Jamie Jewell Presents. Entropy Restaurant. Thebarton. 20 Feb 16
Sensory overload. Oh, my.
It's a daring gamble Candy Chambers takes.
She pits her drag artiste entertainment skills against the culinary art of Entropy chef Peter McLaughlin.
Now, wining and dining and being entertained is well and good and all very traditional. However, a degustation menu involves a chef showcasing skills and ingredients. It's a show in its own right.
So Candy's production at Entropy is a double-bill spectacular with its stars performing simultaneously.
Entropy is a marvellous space on the University of Adelaide's Research Campus at Thebarton. It is an elevated relocated railway shed with lots of galvanised iron, stools against high wooden benches, some tables with chairs for the oldies, and a neat little stage. There's a nice narrow balcony, too, looking into the grounds and onto the towering gums along the Torrens. It's deemed to be something of a hipster place. Certainly it has a neat, lean, streamlined wait staff, one of whom has the requisite Kelly-gang beard and perky hair.
Tables are equipped with wine lists: some of the wines set to accompany the degustation courses and the others of the wines, beers, ciders, spirits available behind the bar. It's pretty classy and the waiters are well-informed and sweet-natured in giving their guidance.
Musical director Carol Young holds the reins from the stage, her four-piece band not only hot, beautifully balanced and versatile but in tune with the spirit of the night as well as the music.
Candy Chambers appears with her clouds of bright orange hair, matching frock and mass of bling. She's looking gorgeous for her celebrated "50 plus" years. She meets and greets her audience before launching into Fascinating Rhythm, working the room illuminated by the golden glow of the last rays of sunshine through the windows. Did she design this dazzlingly glamorous lighting?
Candy's patter is light and quirky. She picks a couple of audience stooges in the front and plays them for laughs. She has such a good American accent that an American in the audience was sure she was a fellow countryman. In fact, she's from Perth via Chatta-nougat. Between songs, she talks about things from "the handbasket of life".
The food is served on disposable plates and when it starts to flow, the five courses roll out efficiently betwixt, between, and on top of Candy's song list. The restaurant maitre'd, Laura, gives a quick run-down on each course. The restaurant's pride is that its ingredients are emphatically South Australian.
First up, a local clam chowder with house cornbread. The bread is a wee fried bun in the centre of dense tomato sauce with fragments of chorizo, wild crocodile and free-range chicken with four Goolwa cockles for presentation. It is rich, interestingly textured and generally gorgeous.
Next comes Grandma Celeste’s pumpkin pie.
Unfortunately for Candy, Grandma Celeste's recipe is so rhapsodically original and delicious with its Hindmarsh dairy creme fraiche and Barossa bacon and local sage topping that she was upstaged. The audience falls into a foodie swoon.
But Candy wants her audience to enjoy the night on every level. It is clearly carefully plotted out with its Southern US theme. It is superbly executed.
"Degust, degust, degust," Candy purrs seductively as the courses come along.
The Cheeky Coorong beef with its quandong sauce melts in the mouth. The Frim Fram chicken wings are zesty with mangosteen salsa and the Candy cherry chocolate jam cup is just a treat.
Candy has been entertaining Adelaide for a long time. She has a keen following. Rightly so. They are there whooping their approbation, calling for favourite songs and generally filling the place with love.
Candy works that wonderful voice furiously with Carol Young firmly conducting, prompting and keeping a slick professional pace.
There are a couple of costume changes, some fabulous, heartfelt blues, rousing hootenanny, good old pop songs, and classics. There is not much Candy can't deliver albeit by the end of the show, after almost two hours of strenuous performance, she looks rather older than when she began.
With her big smile and good humour, she's an engaging and enduring performer. In this show, going head to head with a chef, she also is fearless.
It pays off. Neither Chef nor Candy wins. It is a photo finish of fun and excellence.
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: Entropy Restaurant
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Presented by Joanne Hartstone in co-production with Greenwich Theatre. The Queens – The Red Queen. 20 Feb 2016.
Fable is one of three productions by the Flanagan Collective this Fringe. It’s a gem, but it’s not easy theatre. It is a story about two individuals, J and Blair, who are not content with simply accepting what life throws at them in a modern capitalist society. They are not content to merely be ‘numbers’. They want something else and both want to leave a mark signifying a life well lived.
Initially we are introduced to J who is a physics teacher in Birmingham, and despite working hard and having the interests of her students deeply at heart, she becomes an unemployment statistic. In truth she always wanted to be an astronaut, or at least involved in the space program. One might say her head is in the clouds but actor Holly Beasley Carrigan imbues J with a veracity that is quite disarming and draws you in. You believe that her becoming an astronaut is indeed a possibility, despite her congenital heart defect. In the aftermath of her losing her job, J accesses a dating app and hooks up with Blair.
Blair is a tree surgeon with a penchant for poetry, and he seems to take some inspiration from the writings of Goethe. He, like J, is a restless soul and dreams of being part of the natural world and of travel. Dominic Allen plays Blair with a steely aloofness that initially creates a barrier between him and the audience, but this is soon broken down by the downright niceness of Beasley Carrigan’s J. The interaction of the two characters creates mind-worlds in time and space and the use of projections and live music create visual and aural back drops that add further impact.
Fable is a well-acted and richly layered play. It encourages us all to aim for the stars. The words of Goethe perhaps echo in our minds: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
Kym Clayton
When: 12 Feb to 14 Mar 2016.
Where: The Queens – The Red Queen
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Presented by Royal Croquet Club & The Last Great Hunt. Royal Croquet Club - Ukiyo. 19 Feb 2016
Fag/Stag is a beautifully written and superbly acted story about two young men, Corgan and Jimmy, who are ‘besties’ and who are pushing through particularly difficult periods in their loves. The play explores the things they share, and the things that make them fundamentally different, especially their sexuality: Corgan is heterosexual, and Jimmy is not – hence the name of the play.
The narrative is grounded in their mutual desire for meaningful and lasting relationships, and although sexuality is a central theme it is merely a frame around which richly detailed and highly credible characters and situations are constructed and brought to life on stage. The fun aspect of the story is that Corgan and Jimmy each tell the same story, but their accounts are different, often hilariously so. This is also a serious piece of theatre and strives to give an insight into Australian maleness.
Fag/Stag is co-written and acted by Jeffrey Jay Fowler (Jimmy) and Chris Isaacs (Corgan). These two young artists are highly skilled writers who are able to clearly tell a story and who don’t get self-obsessed with the act of writing. As actors they are admirable: excellent projection and diction (which they needed it to overcome the ambient noise of the venue); physical expressivity; emotional facility; superb monologue techniques; and a deep sense of partnership with each other.
The venue? Ukiyo? One has to wonder at the names given to the various Fringe venues. Apparently Ukiyo is a Japanese word that loosely translates as ‘floating world’ and describes the ‘pleasure-seeking’ aspects of urban lifestyle of an earlier time. It is then perhaps fitting that Fag/Stag should be staged in the Ukiyo. Corgan and Jimmy are temporarily ‘floating’ about and trying to make sense of their situations, but Fag/Stag is much more than about seeking pleasure.
Fag/Stag is a highly entertaining and affecting stand-out show.
Kym Clayton
When: 18 Feb to 1 Mar
Where: Royal Croquet Club – Ukiyo
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Presented by Nick42Berlin. Tuxedo cat – Cusack Theatre. 19 Feb 2016
If the Fringe was a curated event, this ‘show’ would never even be allowed to finish its audition.
What I thought was going to be a touching, possibly risqué story about one man’s coming out, instead turned out to be a smutty, feebly scripted, and poorly delivered disorganized array of pornographic stories that simply confirmed that the ‘actor’ is untalented and has a penchant for giving offense.
Forty-five minutes into this hellish experience, the ‘actor’ wandered over to where his long-suffering tech was sitting and mumbled whether there was time for another ‘story’. You could almost hear the audience collectively intone the words “Please God, No! Turn on the lights and let us out of here.”
Execrably bad.
Kym Clayton
When: 18 Feb – 1 Mar
Where: Tuxedo Cat – Cusack Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
State Opera of South Australia. Freemason’s Great Hall. 18 Feb 2016.
Die Zauberflötte (The Magic Flute) is one of Mozart’s most loved and accessible operas.
It’s a crowd pleaser.
Its story line can be considered at a range of levels and, at its most basic level, is about the emotional journey of young lovers finding each other and wanting different things from relationships.
In that sense it’s an eternal story, but there is also a deeper level.
It is also about the journey of humankind progressing from original sin through to enlightenment grounded in humanism that transcends religious fantasy.
The opera is also imbued with the mystical traditions of Freemasonry – both Mozart and librettist Schikaneder were Freemasons – and so it is apt that State Opera should mount this production in the Freemason’s Great Hall on North Terrace.
However, the Freemasonry symbolism is obscure except to the cognoscenti, and Director David Lampard’s design doesn’t really make it any clearer.
His design concept, which is explained in detail in his programme notes, is an interesting addition to the canon of the re-imaginings of traditional opera, but without his notes it is not really obvious what he is trying to achieve, and therefore it fails. A large proportion of the audience are left wondering why some things in the design are the way they are.
That criticism aside, the production is colorful, the music is… well it’s Mozart so nothing more needs to be said, and the orchestral ensemble under the direction of Luke Dollman is terrific. The English translations of the dialogue (by Lampard) and the lyrics (by Timothy Sexton) ‘work’ well and are entertaining, and the singing for the main part is quality with some real standouts.
The opera has fourteen different scenes in multiple diverse settings, which presents a substantial challenge for any designer. Lampard’s split-level set design comprises a number of structural elements that are frequently dragged or trucked around the stage, but they are over-used and eventually their use becomes monotonous, clumsy, distracting and generally slows the pace of the production.
Some of the structures are imposing and make effective conduits for the Masonic symbolism; strongly illuminated in stunning fluoro-colours.
Daniel Barber’s lighting design is a true highlight of the production, although some of the finer aspects get lost, such as the visual effects cast by motorized gobos on the high and expansive celling of the Great Hall.
In all, there is an over-emphasis on the look of the show that results in something close to excess. Less would have been more.
Brenton Spiteri is excellent as the love struck Tamino, with lyrical flowing tenor lines. His scenes with Nicholas Spiteri as Papageno are entertaining. Lampard gives Papageno a “knock-about” feel, which at times seems to be underplayed.
Joanna McWaters is fabulously menacing as the Queen of the Night and uses her flowing costume to great effect. Her two famous arias, which almost define the entire opera and which the audience leaves humming at the end of the night, include several extremely difficult three-lined high F’s that are so high “only dogs can hear them”, as the inimitable Anna Russell once said! McWaters is not entirely comfortable with such stratospherically high notes but this does not diminish her solid performance.
Adam Goodburn is outstanding as the totally unpleasant Monastatos – he looks the part and his vocals again demonstrate his ever increasing stature in the local opera scene. Robert England is austere as Sarastro, and one longs for him to be more obviously benevolent.
Unfortunately one can easily but erroneously believe that he is the villain that the Queen of the Night holds him out to be. He struggles with some of the very deep basso profundo notes early in his performance.
Naomi Hede is superb as the virtuous Pamina and is responsible for some of the beautiful bel canto moments in the production. The Queen of the Night’s Three Ladies, sung by Deborah Caddy, Rosanne Hosking and Meran Bow is excellent, as are the three ‘child spirits’ sung by Sarah-Jane Pattichis, Lisa Cannizzaro and Rachel McCall. (Their curtain call hilariously borders on up-staging!) The supporting male roles are sung well, and Jeremy Tatchell again is imposing.
The Great Hall is stiflingly hot inside, and this may have contributed to the warm but not excessively exuberant applause from the audience at the end of the performance.
Kym Clayton
When: 18 to 24 Feb
Where: Freemasons Hall
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au