Adelaide Fringe. Scrambled Prince Theatre. Bakehouse Theatre. 4 Mar 2019
This is a bad time for the Catholic church. And here is the ultimate show in terms of airing the church’s dirty linen. It is set in a slave labour laundry where world-weary nuns keep them on task and punish any of the “fallen women” who slacken or rebel.
These nuns are a million worlds away from the enlightened educator nuns of today.
The Magdalene Laundries, also known as asylums, operated from the 18th through the 20th centuries, most notoriously in Ireland but also in England, Canada, and Australia.
The “fallen women” could be pregnant girls, prostitutes, the mentally ill, petty criminals, or just unruly teens unwanted by family. They would be taken to these cruel workhouses where their labours were deemed to be payment for the kindness of the convent in taking them in. They were miserable, punishing places where silence was imposed, food was meagre, and work was relentless.
A group of Melbourne schoolgirls has made a study of the Melbourne Magdalene phenomenon and put their research into a theatrical production: All the Lovely Magdalenes.
It’s a brave and very earnest piece of theatre penned by Clare Steel and the cast.
There are nine of them.
They grace the black stage clad in black smocks and bright white long pinafores. They scrub white sheets in shiny tin buckets. They scrub the floor with hard brushes. They shake and fold, shake and fold, shake and fold endless sheets. Their diligence is fear-driven. They talk surreptitiously and support each other, while bored nuns periodically patrol their work. They also brawl, love each other, and have breakdowns.
Much of this hapless life is expressed in song and melancholy tunes, sometimes angry. “Hold onto your skin,” is the message the girls reiterate. It is all the Magdalene women have that they may call their own.
This production is beautifully lit by Elizabeth Banger and eloquently choreographed by director, George Franklin. Regimented routines, repetition, and hard slog are forefront. From time to time, individual relationships, grievances and despair are brought to the fore.
At times the girls’ voices make a beautiful harmony in their black world. Sometimes their balance falters. Mostly they sing unaccompanied, voices in the darkness of a life without hope. It is extremely moving.
It is a strong little piece of theatre, visually and emotionally. Some of the young cast show serious theatrical potential. They also demonstrate hearts and minds to be admired since this is a display of compassion by today’s young women for all those whose young lives were blighted all those years ago; not to be forgotten.
More than anything, it is a remarkable display of initiative by an enterprising and classy group of girls and it deserves a Fringe salute. Brava!
Samela Harris
4 Stars
When: 4 to 9 Mar
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Belvoir and Co-Curious. Ridley Centre – Adelaide Showgrounds. 3 Mar 2019
Counting and Cracking is everything a truly great night out at the theatre should be. It is a sweeping multi-generational epic of an upper class Sri Lankan Tamil family that spans decades of time and migration to Australia. The action begins with familiar domesticity of mother and son and girlfriend in Sydney but ratchets up as the back story is filled in by going back in time to Sri Lanka. Shakthidharan juxtaposes a near-present day personal story of family reunification with the tragic civil war between the Tamil people of northern Sri Lanka and the ruling Sinhalese majority. Intriguingly, the patriarch of our subject Tamil family is a member of parliament and dedicated to Sri Lankan unity. We witness the moment when things spiral out of control and our parliamentarian – a dedicated pacifist - is forced to shift from counting on democracy to cracking a few heads. Similarly intimate is a refugee’s desperate journey from political prisoner to the people smugglers. The Sri Lankan conflict and the confused loyalties of immigration between one’s adopted country and country of origin are subtly reflected back in a relationship between the Australian-born Tamil and his Aboriginal girlfriend.
The authenticity of the production is due to many contributive elements coming together. Western Sydney playwright S. Shakthidharan is of Tamil ancestry and he wrote the play to explore his history and homeland. Director Eamon Flack is Belvoir’s artistic director. He has great experience working with Indigenous theatre and has a learned sensitivity towards displacement and identity. Belvoir is Australia’s premiere theatre development workshop and Flack’s productions have won Helpmann Awards for Best Play in 2014 and 2015. The direction is swift-paced and inventive for character interplay and scene conversion. The sixteen member cast is drawn from around the world and their heartfelt and realistic performances involve you in the family drama. They are all cracker performances of the highest calibre. One feels in the presence of street urchins, prisoners and politicians, Sydney siders and Sri Lankans. The dialogue rings true, and is delivered with emotional veracity. Shakthidharan sets a scene during a Sri Lankan wedding and colourful traditional dress and props convince we are in Colombo. Family life is a riot of engagements with servants, shysters, politics and matchmaking. Live music using traditional instruments further transports the audience to exotic locations.
The show is divided into roughly three fifty minute acts and the tension from waiting through two intermissions is excruciating. It is like binge watching a series on Netflix. The prime goal of this creative team is to find the humour, find the love, and find the conflict, which they have done in spades. Counting and Cracking is an exploding kaleidoscope of emotional colour and tension, despair and hope, simultaneously on an epic and personal scale. Unbelievably, it’s Shakthidharan’s first play. Double bravo! Not to be missed.
David Grybowski
When: 2 to 9 March
Where: Ridley Centre – Adelaide Showgrounds
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
The Cabbage & Kings Collective. Noel Lothian Hall – Adelaide Botanic Garden. 3 Mar 2019
Chris Issacs is a Western Australian playwright to watch out for. Flood was a product of his mind in 2014 and it won a Performing Arts WA prize for best new play. The Fringe production on offer is performed by recent graduates of Adelaide College of the Arts and Flinders Drama Centre. Director Max Garcia-Underwood and designer Tom Kitney are also early in their careers and years, and the whole shebang has a fresh exuberant feel.
Plot-wise, three unattached couples aged the same as the actors have a long history of hanging together and decide on a hefty two week camping trip in the middle of nowhere in northern WA. It does not give the game away to say “they unintentionally violate sacred land and an Indigenous man is murdered” because that’s what’s written in their blurb. Which is a shame, because the play provides palpable suspense by being blissfully unaware of this spoiler.
Strange noises on the first night are provided by an excellent tension-raising soundtrack, and Isaacs gives the good friends delectable individualised reactions to this and other goings on. After reasoning that the incident will not advance their careers, the second half of the play focuses on ancillary damage and discussion they didn’t anticipate through some superb writing. However, high drama was missed by the audience not witnessing the “ah ha” moment when the gang realises that the Indigenous man was simply warning them of the eponymous flood. Or maybe they don’t. The two week time lag between the incident and the flood left this point pointless.
The drama also would have ratcheted up if the characters spent more time dealing with each other instead of telling us what they are doing. There is a better play of character engagement and interaction over-stamped by blank delivery toward the open spaces above the audience. Too often, the writing resembles six simultaneous one-person plays. A more fully developed set design would be appreciated but perhaps a few white blocks had to do due to the tight scheduling in a Fringe venue.
The campers are admirably mutually supportive but they cannot save themselves. The play is a great study of integrity, leadership and group dynamics, living with guilt and secrets, and emotionally coping with bad decisions and consequences. Think Deliverance. While one couldn’t help feel there were opportunities missed in the writing, direction and design, the company conveyed a compelling and disturbing story.
David Grybowski
3 Stars
When: 2 to 17 Mar
Where: Noel Lothian Hall – Adelaide Botanic Garden
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. AC Arts Main Theatre. 2 Mar 2019
“The metaphor escaped me,” wailed an audience member as she trooped out of Palmyra.
“Wait to read the reviews,” recommended her companion.
The audience not only left Palmyra perplexed, but it left in dribs and drabs, uncertain as to whether the show was actually over or not.
There is a lot of silence in Palmyra and the silence speaks, albeit in code.
Two actors inhabit the black stage in the black auditorium. Much of the time, they do so in silence. They are on standoff, one against the other. They are frenemiies. Sometimes rather psychotic ones. They demolish white plates and they demolish the fourth wall. They seek sides from the audience. The Frenchman seeks audience sympathy. Look after this hammer and don’t let his mad friend Nasi have it.
But who is the mad one? Nasi Voutsas or Bertrand Lesca?
The audience learns that it should not stay mute. It may call the tune. Silences are long. Interjections are entertaining.
The source of antagonism between the men is a mystery. What is their relationship? Why the tension and destructiveness.
There are flashes of humour. There’s an air of absurdism. There is a sense of fatalism, cruelty, and unpredictability.
It is one of those pieces of Festival theatre which is so far outside the bounds of conventional expectation that its crashing shards of black and white aesthetics sear into mind’s eye and one knows they are there to stay and, from time to time, to be mooted.
The metaphor? Poor Palmyra, the eponymous city in Syria. Invaded and shattered, Reborn. Shattered again. Betrayed. Who can be trusted? A landscape in ruins.
War is hell. Political relationships are fragile.
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 5 Mar
Where: AC Arts Main Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Little Theatre, Royal Croquet Club, University of Adelaide. 2 Mar 2019
It’s difficult to categorise the LipSinkers. They are drag, they are queer, they are loud (oh so loud!), they are alternative, and they are completely over the top. They are all these things but on megadoses of supercharged steroids. They are so much larger than life that they give new meaning to the phrase. However you categorise them, they are just fabulous, and their show sucks you in with the overwhelming force of a show biz black-hole. The LipSinkers are an irresistible freak of nature!
Done. Enough of the superlatives
For an hour they ‘lip sync’ to a set list of songs without a break: some are obscure (you know you’ve heard it but where? when?) and some are well known, such as Queen’s iconic Bohemian Rhapsody and Abba’s Waterloo. As one song gives way to the next the constants are the troupe’s inventive break-neck pace choreography, their trashy costumes and even trashier wigs, their hilarious facial gestures and general antics, and of course their lip sync accuracy (scarily so!). It is exhausting and almost impossible to take it all in. It all happens with such rapidity that it is altogether dizzying.
Despite all the antics and the slapstick humour, there is also a serious message. There isn’t a narrative as such to the selection or sequencing of the play list, but there is cutting social commentary. In one scene two of the troupe wear face masks of Rolf Harris and Cardinal George Pell while they bat away the ping pong balls of society’s disgust and accusations. It almost happens in the blink of an eye and one is left rapidly pondering how the current song choice ‘fits’, then it’s onto the next.
By the end of the show, the stage is in absolute chaos with costumes and hand properties littering the entire space. One leaves the event shaking their head and asking oneself ‘what the hell was that all about?!’ Whatever the answer, one is glad the tsunami is past, but the smile on one’s face persists for some time.
Kym Clayton
4 Stars
When: 2 to 17 Mar
Where: Little Theatre, Royal Croquet Club
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au