Watercooler Talent & The Harbour Agency. Dunstan Playhouse – Adelaide Festival Centre. 12 Aug 2023
The show was just about to start and you could cut the tension with a knife! Many audience members – in eager anticipation - donned colourful Hans-like costumes topped with Tyrolean hats. But Hans had to wait a wee moment. People were on the edge of their seats, clustered in groups around mobile phones, thrilled by the sudden death penalty shot round of the Matildas vs France quarter-final game. Then a cheer rang through the theatre; people stood up and hugged with joy and relief. This was the best possible mood for Hans to continue the celebrations with an energetic and highly entertaining disco party.
Hans is an Adelaide cabaret stalwart, and he has broken through the Fringe barrier, this weekend playing two sold-out nights in the big tent. The theatre was full of Hansophiles accumulated from a 25-year career. And Hans has something to celebrate besides the Matildas. About a year ago, he drifted off the stage during a show on a cruise ship in the Aegean and fell four metres into the orchestra pit thereby fracturing five vertebrae and a foot. Aside from singing a couple of songs in the Adelaide Cabaret Festival Gala and receiving the festival’s Icon Award, this is his comeback show which will tour SA and Queensland (he may need a safety net) after this weekend.
Hans is Hans and Hans is great fun. He’s a strange brew of a transvestite-looking act with self-parody, stand-up comic, terrific audience rapport, self-promotion and chutzpah - all backed by multiple musical talents.
He wears a girdle to protect his broken and healing spine, but it tops off mid-chest and creates an unflattering misshape highlighted by his trademark show-all skin-tight jumpsuits. Best to consult the costume department.
Definitely a disco theme with whacky psychedelic and constantly whizzing graphic lighting coeval with the ‘80s pop covers with terrific new disco-ised arrangements. Hans is helped by a couple of dancers in costumes from the last century who double as chorus and also sing admirable duets during Hans’s costumes changes. The choreography is not special though the bass guitarist and drummer seemed an orchestra.
The disco fever was interspersed with tales of Hans’s tribulations suitably told with nautically inspired songs, eg: Rock The Boat, sound and lights, as well as lovely banter with the audience. Anticipating his audience anticipating some Hans favourites, he indeed brings out the accordion, tickles the piano, and conducts a few singalongs including Edelweiss. Hans works an audience with gusto, and he picks on a lucky six whom he refers to for the duration of the whole show - they eventually seem like old friends. Two lucky men got pulled on stage, then off into the wings presumably for a bit of coaching. They reemerged in tutus and were compelled to dance in the most wildly successful audience participation schtick I have ever seen! That says a lot for Hans’s camaraderie and for creating a safe, yet still highly volatile situation.
The show’s energy constantly increases, culminating in a crescendo of dance, disco and balloons. You have to hail Hans as unstoppable. There is a familiarity that breeds mutual admiration. He’s self-labelled, “the Taylor Swift of the 5AA audience.” He loves that audience and they love him. I wish I could be in north Queensland when he is unleashed there with all his flamboyance.
Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: Touring 16 Aug to 2 Dec
Where: Various Locations around Australia
Bookings: hansofficial.com
Bangarra Dance Theatre / Adelaide Festival Centre. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 10 Aug 2023
Dispossession is the dark heart of indigenous Australian history.
Yuldea is a story of vast long term dispossession in which the Agnagu of Great Victorian Desert and Nunga people of far West Regional South Australia where displaced and a living environment which sustained their peoples, was decimated by industrialisation and the Maralinga atomic bomb tests.
Choreographer Frances Rings and creative team evoke this story in a three-act structure. Every creative element of expressing land, people, culture, and struggle is focused expressly through creation on the bodies of the ensemble as a living, moving set design by Elizabeth Gadsby, Costume Designer Jennifer Irwin, and Lighting Designer Karen Norris.
Composer Leon Rodgers’ and Guest Composer Electric Fields’ score, while seemingly modernist electro, holds at its heart the beat and spirit of ancient song and sound.
Rings is telling a tale in a form a Western eye and ear can grasp the significant essentials of. A growing sense of unease, with deep felt horror of the destruction occurring, is blended with wonder in awe at the beauty of choreography filled with expressive strength and pride. Work capable of absorbing contemporary dance form and one dust mite’s worth of classical form.
A story truly told, as Yalata Cultural Consultant Maureen Smart noted on stage before the performance. One told in a visual form capable of saying things unsaid, hidden, and misunderstood when considered from a Western perspective with no access to the lived history.
Yuldea is a magnificent, beautiful message and testament of a surviving culture in the face of so much cruelty. A creative gift shared with all people, shared in joy and communal earnestness rather than despondency and negativity.
David O’Brien
When: 10 to 12 Aug
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Pelican Productions. Arts Theatre. 5 Aug 2023
One doesn't know how Jen Frith and Kylie Green do it. Year after year Pelican Productions presents massive alternating junior cast after massive alternating cast of juniors. Blockbuster show after blockbuster show. I’ve never seen them do a bad show. And, I’ve never seen a kid onstage who is not pulling his, her or their weight and giving out, right down through the ensemble members.
And, quite frankly, the Disney organisation can stand proud to have their shows delivered with this degree of finesse.
For Adelaide, the reward comes not only in the quality of the entertainment but in the professional training to which the young casts are exposed. Hence, with “Summer” and "Winter” alternating casts, under the musical direction of Ben Francis, powerful voices belt out Broadway style from nascent talent. And the older hands in the casts already have a professional sheen.
Disney’s Frozen Jnr at The Arts is not just a winner because of these factors but also because of the startlingly good production values. The projections of snowstorms are so effective one thinks snow is actually flying out from the stage. And the pace of the show is stunningly snappy, tapping in just about on the quick-fire hour. If flaw there is any, it is in that fraught technology of body mikes and a big cast. And, perchance, vocalists occasionally over-compensating for soundtracks.
There are some big, big voices in this company of which this critic could see only its “summer" cast. Therein there were Annas young and old. In fact, there was an infant Anna in the opening number appearing alongside an infant Elsa, played by Hazel and Edie Frith, twin daughters of the producer Jen Frith. Just a heart-melting first which rather challenged the showbiz records of theatre baby stage debuts. If those gals don’t end up treading the boards…
Subsequent ages of Anna were well sung by Lila Messenger, Vegas Nikolitsis and, as the adult, Abigail Sharp, while baby Elsa’s role was followed by young Elsa with Mia Ricciardelli, then Tahlia Sabatino before Lluka Wadley as big Elsa, the famous Frozen queen. Well done all round.
There were some outstanding characterisations, Aiden Salmon as Olaf and Ava Sirico dancing Snowflake among them.
But, with such a plenitude of fine young talent, it seems unfair to pick and choose. Just smile and applaud.
Pelican is furnishing our future and among its summer and winter ensembles, and from its Music Theatre camps and tuition “nests”, along with its old school rehearsal processes, it is creating a solid foundation for the arts of tomorrow.
Of course, we live in hope of a government willing to recognise the importance for South Australia of the arts for both state economy and reputation. It feels decidedly gloomy at the moment.
Not that Pelican leans on funding. It is a thriving independent operation, its momentum driven by investments of parental love and belief in enablement.
So, three cheers all around, with a fourth for the substance Pelican offers to the future of Australia’s performing arts.
Samela Harris
What: Frozen Jr.
When: 3 to 6 Aug. 23
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: Closed
NB: Next week, August 10- 12 it is presenting the second part of a blockbuster double with Legally Blonde also at The Arts Theatre.
What: Legally Blonde
When: 10 to 12 Aug
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Famous Last Words. Goodwood Theatre. 29 Jul 2023
Who would want to be James Watson?
He returns polished from the east to his hometown, sets up a theatre company resident in the gorgeous old Goodie, deconstructs a Strindberg and has the city’s critics headlining: “Wunderkind”.
He’s a hard act to follow. Even for himself.
Now his Famous Last Words company presents Watson’s own words - a play called Proud. It is a stridently political one-hander which features that very promising young actor, Henry Cooper.
It is a lot of words and Cooper does not lose a single one. He delivers, often with machinegun fury, but always with impeccable articulation. Not that they are very nice words. They are downright nasty and written in the sorry semi-literate street idiom of the day.
Proud is about the right-wing nationalist phenomenon, very much inspired by the January 6, 2021 insurrection American Proud Boys but, with reference to the Cronulla riots, transposed to Australia. Watson’s character is called Jack and he is a lad disappointed in his life. He was bullied and humiliated at school and left to care for his dying war hero grandfather by a brother who not only was never there to stand up for him but who also dared to marry an immigrant and move away. He found a new sort of brotherhood from the beer and barbie camaraderie of suburban fascists.
The play is as subtle as a sledgehammer and as didactic as Baptist tub-thumper.
It is the considered passion of a generation, and it provokes in us old theatre hands fond memories of the agit prop of yore.
It offers nothing new except the reminder that there is nothing new. Humanity makes the same mistakes over and over. Unkindness and bullying damages people. Hatred and racial stereotyping are born of ignorance.
How ironic, then, that a play bellowing racial intolerance should produce love. But, of course, one loves Watson and his shining ilk for their laudable zeal. He reminds us of us, and one hopes that his play’s sentiments may at some time, somehow, not be preaching to the choir.
The play is performed in the smaller Goodwood theatre space, which once was a library. Walled in by black drapes, the audience tries not to trip over the footlights as it takes its place on two sides and in two tiers, with drummer Dan Pitt on a corner dais and just three green yard chairs as props. Director Connor Reidy has Cooper move the chairs to symbolise this and that. It’s an old minimalist trope which is either loved or hated by audience members. And, he also has the play’s dramatic emphases underscored by abrupt drum explosions. Some people like a cacophonous shock. This critic is not among them. Damagingly loud in a small venue, she says.
But Famous Last Words is well and truly alight on the map now, and we wait with immense curiosity for what next it presents.
Samela Harris
When: 29 Jul to 6 Aug
Where: Goodwood Theatre
Bookings: eventbrite.com
Disney and Cameron Mackintosh. Adelaide Festival Theatre. 5 Jul 2023
The whimsical adventures of that magical nanny, Mary Poppins, have been capturing the imaginations of both children and adults alike since PL Travers penned those wonderful stories in 1934. The subsequent release in 1964 of the Robert Stevenson film produced by Walt Disney, and starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, took it to a whole new level. No less than 13 Academy Award nominations and Disney’s highest grossing film ever!
A source of nostalgia for many, the memorable songs, enchanting characters, and the heartfelt messages resonate deeply with those who were raised on the story. It is a testament to its timeless appeal that generations have embraced and passed down the love for this extraordinary tale, including Cameron Mackintosh who, along with book by Julian Fellowes and score by Richard M Sherman and Robert B Sherman, adapted it into a stage musical.
The Adelaide Festival Theatre explodes into life as Mary Poppins takes centre stage. From the moment Stefanie Jones descends from the heavens with her iconic umbrella, it is clear she was born to portray the beloved nanny. Jones effortlessly embodies the essence of Mary Poppins, blending her prim demeanour with a touch of mischievousness; her stunning voice soaring through the theatre, enchanting everyone in the near capacity opening night audience. Her performance is indeed practically perfect in every way!
In the charismatic role of Bert, Jack Chambers is an absolute revelation and proves a force to be reckoned with. Chambers’ performance is truly captivating. Not only does he possess a remarkable singing voice, but his tap-dancing skills are awe-inspiring. Chambers’ feet create a symphony of rhythm as he effortlessly glides around the stage during Step In Time. Every step, every leap, every intricate tap sequence is executed with breathtaking precision. Bravo!
However, the brilliance of this production is not limited to its leads. The entire ensemble cast shines brightly, each member contributing their unique talents to create a cohesive and memorable performance. Patti Newton’s Bird Woman provides a wonderfully poignant reminder of the importance of love and compassion for all living things, the hauntingly beautiful ballad Feed The Birds swelling in our hearts when Jones joins with Newton in the duet.
Tom Wren and Lucy Maunder as George and Winifred Banks perhaps don’t get the time to truly develop their character’s arcs as the contrasting forces of tradition and change, however their performances are still captivating to watch. Wren perhaps has the biggest character arc in the show and the transformation from rigidity to compassion is truly affecting.
One may be forgiven for a double take when Helen Walsh hits the stage as Mrs Brill, her performance combining all of the mannerisms of both Ellen and Mrs Brill in the Disney film version. The character Robertson Ay, plucked from the books but who did not appear in the film, is portrayed spectacularly by Gareth Isaac. Robertson doesn’t get a lot of opportunities to sing, but when Isaac’s opportunity comes his operatic tones blow the roof off the theatre! The cast of kids includes four young actors and actresses playing Michael and Jane Banks, each sharing the role across the season.
Surrounding these spectacular performances is a true work of art in the set and lighting design by Bob Crowley, Hugh Vanstone, and Natasha Katz. Reminiscent of a whimsical children's pop-up book at times the set dances across and around the stage in perfect harmony with Matthew Bourne and Stephen Mear’s spectacular choreography. Every scene is a visual feast for the eyes, with intricate details and vibrant colours that transport the audience to the heart of the story. The seamless transitions between locations are a testament to the creativity and skill of the production team.
The sound, by designer Paul Gatehouse, has wonderful dynamics and builds to exhilarating crescendos throughout the performance and the orchestra delivers a flawless accompaniment, bringing the iconic songs like Jolly Holiday and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious to life.
Mary Poppins is an absolute triumph. It is selling well, so book early to avoid disappointment.
Paul Rodda
When: 5 to 27 Aug
Where: Adelaide Festival Theatre
Bookings: premier.ticketek.com.au