★★★★★
Holden Street Theatres & Martha Lott. Holden Street Theatres. 17 Feb 2021
The set is layered with a boy’s toy debris and an eight-year-old’s clothes lie strewn about his bedroom. With the theatrically missing walls, the whole shebang is like the aftermath of a tornado. Tornado Tom. Mum enters for an archaeological dig to find the cannot-do-without floppy monkey puppet and to pack an overnight bag for him. Tom has fallen off his perch again.
Holden Street Theatre’s artistic director, Martha Lott, has written, with developmental assistance from others, a forensically informative and emotionally wrought narrative for a single mother raising a behaviourally troubled boy and an older sister who is subject to collateral damage. From early days to the latest incident, Tom’s increasingly serious transgressions are revealed along with Mum’s search for help. And then there are the recriminations. Blame and well-meaning advice is always nearby, but help that leads to real change is elusive.
Martha Lott plays our heroic Mum with amazing verisimilitude. Lott’s Mum reaches the brink of emotional breakdown rather continuously only to pull back to get on with the job. Because there is no choice. This isn’t some alcoholic husband who cyclically abuses and apologises, whom you can leave; it’s your baby and you can’t give up. The subtext of being on your own, of the daily worry of the next phone call from school, and the effect on the daughter is excruciatingly palpable. Lott takes you right into the trenches with her and there isn’t much in the way of relief. The only hope is that the whole family has finally got individual mental health plans.
Director Yasmin Gurreeboo guides Lott to a wonderful balance of text and emotional import. It’s kind of heartbreaking, but great empathy for this family is automatic, and we should all know about this. Bravo to the creative team and to Lott’s first writing credit and performance in this world premiere!
David Grybowski
When: 16 Feb to 21 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Patrick Livesey. Holden Street Theatres. 17 Feb 2021
Producer Patrick Livesey has delivered another five-star show for the Fringe at Holden Street Theatres. His hit play in 2019, The Boy, George, was the hilariously plausible improbability of an impish Prince George plotting to save a Boris Johnson-lead government disaster from his bedroom in Buckingham Palace. Last year, his equally good Gone Girls did brisk business.
This year’s burnt offering is the world premiere of a ripper yarn penned by Melbourne playwright and perennial student of the arts, Angus Cameron. An Australian tourist in Moscow chats up one of those umbrella tour guides seen in all major cities these days, seeking the underground gay scene. In Russia, same-sex activity in private was de-criminalised in 1993 but is otherwise frowned upon to downright dangerous in a largely homophobic society. Say no more and enjoy the ride and climax, but what happens is a lot more than a gay tryst – yes, there are hidden agendas.
From ABC’s Millennials/Gen Z TV series, Why Are You Like This?, Wil King’s cherubim looks manifests his Australian’s naivety, enthusiasm, and idealism. His real-life partner and play protagonist, Patrick Livesey is a machine gun burst of the inscrutable Russian. His broken English is wonderful, and his Russian is mysterious, suspicious and tough. While I feel Russians love to complain and joke about their leaders and society, they absolutely love their heritage and are nationalistic at heart, and Livesey and Cameron nailed it. Together, the playwright and cast, aided by an edgy soundtrack, authentically invite us into a shabby and tiny Russian apartment for a few afternoon to evening drinks, followed by the drug-induced haze of a thumping nightclub. Menace is ever present, and malice seems not far behind. Stranger danger and the stakes inexorably increase with every round, yet the tense yearning for sex or at least connection is always palpable. And then there’s the stuff I haven’t told you about.
It is an edge-of-the-seat experience, wonderfully written and expertly performed. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 16 Feb to 21 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Therry Theatre. Arts Theatre. 11 Feb 2021
Emerging into the world of covid shutdown, Therry imposes strict conditions with lengthy instructions, including ordaining that no one leaves the theatre before the row-by-row exit rule has been explained. Since Therry attracts elderly audiences, this is admirable duty-of-care.
For its elderly audience, Therry’s first 2021 production proves to be a welcome chuckle in the dark.
It is Ken Ludwig’s 2004 adaptation of the 1932 Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur play, Twentieth Century, a showbiz-themed comedy set on a luxury train in the glamorous 1930s. It depicts a grandiose Broadway producer’s efforts to revive his collapsing career by exploiting the stardom of his one-time protégé and lover, Lily Garland. It’s all about vanity, glitz, fakery, and gullibility on a luxury train from Chicago to New York. It is also a comedy.
In this Kerrin White production, it is not a rib-rattling, guffawing comedy but more of a cackle-fest, "The Producers" on valium, perhaps. Its set is utterly fabulous, being a series of ritzy train compartments which are shunted to and fro across the stage to reveal and expand the action as the protagonists - a stage-struck doctor and his mistress, a nutty old conman, a rival producer, railway staff, and assorted members of the great producer’s entourage - bumble about in their assorted quests. The humour is hit and miss, rising towards the climax when all hell is breaking loose.
This work has been a vehicle for the likes of John Barrymore, Frederick March, and Alec Baldwin as the pompous producer Oscar Jaffe with Carole Lombard and Gloria Swanson as the female star. Following in such luminous footsteps is a daunting challenge for any actor and, indeed, one feels for stalwart Adelaide actor Lindsay Dunn as he seeks to embody the blustering egomaniacism of the lead character. Dunn is word perfect and diligent to a tee in his portrayal, but trying as he may to achieve blustering misogyny, he can’t help being just a wee bit too nice.
Playing opposite as the brattish movie star and wearing an exquisitely clichéd blonde wig, Shelley Crooks delivers some delicious vapid vanity in a funny, edgy performance.
The supporting cast is consistently strong and well-rehearsed with some pleasing characterisations and the production definitely lifts in the second act. But it is a clumsy, oddball old play, so much a period piece that the program contains a long glossary of references. Hence, it is a goodie for the oldies but it misses the mark for teenagers.
Samela Harris
When: 11 to 20 Feb
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
David Gauci & Davine Productions. Star Theatre One. 5 Feb 2021
Producer, director and writer David Gauci relies on the now-hackneyed title of Bryan Adams’s 1984 hit single, Summer of ’69, to signal to the punters that what’s on offer is a nostalgic magic carpet ride of ‘60s hits, and they got the message. The COVID-restrained, entertainment-hungry, post-middle age chardonnay set have come in droves to turn on, tune in, and drop out for a couple of hours in this blissful trip.
Gauci is a musical stalwart of Adelaide who sang in the inaugural Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2001. His production of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical – a biographical jukebox musical of King and her ground-breaking songwriting companions from 2013 – was a huge success in the 2020 Adelaide Fringe, and not surprisingly, people have remembered that and returned for more.
In the first half of the show, Gauci chronologically chronicles the main news events and hits of each year in the decade. The use of television clips is helpful, but the employment of tag team narrators is less successful. Reading from scripts and pretending not to is as awkward as the dual MCs that occasionally mar the Academy Awards. Gauci’s pop histories – perhaps rehashed from late night SBS documentaries - forestalls what people really came to enjoy – THE MUSIC. However, my American companion loved it – “I had a combi!”, “I went to San Francisco!”, “I was at Woodstock”, “I was at the Kennedy assassination!” (Just kidding about that last one.)
Musical director Peter Johns and The Hip Beats accompany a bongful of vocal talent in flawlessly rendered hits that carry you off to some associated past be it pleasant or poignant. Carly Meakin’s rendering of Aquarius is soaring and Joshua Kerr’s and Trevor Anderson’s Sounds of Silence is particularly evocative. Jordan Coulter improves on Dylan with his The Times They Are a-Changin’.
Shenayde Wilkinson-Sarti’s choreography is unchallenging and the singers’s costumes lack ‘60s authenticity – more like a dress-up party. Space for backstage and front-of-house credit in the program is used up instead by the major sponsor. Seating around tables and an open bar exude the warm and welcoming social atmosphere that we missed in the truncated 2020 Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
The second half of the show is a delectable selection of what else you would want to hear. The Four Seasons’s Walk Like A Man is delightfully dispatched by women in pink suits. Maya Miller and Joshua Kerr correctly capture the playful rapport of Sony & Cher in I Got You Babe. Bravo! And still, Gauci left the best for last. Jemma McCullough reprises her role as Carole King from Beautiful… with powerfully performed interpretations of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and I Feel The Earth Move. Bravo!
After the encore and final round of applause, your table thanks Gauci for bringing back his Beautiful… singers and musicians for a much-needed night of sublime music and memory.
David Grybowski
When: Closed
Where: Star Theatre One
Bookings: www.trybooking.com
Zest Theatre Group. Victor Harbor Town Hall. 30 Jan 2021
They’ve done it again.
Zest has turned on a musical with a cast of nigh-Broadway talent. Is it the sea air?
Strikingly this production of the Dreamworks musical, introduces in the female lead one Matilda Boysen whose assured stage presence and vocal maturity belies her mere eighteen years of age. She really is quite a phenomenon.
As the Princess Fiona, her role is to be rescued by the ogre, Shrek, and be delivered as a bride for the evil Lord Farquaad who has thrown Fairyland into misery and disarray. Originally an animation movie, it’s a silly old plot, with lots of comforting corn but with book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire and music from Jeanine Tesorie, it is a thoroughly good-spirited and rightly popular musical.
Zest has assembled a huge cast and clearly rehearsed and tutored it thoroughly since its discipline, enthusiasm, and vocal abilities are rather accomplished for a community group. Indeed, the whole production is rather classy, from sound and lighting to choreography and costumes. It has been directed by Peta Bowey and Terry Mountstephen, a remarkable daughter and mother team.
For the role of the green-faced ogre, Shrek, they have found one Chris Stevenson, a bearded hairdresser who not only can roll out an excellent Glaswegian accent but also can belt out a darned good song. He makes a terrific Shrek with acting skills sufficient to imbue the gentle giant with pathos. Hence, his evolving relationship with the Princess achieves some credibility.
There is a very important donkey in this story and he is embodied by Joel Pathuis, an arrestingly talented 14-year-old with a very interesting voice pitched just a bit low for the demands of this show. He gives Donkey lots of wit and good shtick. Meanwhile, the vertically-challenged Lord Farquaad needs to be performed by an actor on his knees. Harrison Gollege braves this discomfort with panache and delivers a delightfully comic characterisation.
Hence, with this strong cast of principals surrounded by a riot of song and dance and colour, Zest has delivered yet another extremely creditable production and proved itself a theatre group worth taking seriously.
Samela Harris
When: 29 Jan to 7 Feb
Where: Victor Harbor Town Hall
Bookings: Season Sold Out