★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Duke of Brunswick Hotel. 23 Feb 2020
It’s there if you look for it. Innuendo, that is. It seems that Steve Davis and Becky Blake didn’t have to look far. It’s even in the school tuckshop menu declares Davis, looking like an over-the-top Etonian headmaster in mortarboard and swirling black gown as he embodies one Professor Longsword. He lists common food items with salubrious disapproval and an oft-raised eyebrow. Off the menu they come. Tsk tsk.
One could question the good taste of a solid hour of double entendres, but that would be pointless, since that’s what the show is all about. It dips just to the edge of bad taste but never descends into it; suggestive but never salacious. Instead, it is silly and funny, a riot of wordplay and bizarrely obscure euphemisms, generally made all the funnier by Davis’s quirky clowning. Just as he is quite the comic fellow, Becky Blake is absolutely the fearless songstress. The Chunky Custard star arrives as the meek teacher, Miss Fondadick, but morphs into increasingly outrageous characters as she delivers old-school advertisements and tres risque songs. She’s a talent and a joy, a marvel on the keyboard and a voice for all genres. There are a zillion costume changes and the pair play suggestive Playschool skits with a hapless audience member as they rev up the content with a nod to director Glynn Nicholas who is there somewhere up the back of the upstairs performance space at the charming Duke of Brunswick hotel. The only negative of our review night was an air conditioner of such arctic efficiency that this critic was almost blown to ice, until from behind her a Sir Galahad by the name of Anton Schrama gently proffered a shirt which saved both the critic and her ability to focus on the show. The result of this kindness was that a good time was had by all, and plenty of laughs.
The short season is a sell-out and rightly so. Maybe they’ll sort out a reprise. One can only hope.
Samela Harris
When: 23 Feb to 1 Mar
Where: Duke of Brunswick Hotel
Bookings: Season Sold Out
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Carrick Hill. 22 Feb 2020
Mr Badger is not often the star of the show in this story; Mr Toad, Mole and Ratty tend to hog the limelight with their crazy antics. So as narrator, Mr Badger gets to tell the story his way.
Seated on picnic blankets under a tree atop Carrick Hill, the occasional power tool and hammer doesn’t faze the children seated around Chris John and his intriguing steamer trunk.
Mr Badger introduces them to the Kenneth Grahame’s watery world, but for most of the audience today, there is no need. Aged from around 3-8 years, this lot were mostly familiar with the story and the characters, and were quite vocal about it!
By necessity, this is a condensed version of the adventure, and when favourite bits were left out or glossed over, Mr Badger was firmly reminded of the lapse, and the children would fill in the gaps. He very kindly acknowledged their input, as he probably has for the last decade or so.
The story is told beautifully with Mr Badger reaching into the drawers of his steamer trunk to demonstrate the physical aspects – dioramas of the locations, and representations of the characters. To my mind, this was the least satisfying aspect of the production; the dioramas were in small cigar boxes and the figures barely bigger than his thumb, and it was very difficult for the children to see any detail at all. They really needed to be larger to be effective, and the children tended to lose interest in them very quickly.
It is delightful to sit with children who are enthralled by a story. That this tale, written in 1908, still fascinates them, is a testament to the power of the written word. Long may it be so.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 22 Feb to 15 March
Where: Carrick Hill
Booking: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Adelaide Town Hall. 21 Feb 2020
When Marika Marosszeky slips off her black dress to reveal what she’s wearing underneath, there’s no real surprise. She already has her mammarian gifts on full display, welcoming the audience to her husband Wolfgang’s funeral, waving around her wine and making clear it’s not her first of the day. “Do you think this dress is appropriate?’ she asked the guests at the wake.
Wolfgang has died unexpectedly, and she’s at a bit of a loss to deal with the whole thing. Because Wolfgang (Michael Whittred) hasn’t actually gone away; he’s sitting behind her, haunting her, and playing electric guitar. So she does what most people do in funereal situations; she tells the story of how they met, runs through their marriage, and tells a few secrets along the way in story and song.
From what I could gather via the interweb, the show originally had three women in the cast; all ex-lovers of the deceased Wolfgang, they meet up at the funeral and exchange stories. It’s now devolved into a one woman show, and I’m not convinced it’s as effective, with Marosszeky indicating that she is a women with many roles, and that Wolfgang unknowingly had many wives.
It doesn’t help when the sound isn’t balanced – Whittred’s guitar was far too loud for much of the production, although initially this didn’t matter, as the vocals were so poorly tuned it was difficult to understand what she was singing for the first half of the show. This detracted from the narrative somewhat, as those songs probably set up the scenario.
When we did hear Marosszeky’s voice undistorted, it showed she was quite a capable singer, and while she worked hard, the production didn’t really deliver. Perhaps because of the sound and the distortion, it was difficult to engage with the characters, which was unfortunate, as there are clearly some skills at work which just weren’t displayed as well as they could be.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 21 to 26 Feb
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
The Flanagan Collective & Gobbledigook Theatre. Open Air Theatre, Adelaide Botanic Gardens. 21 Feb 2020
Edinburgh is grey. Grey buildings, grey streets, grey skies. Alex Wright tells you this, so you understand the world of Dave. It’s Dave’s 30th birthday, and he lost the ability to see colour when he was a child. He used to sing flowers, but the world of colour was bullied out of him by his peers. He’s hanging out in bars with the sort of mates that inspired Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping, singing Springsteen karaoke, when suddenly, colour breaks through. It is Eurydice, and she is coloured love.
The transformation of Dave is both eloquent and elegant. Wright’s rewriting of the classic tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is filled with the humour, despair, joy and brutality of love. The gods giveth, and the gods taketh away.
Phil Grainger is the perfect accompaniment to this tale; he plays the guitar and sings a libretto for the star-crossed lovers, for how can a man who sees grey keep to himself a tree nymph?
This is two handed theatre at its finest, and it’s what Fringe theatre is all about. Set in the Botanic Rose Garden at dusk, there is no set, no props – just two men, a leather bound book and a guitar. The engagement is immediate, and there is a pure pleasure in listening to the mellifluous words and music as Wright and Grainger guide us through this tale.
Eurydice’s death (note: this is not a spoiler) makes us bleed for Dave, and we quite willingly suspend our disbelief to journey with him from karaoke bar to Hades, crossing the River Styx with Charon and soothing the multi headed Cerberus to rescue his love.
See this show; the language and the music will wrap itself around you like a warm blanket. Bliss.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 21 Feb to 11 Mar
Where: Open Air Theatre, Adelaide Botanic Garden
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. Domain Theatre, Marion Cultural Centre. 23 Feb 2020
Presented by composer/pianist Riccardo Barone and singer/actress Nikki Ellis Souvertjis, Amore e Morte is essentially an art song cycle that tells the story of a man and a woman who are impacted by him witnessing a crime. They uproot themselves and flee to another country to avoid any repercussions of being witness, but their new found peace is destroyed when he is eventually called back home to give evidence. She chronicles the events, and according to the supplied programme notes, does so “…in pursuit of writing a prolific exposé.”
Barone is clearly a capable musician – he definitely knows his way around the piano (and the Melodica for that matter) – and his compositions are passionate, but for the most part the songs in cycle have a ‘sameness’ about them. The music for the most part is fast paced with very little variation. The melody lines are mostly structured around rapidly executed rolling broken chords and almost excessively used arpeggios. Early in the cycle some of the songs are jazz inflected and Ellis Souvertjis’s relaxed vibrato fits the music like a hand in a glove. Some of the more densely figured songs provide a less direct and more challenging accompaniment for the vocal lines.
The songs about the couple’s departure have more clarity and Souvertjis demonstrated command of scat singing. One of Barone’s songs, and perhaps the most interesting and best executed, is sung by Souvertjis at a typewriter as she produces her “exposé”. The sound of the keys is completely empathetic with the spiky rhythm set by Barone on the piano.
Overall, the lyrics of the songs are overshadowed by the intensity of the piano playing and by the density of the music, to the extent that the narrative is not as clear as it might be.
That said, the audience were enthralled by the obvious passion and musical skills of the two performers.
Kym Clayton
When: 23 Feb to 28 Mar
Where: Domain Theatre, Marion Cultural Centre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au