Threewoods Playwright. Bakehouse Theatre - Studio. 15 Feb 2016
A visitor to Hong Kong will be fascinated at how well a huge population has so successfully socialised on such a tiny - and beautiful - piece of real estate. But beauty can be only skin deep. On 28 September 2014, Kong Hong police used tear gas against a huge popular movement urging the Chinese government to allow Hong Kong's voters to elect their own chief executive and all members of the legislative council, as promised in the Basic Law, and to permit the free choice of candidates without any limitations. Never mind that this was not the case even during British occupation; the last British governor, Chris Patten, rushed through a raft of democratising initiatives. What Hong Kongers want is what we Australians take for granted. The Immigration Lottery is producer, director, writer and actor Cathy SK Lam's protest satire to enlighten the world of the increasing mainland Chinese control over Hong Kong since handover in 1997.
Cathy investigates her ambiguous national identity, and the post-British diaspora from Hong Kong through a character named Jenna Wong who attempts to leave Hong Kong by passing a test to migrate to the fictitious United Nation of Hap Asala, and thus exposes the issues. She was incredibly prescient, as only two months after the world premiere of The Immigration Lottery at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014, the aforementioned Umbrella Revolution took place, and the current show incorporates the energy of that protest. I don't bandy around the word brave to describe your average theatrical work, but to parody the policies of mainland China in their administration of Hong Kong, and to reference the protests, definitely is brave.
While the performance and writing lacks sophistication, a certain Kafkaesque atmosphere was created, and there is much to amuse and ponder. Cathy as Jenny pulls everything bar the kitchen sink out of her bra for a prop, and the plea for each Hong Konger to take notice of what China is doing, to take some responsibility, is palpable. Some sense of the street activism was achieved by having a dancer post pictures on the walls - her arms wrapped in cling wrap for protection against the tear gas -and a minor movement piece with an umbrella.
They are a highly organised lot. Besides a wordy program, you can scan a QR code for a 'Performance Handbook' with additional background information and pictures concerning the Umbrella Revolution and the theatre work. If you're lucky, you can get a hardcopy after the show and you might be asked to be interviewed on camera for your feedback.
Not compelling theatre but a compelling issue.
David Grybowski
When: 15 to 20 Feb
Where: Bakehouse Theatre - Studio
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
five.point.one theatre company. Bakehouse Theatre Main Stage. 15 Feb 2016
The wonderful five.point.one theatre company has set its audiences quite a thinking challenge with its new work, The Last Time I saw Richard.
It is a dense play by Cat Commander depicting a man and a woman engaging in a relationship which is suspended in the emotional safety zone of hotel rooms. These are people intensely attracted to each other but not seeking commitment from each other. This makes for a complex and interesting state of play.
April is a brittle 27-year-old. She uses her sexual power to toy with Richard. He is 39 and he is smitten. She's a bit of a cold fish who comes to the party just enough to keep him in the game. As the play evolves, she becomes less and less likeable while Richard wins the sympathy of the audience.
For a play about people indulging in an affair, this one is exquisitely tasteful. Sex is suggested rather than depicted. Warmth, proximity and conversation are the tools of communication - and also the sense of endurance. Years roll by.
It's a very interesting production. A white panelled screen represents windows and walls of hotels with projected images, patterns and degrees of light indicating the changes of time and place. A low, black dais represents a universal hotel bed. It is very low and a bit odd. But the Bakehouse stage is small and a real bed clearly would swamp the artistry of the set which has been designed by director Craig Behenna with Brad Williams and Matt Crook. It certainly has its own aesthetic but must be hard on the actors.
Michael Darren is behind the sound and music which blends smoothly with the production.
They're a classy team at five.point.one and this play is quite a test for them. Behenna has elicited a good sense of hotel ennui and his actors are well blocked and lit. However, the play is very wordy and with its action being contained to hotel rooms, it is fairly static. Movement on the projection screens lifts this a bit and Richard's early shadow dancing is very effective. There could be room for more movement and definitely for cutting.
The two actors give a powerful sense of the characters they embody, albeit that Elizabeth Hay is occasionally inaudible for some. Charles Mayer is a tower of sensitivity and sensuality; what a wonderful player. And he's funny when given a chance.
The play has a keyhole-like intimacy to it. The audience has spied upon these two and their oddly soulless assignations at their conference and convention accommodations. It leaves one pondering the phenomenon of love versus lust, the diverse needs of others, and the nature of fidelity.
It's a nicely original work.
****
Samela Harris
When: 15 to 27 Feb
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
A Radioactive Musical Comedy about the Death and Life of Marie Curie. Holden Street Theatres in association with Tangram Theatre Co. Holden Street Theatres, The Arch. 14 Feb 2016
C.P. Snow must be rolling in his grave. Science and art could not be happier together - at least as they are manifested by one John Hinton.
Over the years, Hinton has brought to the Adelaide Fringe his shows Origin of Species, about Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein: Relatively Speaking.
He has returned wearing a long black dress. He is now Marie Curie in what is one of the longest-titled shows in showbiz. It is the third of what he calls his Scientrilogy of musical comedies.
It is all that the title says. It is musical, comic and narrative. It also is a science lesson extraordinaire.
Audience members are greeted at the theatre by Hinton and assigned an element. My card identified me as Bismuth 214. I was radioactive. In decay, I produced polonium 214.
Later in the play I was to link up with other audience members in a game of chemical evolution, all of us connected by a ball of green wool. Various elements made odd noises. Some wobbled. Everyone was having fun. Wool zig-zagged the auditorium.
Hinton is a dynamic, high-energy performer in this role. He condenses four months of Marie Curie's laboratory work extracting radium from pitchblende ore into about ten minutes of ever-faster reiteration of strenuous actions. It is exhausting simply to watch. But, never ceasing in his machine-gun descriptions of the science and actions of Marie Curie, he is also funny.
The calm companion onstage is Hinton's musician wife, Jo Eagle, who, adorned with beret and pencil moustache, accompanies him on accordion and plays the part of Pierre Curie.
Hinton plays as himself from time to time and also a range of other characters such as Missie, the American journalist, the English chemist John Dalton and, hilariously, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.
And, he sings his glorious Radium song, the show's theme song with which the audience may sing along.
The Hinton voice is deep and strong and versatile and seeing the particular precision of his mime work, it does not surprise to discover that he is a product of the Jacques Lecoq school.
He paints Marie Curie as a fairly grumpy old genius who will do most anything to secure a supply of radium for her work. Hence her trip to the US and her relationship with Missie, the American journalist.
Family, career, science, it is all packed in to the wild elemental ride of John Hinton.
Tour de force doesn't begin to describe it.
Five stars and then some.
Samela Harris
When: 14 Feb to 12 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres, The Arch
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Joanne Hartstone and Hector Macpherson Brown. A Jethro Compton Production. Noel Lothian Hall (the old tram barn) - Adelaide Botanic Garden. 14 Feb 2016
The bunker crew were here with their trilogy of Agamemnon, Macbeth and Morgana in 2014 and scooped up a BankSA Award for the latter. Back then, I gave Macbeth a fulsome review, and as the others were picked up by other reviewers, I, heaven forbid, actually had to buy a ticket to see Morgana. I simply couldn't fit in Agamemnon, so I'm very happy about this reprise season.
Writer James Wilkes presses all my buttons by setting adaptations of these classical works in a World War I bunker. The audience creeps into a dark and cramped, pseudo-smoke-filled, pseudo-underground shelter on the Western Front. You are pleasingly trapped for a sensoround experience as the light of day is extinguished upon the closing of the wooden door. Ka-boom! Rat-tat-tat! There is a war going on outside. Inside, a metre in front of you, the action is immediate and intense.
For those who have lost the plot since high school, Aeschylus tells of the agon (contest or struggle) between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Agamemnon, you surely recall, was the King of Argos, and returned from the Trojan War to his wife, Clytemnestra, with the former slave of the Trojan king, Priam, as his concubine. Not a good homecoming. Wilkes captures the narrative arc with dramatic situations and personae compatible with the times and makes the story his own. Deftly switching between the front and the home front, the heart-breaking realities of wartime domesticity are played out with palpitating intrigue.
It's early days, but as in 2014, I'm sure a Bunker Trilogy show will be a highlight of my Fringe. The acting is superb, the story is fascinating, and the production values are completely encompassing. I have been to the Western Front and toured the relicts there, and director and designer Jethro Compton has nailed it. Bravo! Your eyes will widen in horror at certain times (I'm not even speaking of the trench warfare) and you and your companion will be stirred to a debate about duty to home and duty to country.
PS It's great to see a Fringe drama with more than one actor, and four is a crowd in the confined theatrical space. It's wincingly realistic, except for the appallingly insufficient first aid that is practiced.
David Grybowski
When: 12 Feb to 14 Mar
Where: Noel Lothian Hall (the old tram barn) - Adelaide Botanic Garden
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
The Dance Pad. Gluttony - The Peacock. 14 Feb 2016.
There are some shows where you sense within the first minute or two that it’s going to be a ‘dud’. Cuban Flow was one of them.
The advertising for this show promised so much more than it gave. It promised a Cuban cultural experience, and if that is what it was then the budding Cuban tourist industry has just been dealt a significant body blow. References to daily Cuban life were hackneyed and uninteresting, attempts at humor were cringe-worthy, and choreography was energetic but passé and lacked originality.
The cast comprised two buff Cuban guys – Piter Pantoja Lopez and Cruz Vazquez Borges – and a chorus line of “sultry sexy Tropicana show girls” (according to the advertising) who never really looked comfortable. One suffered a wardrobe malfunction and for a time the most interesting thing on stage was whether she might rival Janet Jackson.
Regrettably there were several attempts at getting audience members on stage, and more regrettably two of them were subjected to a tasteless simulated sex routine at the hands of Lopez and Borges
Curiously the audience lapped up the show.
Thankfully Cuban Flow has ebbed.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Gluttony – The Peacock
Bookings: Closed