★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Ukiyo, Gluttony. 8 Mar 2023
I’m only guessing if I offer an explanation for the name Bones… a show which relies upon the human skeleton for the wonderful ways in which dancers and performers use their bodies…? The bare bones of our relationship with addictions in the modern world laid bare for all to see…? The bones of a performance of one hours’ duration to be enlarged at a later date…?
Bones may be all those things, or none. Utilising the skills of five performers - one man and four women - it explores the limits of addiction, both physical and mental. Within society there are many things to trigger our addictive nature: social media, materialism, substance abuse, food, sex and health and fitness. It is the latter addiction which had the greatest impact with me, since it seems these days everybody is wearing active wear, some flexing, some posturing and preening, some over-committing at the gym. The way the limits were examined by the young women, obsessed with body image, laid bare the issues. It really was a wonderful expose, as was the later exploration of sexuality and sex.
You may infer the dance was powerful, erotic, and very, very visual, yet even in the space of almost exactly one hour there existed audience members who were unable to curb their own impulses. A young woman opposite me snuck at least four looks and sent at least two texts in that time - a devotee to social media who simply could not control her compulsive behaviour. There were also two young men, one to either side of me, who similarly had to sneak peeks at their phones throughout. One of them had dimmed his screen; obviously a repeat offender.
None of this offers real explanation for why we pursue such activities. It’s human nature, and the fact that the male cast member had a chair and claimed a background as a clinical psychologist made little of explaining the behaviour. This was an expose through the physicality of dance, and an excellent one at that.
Alex Wheaton
When: 8 to 12 Mar
Where: Ukiyo at Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Alley Cat at Rhino Room. 8 Mar 2023
David Innes and Robert Lloyd, known together as Innes Lloyd, are rare thespians: they are writers, performers, mimics, singers, historians, and researchers.
Their show Journey to the Centre of the Earth is a retelling of Jules Verne’s classic 1864 science fiction novel that tells the story of Professor Lidenbrock and his nephew Alex as they travel deep down into a dormant Icelandic volcano in the belief they have found a passage to the centre of the earth. The way is shown to them after having discovered a medieval document prepared by an alchemist. They travel from Hamburg to Reykjavík and begin their adventure. Along the way they confront giant mushrooms, supposedly extinct fish and dinosaurs and mastodons, storms, various physical dangers etc. Suffice to say, they have a rugged time before they eventually find their way out. The story has been made into several films (most recently starring Brendan Fraser), in various languages, and has been set to music, most notably by Rick Wakeman.
With the aid of a flip chart, which serves as a sort of program and provides visual cues for the benefit of the audience, Innes and Lloyd act out Verne’s story in a brisk 50 minutes with great humour and stye. They pepper their script with impromptu responses to audience reactions that would do a stand-up comedian proud, and lay on lots of ‘fun facts’ and references (sometimes enjoyably obscure!) to all manner of things to keep the audience on its toes.
Innes and Lloyd are almost vaudevillian in their approach, and they constantly engage and delight the audience – the pace never drags! Their script is a celebration of language: it’s intelligent, witty, well written and always funny (with no reliance on ‘blue’ language to get the audience laughing!). They quickly put smiles on the face of everyone in the room, which stay there and get broader as the show progresses. This reviewer’s face ached!
A highlight of the show is an excellent backing track of sound effects and music that Innes and Lloyd have meticulously put together and flawlessly perform in sync with. It’s as if there is an invisible foley artist on stage with them. The sound effects, coupled with the oh-so-funny flip chart and the polished stage craft of Innes and Lloyd, adds up to a fun and stimulating show, and all performed in the tiniest theatre that has ever existed! You couldn’t swing an alley cat in it!
Kym Clayton
When: 8 to 12 Mar
Where: Alley Cat at Rhino Room
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★
Adelaide Fringe. Derek Tickner. Curiositeas. 5 Mar 2023
Curiositeas, up a narrow staircase aloft of Rundle Street, is an enchanting and tiny temporary Fringe venue that can make the smallest of audiences seem a full house. Proprietor Shannaka has decorated the arches and shelves and nooks and crannies of the archaic building with tea paraphernalia that the roving eye catches.
The Doomer and Boomer are an odd couple in presence but a sensible match in the planning stage. The pair tag-team their schticks with more entanglement than entertainment. In fact, they seem to occasionally loathe each other as part of the act.
Mark Allen as the doomer kind of gives a TED Talk of opinion and Wiki-facts of what’s gone wrong with the world. Initially full of complaints, his patter grows more practical, even infused with solutions. Unfortunately, Allen totally lacks any sense of stagecraft. He’s constantly in motion like a drunken sailor on a pitching ship. He looks down to the floor a lot, so I look down to the floor. And A4 notes, really? However, with each turn, Allen’s ideas grow better, and one realises he actually has serious commitment to greening and better wealth-sharing from business. As his confidence grew, his eyes lifted off the floor into the soul of the audience for some genuine connection. An ironic and humorous examination of the full cycle resource utility of cow’s milk vs oat milk, and a pretty good Brian Cox (TV physicist) impersonation are made.
Eric Tinker (Derek Tickner) reprises his successful MC Boomer rap but was unable to fill even the tiny tea house with volume. The Boomer is a marvelous invention of a crude and smug old man in mirrors and black beanie laughing out loud at his good luck to mature in the age of resource rape – exactly the doomer’s complaint. Being of similar age, I am guilty as charged and feel sorry for the three young women in the front row whose future is diminished by the generation currently frame-walking their way to nursing homes. In his next appearance, Tinker reprises his whimsical song of the good old days when “IT meant it,” and phones had cords. The mind-reading skit worked a treat and Cow Meditation has been bolstered to be even funnier - oat milk gets a second mention.
While there is a hint of a good duel between the two, the show is poorly written, casually delivered, under rehearsed and un-directed, and the performers disheveled. Not Tinker’s best work and hopefully not Allen’s either.
David Grybowski
When: 1 to 5 Mar
Where: Curiositeas
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Windmill Theatre Company and Sandpit. Queen’s Theatre. 8 Mar 2023
I love young persons’ theatre, especially by Windmill. It’s always highly creative and it messages without pretension or angst – ie. it’s fun! You listen to the kids and the kids will listen to you.
This extraordinary production began as a thought bubble of Rosemary Myers, longtime creative leader at Windmill. She handballed it to playwright Lally Katz who roped in director Clare Watson. It got shaped through an iterative workshopping process, much of it with the cast. Easy peasy!
The original Hansel and Gretel is a Brothers Grimm tale of 1812, and grim it is. Many of the key features of the fable are present in Windmill’s version, but most are transmogrified.
This production contains everything titillating for school kids and is loaded with issues. The first gasp goes to Jonathon Oxlade’s incredible set comprising a gabled house with bespoke opaque or transparent walls on demand. The whole shebang rotates to hide or reveal whatever is necessary. We are introduced to a family comprising a Mum who doesn’t understand her daughter, a daughter looking forward to the formal with her bestie (she hopes for more than bestie actually), a younger brother (did he have a moustache?) and a Dad who tries to claw back some machismo command from a situation going pear-shaped.
Unlike most fictional families – Death of a Salesman or Long Day’s Journey Into Night comes to mind – this one sensibly opts for group therapy and thus we meet the most remarkable character. Gareth Davies plays a psycho-charlatan with aplomb. His conman of the subconscious is garbed like a guru and gabbles like Tony Robbins. Employing song, dance and performance skills, Davies concocts some absolutely magnetic wizardry.
There is nothing but other great performances and choreographic energy. The arrow of the narrative arc belongs to the adolescent female played by Temeka Lawlor with believable naturalism. The parents worked out by Jo Stone and Jim Smith are more purposefully cartoonish and their parents’ foibles are funny. The Hans character (Dylan Miller) is a great observer of and foil to the angst-driven daughter, and bestie Sim played by Emily Liu, well, what happened to her? The wolf people and the outside-the-gate idea were interesting threats but didn’t actually nudge the story much. And Grandpa is a wolf? Wonderfully whacky but useless.
Nothing is off the table here: drugs, sexual freedom, weirdness. The energy explodes into a climatic reveal of sci-fi horror rendered superbly by set design and frantic action. A nifty device is that the audience is issued with sound devices and earphones. A voice acts as narrator or subconscious, but it wasn’t used enough for either to be truly participatory. There is a short quiz before the show so that manipulative powers off stage can issue instructions to individuals about how they’ll participate in the performance. This was utterly fascinating.
A production not to be missed but you will miss it unless you are already booked. Every school in the world is going. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 12 Mar
Where: Queen’s Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Powersuit Productions. Holden Street Theatres. 7 Mar 2023
This is a cracker of a play and performance! Because the revelation of information is so exquisitely written - so subtly moving under the radar of action - you may want the same experience I had by approaching it with little foreknowledge.
Safe to say housemates – a vivacious young woman and witty homosexual – are cosily comfortable in their flat, which takes on a kind of Covid self-isolation. Their portals to their surrounding urban universe are via their regular podcast to an army of followers and the occasional foray to work and dating entanglements. They cuddle and converse like never-ending friendship. Everything is OK until something goes wrong and the characters are profoundly tested.
Playwright Laura Jackson is highly credentialed and experienced. Most of her creativity focusses on women’s experiences with street harassment, domestic violence (ie: not safe anywhere), online privacy and fertility. Jackson notes that The Culture was first written in 2014 but is now tweaked for today, and things are only worse since Rosie Batty was Australian of the Year.
Laura Jackson has written a completely modern play that mirrors urbanites aged 20s or so with complete veracity – a complex milieu of connection and trepidation. Jackson also plays the young female with effervescent exuberance, a-teeter between confidence and fragility. Mina Asfour is a theatre creative working out of Western Sydney. His performance is like none at all – so realistic and natural. Together, their characters’ friendship, loyalty and spats make for an easy verisimilitude.
The original production was directed in New York by Bethany Caputo and made ready for the current tour by Carly Fisher. The detail in the direction fosters the pace and the poignancy. A screen showing phone texts and podcasts is extremely useful.
There is a message about domestic violence but the narrative focusses on the damage and the response, not on the perpetrator, and we cheer our dynamic duo for making good decisions.
A terrific tale told with delectable realism. Bravo!
P.S. The Robson Jackson Foundation supports a charity in each city of their tour; in Adelaide, it is the Western Adelaide Domestic Violence Service (part of Women’s Safety Services SA). The foundation will match donations of up to $2000 in each city - $10,000 in total. Get onto it.
David Grybowski
When: 7 to 16 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Arch
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au