Adelaide Fringe. Holden Street Theatres. 23 Feb 2019
It’s amazing, year after year, Peter Goers finds more rabbits to pull out of his raconteur hat.
You’d think he’d run out of funny stories. But, no. This Fringe, he brings a fresh batch of anecdotes old and new, and despite the title of the show, none of them is about Hans.
Indeed, there is no Hans; just Goers appallingly attired in one of the spangly sparkly outfits Hans’s loving mum makes for Hans, who has his own Hans: Like a German show on at Gluttony this Fringe. If there’s a laugh in it, Goers has no shame. There’s a big laugh in it. Red spangles and tail feathers speak for themselves.
It’s one of those sights you can’t un-see.
Thereafter, clad in more elegant summery garb, Goers regales his audience with tales of adventures out on the speaker’s circuit, of Adelaide nostalgia, books, mischief, showbiz, and things that get up one’s nose. He balances the funny with the poignant making it a pleasing emotional roller-coaster of vignettes, an hour of fun and amity. He’s been doing it now for decades. He has a wealth of material. He’s good at it.
As his stage manager this year, he has the wonderful Singing Milkman, Robin “Smacka” Schmeltzkopf who not only works in the wings but gets to sing a number. It is a winning interlude and the audience adores him.
Thus arrives another very nice afternoon of hearty giggles with Goers.
Don’t dither about booking. It’s bound to be a sell-out like the others.
Samela Harris
4 ½ Stars
When: 23 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Joanne Hartstone, The Flanagan Collective & Gobbledigook Theatre, and Holden Street Theatres. Holden Street Theatres – The Sunken Garden. 22 Feb 2019
Orpheus returns to the Adelaide Fringe, having won weekly awards at both the 2018 Adelaide Fringe and at Fringe World in Perth this year. One may be forgiven for thinking that the troupe’s companion piece, Eurydice, won one or both of these awards, or even more, by reading the Eurydice poster, as that’s not the case.
In the ancient Greek myth, Eurydice is chased by Aristaeus, trods on a viper and goes straight to Hades. Her husband, Orpheus, proceeds to retrieve her; all he has to do is lead the way and not look back at her until they reach the light of day. But look back he does and she vanishes.
Both stories are updated to modern Britain and in Orpheus, Dave spies Eurydice across a crowded bar on his 30th birthday bash. Orpheus follows a similar narrative arc as Eurydice – both penned by writer Alexander Wright; there is a greater emphasis on the preamble of the biography of the eponymous character, how the couple meets and the fireworks of love at first site, than on the myth.
Orpheus is a spoken word performance, so no need for acting. The playwright narrates from an intrusive script he didn’t really need to hang on to. Imagery and metaphor rush out in torrents of energy and palpable emotional wonder. Moving randomly in the performance space, Wright tag teams with composer Phil Grainger on acoustic guitar. While, what one presumes to be, his own compositions are poetic and pertinent, we are dragged back to reality and our individualised nostalgia by rifts of Bruce Springsteen.
Yes, the tale of young love is beautiful, and lovingly told, but told for too long, and the drama that might have been accessed from the myth promised in the title is left wanting.
David Grybowski
3 Stars
When: 16 Feb to 16 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Sunken Garden
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Scott Theatre. RCC University of Adelaide. 22 Feb 2019
She’s a living legend of the American avant garde, an icon of the emancipated and a performer long beloved of the Adelaide Fringe.
Returning with her most famous production, Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, she packed Scott Theatre with fans and adorned it with erotica glam, importing half the cast of Hindley Street's famous strip clubs, describing them as among the world’s best. She seems to think Adelaide would be surprised that talent came from Adelaide. Yawn. Adelaide ever was a crucible of creative talent, and exports it to the world. And, indeed, this crop of erotic dancers is sterling; slinky, writhing skin in perilously slim g-strings. They are strong, sexy, beautiful, lithe, muscular, acrobatic, and personable. To highly-amped music, they perform extensive pole dancing, twerking and exotic acrobatics as a pre-show feature and are interwoven between the subsequent content of Penny Arcade’s wonderful monologues.
Arcade says burlesque was reborn through her use of such performers. In which case, it certainly suggests that procreation follows sexy since the Fringe and Cabaret festivals have seen something of a population explosion of burlesque.
For decades, Penny Arcade a.k.a. Susana Ventura has been the great evangelist of gender tolerance and understanding. Her monologues are erudite, insightful, compassionate, and funny. For one who left school at 13 and lived 16 years in a borstal for her petty crimes, she has turned out as a jewel of humanity. Perhaps “being raised by gays” is the secret. Of course, the now lost world of “fag hags” is a big part of her schtick. Takes one to know one, Ms Arcade. She points out that now that gays have gone mainstream and have grown moustaches, fag hags are obsolete. Yet, it was these symbiotic women who helped gay men to move up in society.
Gay liberation has its down side and Arcade steams with frustration at a culture and a media which brags that “AIDS is dead”. HIV and Hep C are epidemic in many places. It is serious. Let the world know.
Penny Arcade finds that she has been repeating herself for decades. Much that which she once predicted has come to pass. Many of society’s ugly shortcomings are unchanged.
But one element of the gender world may rejoice. It is the era of the lesbian, she declares, to rousing cheers from the back of the auditorium. Maybe it’s not such an easy time to be a woman, though.
Penny Arcade’s audiences are more diverse than an LGBTQIA convention. But there is something in her monologues for everyone: alarm calls which resonate like a fire siren; messages which are taken away to ponder; reflections which tickle the funny bone; deft political swipes; snatches of absurdism in among tirades of sensible satire.
This critic did not make it to the grand reveal. Frustratingly, the amped-up disco volume of the epic everyone-dance-on-stage finale was beyond aural endurance. One posits that sound people are so deafened that they don’t know they are being deafening. Sorry, Ms Arcade. But, Aldinga Beach and all…
Penny Arcade has a thrilling and seemingly timeless repertoire of monologues. These are her gifts of enlightenment. She is the angry wise woman of our times and we salute her.
Samela Harris
4 stars
When: 22 Feb
Where: Scott Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Fringe. Presented by Global Arts Management. Tandanya. 22 Feb 2019
Ingrid Garner’s Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany is a hard act to follow. It was a 5-star award-winning hit of the Fringe in 2015, a breathtaking and heart-rending work even out there amid the hubbub of the parklands. It was derived from her grandmother Eleanor Ramrath’s harrowing autobiographical account of her childhood years growing up amid the terrifying tensions of living in Hitler’s wartime Germany as an alien. It has toured widely and it is even on this year’s Fringe program for anyone who missed it. It is best they catch it now since Ingrid is now presenting its sequel, Eleanor’s Story: Home is the Stranger.
Still channelling her grandmother’s vivid memories, she brings to life the sensations of a teenage girl who is at last allowed to leave Germany and return to her native USA with her father and brother. She has to find a place in a blithe other world among peers who have never gone hungry let alone seen death or crouched in bomb shelters. She tries to adapt to different values, teaching styles, and dress but when she least expects it, spectres of the past emerge to trip her up. Traumas of war are not easily sidelined.
Garner once again slips into her grandmother’s skin to tell her story. She has it down to a fine art with just two chairs and a trunk as a simple, moveable set. She darts easily between characters, voices, and accents as the narrative moves between present and memory. She is deft and graceful and beautifully committed. The audience is stilled, rapt and emotionally enveloped.
At the end, a snatch of the grandmother’s voice is played adding another dimension to the human power of the story. That her grandmother is still alive and living in California reminds us that Nazi Germany was not that long ago.
Samela Harris
4 Stars
When: 22 Feb to 2 Mar
Where: Tandanya
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Emma Knights Productions. The Cabinet Room, Treasury 1860. 22 Feb 2019
This is an amusing and clever production that is aimed at those of us who really get off on words and enjoy baroque-ish music!
David William Hughes is an actor, musician, historian, singer, and orator, and he has all of those skills in equal measure. Dressed in pompous attire in the style of the Elizabethan era, Hughes plays the role of Tobias Bacon, an Elizabethan who is poor in love and love-making, but is rich in ardour and even richer in lustful intention. Let’s be plain - he just wants to get laid, but he really makes a bad fist of it!
Hughes sings about Tobias’s various amorous pursuits and accompanies himself on a rather handsome lute which he plays with a certain flair. The songs are genuinely from the Renaissance, although , to be picky, the music isn’t entirely true to the musical modes of the period, but it sounds terrific and Hughes is obviously enjoying himself. The songs are unashamedly bawdy and there are even references to certain sex toys that remain popular today! Cleary the Elizabethans knew how to have a good time, and so does Hughes. His palpable enjoyment enthuses the audience and he has them clapping, booing, hissing and participating in no time at all. Most people hate audience participation, especially the ‘being reluctantly dragged up on stage’ type, but Hughes almost has people clambering to join him! He radiates warmth and genuine care for his audience and has his volunteers eating out of his hand as they play characters alongside him.
The narrative that Hughes creates around the songs is witty and delightfully lewd in an oh-so-clever and sophisticated way, and the audience just loves it. His use of language is so smart that one simply cannot take offence, and the fifty minutes goes by so very quickly.
There are two mores shows - February 23 and 24 – at various venues. Check your Guide.
Great fun and a welcome change to the usual sort of stand-up humour.
Kym Clayton
When: 23 and 24 Feb
Where: Various Venues
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au