a giraffe? Loser.
The kids were for the most part, happy to be part of the show; the small audience meant that anyone who wanted to could join in. From super heroes to emojis, balloons were twisted, turned and tugged over kids - and occasionally their parents – accompanied by much raucous laughter (and a few tears as they inevitably popped) and just a bit of audience heckling.
Henry makes enough adult allusions to keep the parents entertained, but there probably needs to be a bit more for the kids; their attention span is short, and they’re just not there for the conversation, unless it’s about them!
Lots of room for improv; it does take a brave man to work with kids and balloons, and Henry is up to the task. Funny, silly and entertaining.
Arna Eyers-White
Whewn: 1 to 15 Mar
Where: Belgian Beer Café Oostende
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Shamel Pitts & Mirelle Martins. Odeon Theatre. 29 February 2020
One of the great things about the Adelaide Festival is having New York come to us. American choreographer Shamel Pitts was trained by Israel’s Ohad Naharin and passes on Naharin’s Gaga dance language in the Big Apple. He was enthralled by pupil Mirelle Martins from Brazil and their collaboration over several years had resulted in Black Velvet. Pitt says it was “as if we were two different aspects of the same person.”
The two dancers have shaved heads and are naked except for simple cloths woven around their waists. Both costume and skin are bathed with a chocolate-coloured sheen resembling, well, black velvet – a sort of hyper-realisation of their natively dark skins. The dance begins excruciatingly slowly and indeed is measured throughout, excepting some explosive frenetic movement resembling the inner workings of a mad clock. Yet the narrative arc is one of love, of engagement and entanglement – an intimate investigation of both masculinity and femininity. Pitt’s choreography, he says, celebrates his female family role models as a gay black man. Watching Pitt’s and Martin’s beautifully toned and muscular, yet lithe, figures writhe into each other’s body hollows is both erotic and joyful.
Black Velvet is a mesmerising work of universal attraction. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 28 Feb to 2 Mar
Where: Odeon Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au