Trash Test Dummies. Corona Theatre. The Garden of Unearthly Delights. 17 Feb 2018
The Trash Test Dummies are back! Circus trio Jamie Bretman, Jack Coleman and Simon Wright created their original children's comedy act in 2013 and have been touring nationally and internationally ever since.
Their latest show is a twist on the trash-themed original, which scored Best Children's Presentation at the 2015 Adelaide Fringe Festival. It features an array of water-themed skits: Bay Watch-inspired life guards, swimming cap capers, synchronised splashing, and a somewhat drawn-out, but thankfully PC, shower scene. The set overflows with slap stick comedy and circus theatrics.
Your favourite dummy will change throughout the show as they show off their many skills. All three are accomplished performers and well-versed in how to make kids laugh. Wright is a super strongman and a master of the unicycle, Coleman is the acrobatic wonder, whilst Bretman impresses with comic timing and his finesse with the hoops.
This show is perfect for primary school aged children; the non-stop physical theatre slows somewhat mid-show and may lose younger audience members until the pace picks back up. Despite this, it is a wonderfully fun and entertaining hour of laughs.
Whether you are looking to dive into the festival head first or wade in at the shallow end, give this splash-tastic show a go!
Nicole Russo
4 stars
When: 16 Feb to 18 Mar
Where: Corona Theatre, The Garden of Unearthly Delights
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
The Gemini Collective. Mainstage at Bakehouse Theatre. 16 Feb 2018
Based on the characters from the popular children's book series Ivy + Bean, this lovely musical theatre production is written and directed by husband-and-wife team Sarah Williams and Anthony Butler. Operating as The Gemini Collective, this is their debut production and one they can be proud of.
Inspired by their own children's love for Annie Burrows' New York Times best-selling books, the play focuses on the unlikely friendship between two seven year-old girls. Living on the same street but with opposing personalities, they avoid each other until circumstance brings them together and they discover a perfect partnership.
The show features a stellar cast from the Adelaide theatre community. Briony Kent, an actress with an impressive list of professional and amateur appearances, captures the rebellious but well-intentioned Bean wonderfully. Her characterisation is believable and she is very successful in portraying conflict between Bean's staunch independence and her desire to do the right thing.
Millicent Sarre's Ivy is so endearing. She nails the childish innocence of her bookish character and she plays off Kent brilliantly. Sarre's voice is divine and she exudes a natural and effortless warmth that lights up the stage.
The supporting cast of Jemma Allen, Zak Vasiliou, Nadine Wood and Thomas Brodie Phillips are fantastic and fulfil their many roles with ease. They interact easily and genuinely just as childhood friends would, and garner plenty of laughs at the right moments.
Allen is particularly delightful as Bean's tyrannical older sister. Successfully mustering all the puffed up arrogance of a tween-ager, she is hilarious as the eleven year-old Nancy.
This production is a perfect afternoon out for primary age children. As well as being a treat for any fans of the book, it is a great introduction to musical theatre for those not old enough to sit through a full length production.
Nicole Russo
4 stars
When: 16 Feb to 3 Mar
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Victoria Square. 16 Feb 2018
The white tents and food stands don't look too prepossessing from the Victoria Square outside. The magic is within.
Grounded is a concept playground - a pop-up Fringe precinct "for kids and their adults”.
It is called “Grounded” because it puts one in touch with the ground. Bare feet on the grass are most acceptable.
There is a strong Aboriginal element to which end Vic Square should be recognised as Tarntanyangga, the dreaming place of the red kangaroo.
Grounded opened on Friday night with the Lord Mayor, Martin Haese and Grounded guru, David Sefton, formerly director of the Adelaide Festival, and a formal smoking and Welcome To Country ceremony which included the most utterly beautiful Of Desert and Sea Dance from Kurruru.
Grounded has a full program of its own throughout the Fringe. It includes a Supermassive Music Festival featuring Sara Blasko, HeapsGood Friends, Solli Raphael, DJ Trip and others.
On February 24 it presents a special outdoor screening of Windmill’s wonderful Girl Asleep and an intriguing Megaphone Project with red megaphones. It also features a bar and shaded places to sit for the grownups, food stands from Central Market and art installations.
Most importantly of all from this critic’s perspective, there are performances in the tents. One is puppet theatre. The other was launched on opening night - Saltbush - Children’s Cheering Carpet.
This is the jewel in the crown.
This is the must-see for children.
It is not just about seeing. It is immersive and interactive. It is earthy. It is ethereal. It is joyful. It is Indigenous. It is universal.
The Cheering Carpet is an illuminated stage on which a world of nature and mythology is most expertly and imaginatively projected.
This lovely thing is part of a series created through Insite Arts and Compagnia TPO with Aboriginal artists Lou Bennett, Deon Hastie and Delwyn Mannix.
The audience must shed shoes before entering the tent wherein dwells the Carpet.
Seated in the dark on broad tiers, to a soundscape of birds and song, they see the carpet come to life as Aboriginal storyline art. It becomes a river, rippling and running beautifully while two dancers dip and splash in it. It becomes a giant turtle. It becomes the glorious night sky of vivid stars.
Throughout the transformations, the children are invited onto its surface with the dancers to chase the lights, to peck as emus and bound as kangaroos and to shelter beneath the canopy of stars.
Their engagement is total. It is a joy to behold.
Interactive kids’ performance doesn’t get much better than this.
It gets five stars in a Milky Way.
Samela Harris
5 stars
When: 16 to 25 Feb
Where: Tarntanyangga (Victoria Square)
Program details: groundedadelaide.com
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Michael Hackett. The GC. 16 Feb 2018
Mystification.
This Fringe comedy show is touted as “groundbreaking”.
Um. What ground? Where?
Perhaps there is some poetic justice in the fact that this English comic’s main impression of Adelaide so far is that we have very smooth tarmac. It’s hard to break ground under tarmac. It is effectively ground sealing.
Michael Hackett seemed to love our tarmac almost as much as we didn’t love him.
He’s a stand-up from Manchester. He stands up tall at 6’ 7”. He supplied his enthusiastic audience at the GC with nips of vodka on arrival. They were very popular indeed.
Hackett worked and worked. He started out moderately well. He is extremely appealing. He has the cutest, most irresistible smile.
He had the old comedian's formula; he’d picked a couple of local references. Smooth tarmac on our roads and the Aussie argot of “strawbs” for strawberries. They were to be his best comedic assets.
There was no great revelation about “giantology” except that long legs are uncomfortable on planes.
But, for some reason, he read his audience as really classless turkeys who could not get their minds above their genitals.
So he hammered on and on about genitalia. His preoccupation with vaginas became tedious. One wanted to send him off to Hobart where he could gaze at them to his heart’s content on the MONA vagina walls. We learned about his scrotum.
One could go on. He did.
He effectively embarrassed and humiliated one sensitive young man in the front row. A few yobbos at the back guffawed before going out to get more drinks.
But, with other audience members streaming off to the loo never to return, he realised that his opening night world premiere in Adelaide was not going down. He had forgotten a chunk of his shtick, he said. He had jet-lag. The vodka was the thing his audience seemed to like best, he lamented. He does not think he’ll do that again. He cut his losses and ended the show early.
Relief.
Samela Harris
2 stars [one for the vodka]
When: 17 Feb to 17 Mar
Where: Variously between the GC at the German Club and The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Matt Byrne Media. Maxim's Wine Bar. 15 Feb 2018
No houses were sold in the making of this production, but they sold me.
I don't know about you but I put real estate agents right in there with bankers and used car salesmen when it comes to telling porky pies. Residential property ownership has been a hot topic in the news all last year with concerns about the double whammy of unaffordable prices, and higher interest rates on over-leveraged mortgages. Plus the current Federal inquiry into banking is investigating shonky loan practice. So there is plenty of material here for Matt Byrne's perennial Adelaide Fringe contribution at Maxim's Wine Bar in Norwood.
Hott Property follows a format created by Byrne that has proven attractive to Adelaide's mature audiences: something akin to TV skit comedy and theatrical review. Whether the focus is on professions (teachers in Chalkies, 2008 and the cops in P.I.G.S. in 2012), TV shows (Chunderbelly, 2015 and The Luv Boat, 2016), or social issues (Bogans in 2013 and dateless.com in 2014), Matt and three other entertainers roast and toast the subject matter with jokes, characterisations, songs, dance shuffle and audience participation.
Leaving the TV shows aside, Byrne satirises the professional and social stereotypes with great affection as they are the unsung heroes in the public service, and people we know and love respectively. But nobody I know is in love with real estate agents and lenders, and Byrne is humorously merciless with the worst of their dishonesty and shallowness. Byrne's serious agenda was revealed in his monologue comprising an impassioned plea for fairness in housing availability, and a regret that the next generation is unlikely to afford the backyard childhood that he enjoyed.
As he entered the arena, I was immediately impressed with the veracity of Brad Butvila's stage persona, only to find out he really is in the business. Indeed, he is credited with giving a sense of authenticity to the show, such as his Terry Trott explaining how the game works by saying, "everybody is lying to everybody," including the house hunters and vendors. He is a fine contributor to the shenanigans. Amber Platton has plenty of stage stamina - a real professional - skills likely honed during her stint at Disneyland in LA. Even while dressed like she's selling a lot more than real estate, it's her ever-present smile and constant dedication to character that stands out. Theresa Dolman is more experienced with Byrne's review productions having first participated in Shakers (bartenders) in 1999. Dolman has a great skill in bringing you into her character's world with empathetic gravitas. But it is Matt Byrne who dominates the comedy and corny lines through delivery or script. His telephone conversation - clicking rapidly between a hoodwinked buyer and a misled seller - was absolutely priceless, and at the same time, frightening in plausibility. He is the Bob Hope of our time and place. The cast present a cavalcade of characters - some hopelessly stereotypical, some fetching and worthy. But it's the absolute pace of comic material ranging from belly laughable to groan to PC Light that keeps you in the game.
Another arrow flung from the bow of Robin Hood Byrne and directly on target. Urrgh! Splat! Right between the mobile phone in one hand and the zirconium pinky ring on the other.
David Grybowski
3.5 stars
When: 14 February to 17 March
Where: Maxim's Wine Bar, 194a The Parade, Norwood
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au and mattbyrnemedia.com.au