★★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. The Lark @ Gluttony. 23 Feb 2025
James Barr is a genuine storyteller, and his show Sorry I Hurt Your Son (Said My Ex To My Mum) is an autobiographical journey through and safely out the other side of an abusive relationship (sort of!). It hurts to say it, but it is oh so funny! The one liners flow thick and fast, and if you don’t know much about the ins and outs of gay relationships, your education is fast and furious, whether you like it or not!
It’s almost shameful that Barr should mercilessly and incessantly joke about domestic violence for almost fifty minutes, and even worse that we the audience should laugh at it. But that’s exactly what happens: Barr does it so well and we laugh and laugh, and squirm.
Barr is clever, witty, calculating, risky, and he slaughters all manner of sacred cows in his wake. He seduces his audience and makes us feel safe, then shatters it all with an ugly reminiscence that stuns us into a silence for what feels like an eternity, before following it up with a funny quip that comes as a release. He’s clever.
Barr’s show is disarming. He subliminally challenges us to consider our own relationships with persons known and unknown. And we do. We each fight briefly with our own demons but then give in to his superbly timed gags and laugh. Above all, Barr is a stand-up comic, but this show is more than that.
The title of the show derives from a Christmas card his ex sent to Barr’s mother of whom he was fond. “Sorry I hurt your son.” Why didn’t he say it to James? A further extension of the abuse.
Kym Clayton
When: 23 Feb to 2 Mar
Where: The Lark @ Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Barbara Hardy Garden @ Holden Street Theatres. 22 Feb 2025
Following last year's raging success of Hamlet in 15 Minutes, Peter Goers has assembled another brilliant Shakespearean cast to make his very own super funnybones of the old Bard’s greatest works.
Romeo and Juliet in 15 Minutes has a similar format with the cast seated under the trees facing an audience tucked under the verandah.
It’s all fast and furious with comedic op-shop costumes, quick changes, a spot of song and dance and some downright silliness while still staying true to the timeless tragedy.
There’s a choreographer called Annie Gaborit behind the scenes there somewhere. She’s a secret ingredient to this speedy folly.
The star ingredients are members of a delicious and generous-spirited cast. They are proper actors. It takes a good actor to make fun of acting; Deborah Caddy and Brian Wellington, for instance. These theatre veterans play the matriarch and patriarch of both sparring houses and parents of Romeo and Juliet. Christopher Cordeaux charmed last year as Hamlet and this Fringe he’s just a bit of a pin-up as Romeo. The interactions with Juliet are as seriously touching as the production is comedic. Sadness in silliness.
Juliet is exquisitely played by Ruby Patrich and, boy, is she a new talent to watch.
Leighton Vogt is a familiar name on the Adelaide stage, and he gifts this show with a death scene to die for. Archie Rowe is so far less renowned but, oh, so handsome and dashing and funny in his several noble roles. Last but never least is Rob Cusenza as Juliet’s old nurse. Cusenza is a natural clown, and, in a hideous pink wig, he milks the play for all its worth, while David O’Brien gets the really fun part of unpriestly priest. No plot spoilers. Go see him.
Go see it with Goers in his bespoke Director’s chair and red kimono, adding gags and calling the shots.
It’s a clever little treat. A $10 cherry on top of the brilliantly curated Holden Street Fringe program.
Samela Harris
When: 22 Feb to 23 Mar
Where: The Barbara Hardy Garden @ Holden Street\
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Peter Goers. The Arch, Holden Street Theatres. 22 Feb 2025
He’s been doing it so long, he’s now an institution at the Adelaide Fringe. That’s a singularly quirky irony in a festival which is all about youth, experimentation, and cutting edges. Then again, Goers has cut the edge of tradition. His routine is now a routine.
But not a repetitious routine.
Somehow, from the edges of an elephantine memory and assiduously maintained diaries and notebooks, he can always come up with new old stuff with a canny eye on older audiences.
This show, with its epically catchy name, is his best and freshest yet.
This is not “arguably” so. This critic has seen and reviewed ‘em all. She’s a peerless authority.
Why is this one different? Well, it is more of a revue. It has three parts. The first is DeGoers Degustation, a stream of anecdotal and observational patter. Giggles and guffaws territory.
And, of course, he always looks schmick. He believes adamantly that performers should respect their audiences by dressing for the occasion, so he dons wild orange sneakers and a sleek and flattering pastel yellow jacket.
He’s into death notices these days. It’s a new source of radio shtick. Archival showbiz records are a standard. And his own interactions with the world.
This is where the brand-new material comes in. He has two closest buddies with whom he shares a Sunday arvo social hour or three. Now, the world gets to meet those buddies and discover why Goers loves them. He’s devised a cleverly crafted sketch which could be called "Three men and a box of Cheezels." It features Robin “Schmacka” Schmelzkopf, sometimes known as “the singing milkman” and Jonny Holds, who is also Goers’ long-term and talented stage manager. The scripting of the trio’s chatter has a dash of Mamet, a hint of Beckett, a whiff of Humphries, and shades of pure revue. Lovely timing, gloriously pregnant pauses and snappy crossed wires. Good work all three, especially brave Holds, the veteran backstager who is unused to the glare of the spotlight.
As a surefire rapid-fire grand finale to the Fringe show, seasoned actor Robert Cusenza (who is also performing in Goers' productions of The Christian Brothers and Romeo and Juliet in Fifteen Minutes) emerges from the auditorium to join Goers onstage for the famous old Abbott and Costello Who’s On First routine. It’s good. They’re good. Tears in the eyes laughter.
And it’s all over for this year. Long may the trilogy live on.
Samela Harris
When: 22 Feb to 23 Mar
Where: The Arch, Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Editors Note: Samela has been friend and colleague of Goers these many years and swears she would be the first to tell him if his show stank.
★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. The Vault at Fool's Paradise. 21 Feb 2025
Elixir Revived is a story of medical mayhem and evil experiments. Our heroes are self-absorbed scientists searching for the ultimate elixir – one that unlocks the secret of life and all the risks and rewards that might go with that. Like much pharmaceutical research their is funded by big companies that are driven by the lure of big bucks, and so our protagonists are forced to experiment on themselves and to take risks.
As they try version after version of the elusive elixir they test their physical prowess to check their progress.
So far so good – the narrative seems as though we will be in for a display of increasingly difficult and fantastic gymnastic manoeuvres, but that doesn’t happen. In fact, what we see is a standard grab bag of circus tricks – nothing new.
Yes, the tricks are done well and with tongue-in-cheek humour, and with commanding strength athletic grace, and the troupe members are buff and fine manly specimens, but there is nothing exceptional going on. The narrative doesn’t really live up to its promise or hold it all together.
A fun show, but not the best comedic circus going around.
Kym Clayton
When: 21 Feb to 23 Mar
Where: The Vault at Fool's Paradise
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Octagon at Gluttony. 21 Feb 2025
Brought to you by SA’s own Gravity & Other Myths, The Mirror is an outstanding show, and demonstrates that circus can be sophisticated and challenging physical theatre.
What does one see when one looks in a mirror? We expect to see a perfect copy of ourselves, but perfection is illusory, and perhaps we really want to see something else - something more flattering, more exciting, or something that challenges what we believe to be true about ourselves.
The Mirror explores all these things through an exquisite display of gymnastic and circus skills which is firmly held together with classy choreography and a razor-sharp narrative that is sometimes sung and sometimes executed with the feel that it is being extemporised, but it’s not.
The whole thing evokes danger. It’s one thing to execute risky routines that feel ‘safe’, because they are performed so well, but its something quite different to inject a real sense of drama and vulnerability. The troupe does this so well, and it is always exciting and on-the-edge-of your-seat stuff. The action is played in variable lighting, which is visually exciting and adds to the sense of danger. (How can they be so accurate in what they do and be safe when surely, they can’t clearly see! But of course, they can. It’s clever illusion.)
A highlight of the generously long 70-minute show is the creation of a human bridge: it’s a display of brute strength, grace, poise and balance, and it evokes whoops and cheers from the audience. Another highlight is a mashup of an almost countless number of songs by a vocalist that cleverly scaffolds various physical routines and is all the while being projected on a screen – it’s one protracted hedonistic selfie, and its oh so entertainingly projected.
This is sophisticated physical theatre, and it comes with a warning – children must be accompanied by an adult. Yes, there’s a reasonably amount of buff flesh, it’s cheeky (pun intended) and provocative, but always tasteful and inoffensive.
This is Fringe at its best!
Kym Clayton
When: 21 Feb to 23 Mar
Where: The Octagon at Gluttony
Bookings: gluttony.net.au