★★★★
Holden Street Theatres and Josh Belperio. Holden Street Theatres. 13 Feb 2020
Josh Belperio is back, and he is bespectacled, moustached and sporting thick, long, flowing hair, in contrast to his poster appearance that reflects on his multi-award-winning 2019 Fringe show, 30,000 Notes. Missed it, so I can’t compare, but Right Here, Right Now is definitely a must-see for the morally concerned.
This is the real Josh, not the one that’s trying to please anyone. Josh foresaked the show he planned, Scarred For Life, in favour of material in response to the fires, the lack of action on climate change, the humiliation of the gay marriage debate, the upcoming Religious Discrimination Bill (legalising religious discrimination) and ScoMo’s famously poor leadership. He is energised by Alan Downs’ self-help book for gay men, Velvet Rage, sufficiently to write what amounts to half a Broadway musical in a couple of months. Josh is an astonishingly accomplished wordsmith and matches that skill with inventive keyboard work while bashing away on the Roland. Whoever can make a string of invectives like “obscene pious hypocrisy” sound good is good by me. Mark Nadler and Eddy Perfect – make way!
Josh is a gay fellow in more ways than one and he is simply a joy to be around. His bonhomie is contrasted with his sincere concern for the world and especially his personal movement toward self-assertion. You want to cheer him on. The songs are ceaselessly clever, although his Otto song from his musical-in-progress, Gay Conversion Therapy, would make a Feast audience blush. Josh’s songs are vocally challenging for a musical star, so I don’t think he would make the cut at an audition for one of his own shows.
Josh lost half a spleen in a bike accident, but he’s all heart. An intelligent, moving, and authentic experience by someone who no doubt will make it big one day. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 11 to 22 February
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Moliere’s Tartuffe by Liz Lochhead. The Arch Holden Street Theatres. 12 Feb 2020
The surtitles are there not because Moliere wrote in French but because Liz Lochhead’s take on the 17th Century French comedy is in braw, regional Scots argot. It’s tough to interpret even for a modern city Scot. But, delivered in very artful rhyming couplets by a thoroughly accomplished cast of classical actors from Scotland’s The Royal Lyceum Theatre Company, it is a voyage of wild vernacular quirkiness and traditional comic caper.
Tartuffe is otherwise known as “The Intruder”, being the tale of a sleazy social parasite who has inveigled his way into the household of a decidedly gullible gentleman called Orgon.
This production, directed by Tony Cownie with very cunning curved scenery transforming the little Arch’s stage, is set for no ostensible reason in the 1940s.
Therein, the sturdy, wise maid, most engagingly embodied by Joyce Falconer, explains the plot and deliciously describes the vile Tartuffe as a “succubus” and her fool of a boss as a “galoot”. She has some glorious lines, among them the temptingly imitable exclamation which translates as “what, the hair oil”.
The purpose of the plot is to protect the unseen daughter of the household from forced marriage to Tartuffe, to which end Orgon’s beautiful trophy wife, Elmire, wittily played by Nicola Roy, has to invest her considerable charms. Harry Ward captures the obstinate dolt spirit of Orgon to a tee while Andy Clark makes such a strident and convincing meal of Tartuffe’s squalid lechery that one’s skin crawls.
All the while, the language flows in voice and surtitles, densely lilting, a marvel of wondrous words whence the more one concentrates, the more the Lochhead poetic skills roll forth, a barrage of brogue and ingenious rhymes.
Thus is this unusual production a cultural adventure on myriad levels. There’s never been a Fringe offering quite like it and daresay there never will again. It is definitely worth some brave immersion.
Samela Harris
When: 12 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Sh!t Theatre. Adelaide Fringe. The Studio Holden Street Theatres. 12 Feb 2020
Sh!t Theatre and its Drink Rum with Expats production is nothing less than volcanic agitprop theatre. It erupts with wild, bold, and brave political intensity coloured with flaming showers of satirical acid.
Its two British performers, Rachel Biscuit and Louise Mothersole, present themselves as hard-drinking, facile expat dropouts who, like myriad others, have found a haven of easy, boozy life in Malta. They have their faces clowned up in red and white Maltese flag greasepaint and wear nautical jackets atop summer holiday shorts. They open the show with an open bar. Free beers to arriving audience members. Thereafter, Maltese beer, Cisk to be precise, plays a large part in their shtick. So does the hell-raiser English actor, Oliver Reed who, famously, collapsed and died at The Pub in Valetta. He had just consumed 8 pints of lager, 12 shots of rum and half a bottle of whiskey washed down with cognac in a drinking competition with sailors.
The Pub is now a shrine to Reed and a prime gathering place for expatriates.
In this multi-media presentation, Sh!t Theatre introduces the expats with marvellous ink drawings, thus populating their depiction of hard-drinking Malta.
They down a few drinks as they do so, even offering nips of rum to the audience before launching off stools into their midst and creating quite a precedent in Holden Street.
They throw in singalongs and language lessons, wild abandon, and general hilarity. They sing in exquisite harmony, by the way. They even do a spot of dancing in what is an explosively high-energy performance.
But their nitty-gritty, the soul of the show, is deathly serious tales of injustice and corruption, albeit wrapped in colourful sardonic wit. Thus, we learn, among those seeking the sweet life in Malta are refugees. Some of them make it to those wee rock islands in the Med. Some don’t. Being sent back to Libya is a gruesome fate.
Then there is the intriguing piece of Valetta graffiti: "Who Killed Daphne?” There’s a tale and a half behind that question. They tell it. The audience quakes.
These two madcap, over-the-top, brimmingly talented performers turn out to be social justice guerrillas of the stage.
They have brought us a sizzlingly brilliant piece of what-the-fringe-is-all-about theatre. It is a must-see. It will be shining out as arguably the top show of 2020. And that is a big call so early in the piece and in a competitive field which exceeds 1000.
See it now.
Samela Harris
NOTE: Saluting this amazing piece of theatre, winner of the Holden Street Theatres’ Edinburgh Fringe Award of 2019, Holden Street has set up its own Fringe 2020 FOOD HUT nightly serving among its local produce fare, specialist cuisine of Malta.
When: 12 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Remember, Remember. Dunstan Playhouse. 4 Jan 2020
If ever there was proof that the seniors demographic is alive and well, it is in seeing how they pack out a theatre when offered an age-targeted comedy show. They aren’t just punctual. They come wildly early and party at the bar. The perfect audience. They never include later-comers. They are hungry for humour. They have a lot of terms of reference; i.e., years under their belts.
All this they demonstrated when the first Senior Moments production came to town last year. It was a big hit, starring Max Gilles and John Wood. Well pleased by Senior Moments, the seniors audience has raced back for more since Senior Moments 2 has been touted as “The Sequel without Equal."
It stars Max Gilles and John Howard, along with Tony Barber, Dave Callan, and Kim Lewis, with Dave Gibson adding voice. Sadly no John Wood and Benita Collings. And very sadly, no Jeff Harvey at the piano. The last Senior Moments was this beloved pianist's swan song. This production features Mitchell Price-Norgaard on the piano, a fresh-faced WAAPA graduate, and the acrobatics of his fingers on the keyboard are an absolute highlight of this production.
Like Senior Moments, this show is a string of revue skits and, in general skit tradition, they are hit-and-miss.
There are some wonderful lines. There are some ingenious ideas.
That Ned Kelly’s disguise was created especially because it would be easy for modernist artists to paint tickled this critic’s funny bone a lot. Vegan steak knives as a prize, also funny. Peter FitzSimons' epic number of epic histories, funny.
The cast keeps the show hopping along for 90 minutes, albeit the stage manager is very busy helping Tony Barber on and off stage and into the relevant lights. Barber’s role of “narrator” enables him to keep the script in his hands at all times. His voice wavers these days just as the Gilles memory wavers. He, too, carries the script when there are other than song lines. Indeed, his headliner role is more reduced in this show, albeit he is the most adored of the senior stars and is the one who always draws the eye. The younger cast members do the line-remembering and work with very good spirit. Wonderful John Howard brings the house down as Jan Utzen in the Sydney Opera House finale.
The script is again written by Kevin Brumpton and Angus FitzSimmons with the latter directing the show. The misses outweigh the hits in this incarnation. Some very promising ideas lose out with punch lines, the Mary MacKillop skit particularly, but the prime-ministers lineup has some lovely moments. For many, the parody of Slim-Dusty-style Australian C&W epics is a high spot.
In other words, there is probably something for everyone but not everything for anyone.
Revue is revue is revue.
Don’t get your expectations up. Go with an open heart and appreciate the free programmes which are a comedy act in their own right.
Samela Harris
When: 4 to 8 Feb
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
Flinders University Performing Arts Society. Bakehouse Theatre. Preview Show 22 Jan 2020
“What is the fate of English farce during the emergence of the #metoo generation?” asked Peter Goers on hearing of this Flinders production at the Bakehouse. Surely the new generation of actors would not wish to promulgate scenes of lascivious older men engaging in trysts with young women?
Well, yes. They would and they have. And they have made it as absurdly funny as playwrights Ray Cooney and John Chapman intended when thy penned Move Over Mrs Markham. None of the predatory males gets his way. And, for that matter, nor do the women old and young who are equally prepared to have devious dalliances. It takes two to tango, as they say in the classics. The sleazy blokes need sleazy playmates, however upright and proper they may ostensibly be. For that is part of the humour.
But how can one produce a classic farce within the constraints of the Bakehouse Theatre?
Well, the ingenuity of theatre designers has never let the size of that gem of a theatre obstruct the scale of a show. Here, with some cunning carpentry, they have installed a mass of very 60s-looking orange doors, plus the odd curtain, enabling the protagonist to flit from entrance to concealment to cross purposes.
The set is its own little comic period piece, its decor dominated by a clichéd Mondrian print, a floral lounge suite, a showy round bed and some old school pine furniture. Oh, and two rotary landline phones which are kept quite busy throughout the play.
As a first-time director, Scott Sharrad shines with some distinction for the astute timing and clearly well-rehearsed standard of the production. Among the things he had to overcome was directing inexperienced millennials to step into the shoes of boomers. If at first the incongruity stands out, the cast soon wins over in establishing their given characters. Among the players, it is Lucas Tennant with his excellent voice, delivery, and comic responses in the role of the hapless children’s book publisher Phillip Markham who really owns the show. Nicole Walker supports strongly as his would-be controlling wife with a lovely range of exasperated facial expressions while Thomas Hodgkison is a beguiling mass of contradictions as the interior decorator. Alistair Spenlow, Aiden Fitzgerald, Christine Pearsall, and Alana Lymn provide strong support, Lymn bringing the house down in her cameo transformation to Swedish au pair. Leanne Marshall is a picture of precision as the children’s book author with Nathan Ibele and Olivia Case filling out the cast with spirited characterisations.
Together, complete with tech team, they call themselves FUPAS and one must say their arrival on the city theatre scene is a bold and engaging one; a lively challenge of anachronisms and a test of the endurance of classic theatre comedy. The comedy definitely wins. This is a funny show. Onya, FUPAS. Keep ‘em coming.
Samela Harris
When: 22 to 25 Jan
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com