★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. James Seabright and Play The Spotlight. Tandanya. 28 Feb 2023
Apphia Campbell, playwright/actor has taken on a great challenge.
Daring to subsume the iconic jazz songs of Eunice Kathleen Waymon, known to us as Nina Simone, into a fabric of story celebrating a life devoted to song as activism supporting black civil rights. She did not fail the challenge.
Songs serve as a fully integrated strand of narrative, illuminating Simone’s deeply personal story and informing her art and life, as support acts throwing light on the greater story - not as the star attraction.
Campbell’s script is so winsomely deft in construction, centred around Simone’s mournful longing for her late father three days after his death. This simple linchpin is powerfully effective in providing a point to which Campbell can return to, each time she prepares to launch into the next stage of Simone’s story. Moving from childhood hopes of a classical pianist career to the face of a human rights movement.
Equally effective and simple is the set design and props. A simple single bed at which a suitcase sits on the floor end, cane chair and table with a telephone.
From the suitcase props are drawn out; letters, hats, a dress, a coat. Each simple thing adds more emotional nuance to the performance. It is show and tell with profound, yet understated, poetic depth.
Campbell as Nina Simone shimmers with passion and a deep, unaffected simple humility of being. Her interpretation of Simone’s songs is rich in the love and pain they are famed for, each filled with an expression of loss and yearning that nonetheless, has light of hope at the heart of them.
David O’Brien
Where: Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute Ngunyawayti Theatre
When: 27 Feb to 5 Mar
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Greg Fleet. Holden Street Theatres. 28 Feb 2023
The show wasn’t ready on Media Day prior to the premiere, but it’s ready now. Greg Fleet wrote himself a character disturbingly close to his own character, but they say write about what you know. Greg plays Matt, a comedian and legend and troubled mind who is looking for his comeback project. He hooks up with Amalee (Kru Harale) - a bright and bouncy young up-and-coming comic - for a podcast. But Matt is struggling with his demons.
We are introduced to Amalee during her stand-up. Amalee/Kru is Indian-Australian and Kru makes the most of the racial difference. Prior to the show, Greg asks the audience to respond to the stand-up sequences as if we are watching stand-up, but that was unnecessary. Amalee slays them with her schtick because Kru really is a comic appearing in her first play. The way she expresses irony and attitude and talks with her hands was wonderfully animated and delightfully charming. Bravo!
Greg, presumably also the director, has the actors achieve a natural, easy-going, conversational style, with ums and ahs, and thought bubbles and broken sentences. The characters are oh so real - vulnerable and relatable. You want to jump onto the stage and give them a hand – one is so at ease and empathetic with these people. Brant Eustice well plays Matt’s exasperated agent to further flesh out our protagonist’s past.
At one time, there is a series of short scenes that disturbs the flow, and in the scenes with Amalee and Matt working on the podcast, they are physically too far apart to see both at once, and if you’re eyes are on the speaker, the reaction is unviewed. More filmic quality, please! We don’t want to miss a thing. However, there’s a bit much of a bewildered Amalee struggling with a lugubrious Matt in the middle of the narrative.
It’s not a sad play, but it’s a realistic situation, and it’s sad to watch a slow burn-up, a fall from greatness - you see it unravel in front of you but there is nothing you can do. All the more poignant because of the support Matt got from his pals, and aren’t comics supposed to be funny all the time?
Once again – wonderful performances!
David Grybowski
When: 14 Feb to 12 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Arch
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Kallo Collective & A Mulled Whine Productions. Holden Street Theatres. 24 Feb 2023
Mime is great entertainment. It goes without saying. Thom Monckton studied the circus arts in New Zealand from where he hails and spent another two years at Lecoq in Paris where Geoffrey Rush learned what he does. Thom won good awards for previous shows, and here we have the Australian premiere of his newest production.
Thom has created a delectable premise where the Fool dons the crown and thinks he’s the King. It goes mostly without saying as he stumbles about the throne and has trouble with the slippery floor. His King’s double takes, sense of exasperation, inventiveness and childish joy are joyful to watch. The Fool flexes and bends and contorts his way out of trouble. He’s a problem solver clown.
The audience is invited to bring the King a present. He loves presents and will unwrap each one with great delight. One hour of dreamy and delectable fun. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 16 Feb to 5 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Studio
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. The Yurt at Migration Museum. 28 Feb 2023
When Fringe Festival artistic director Heather Croall realised Fenton Bailey was on his way to New Zealand to produce the next series of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under, she realised this was too good an opportunity to miss. So, she invited him to the Fringe to launch his book ScreenAge: How TV shaped our reality from Tammy Faye to RuPaul’s Drag Race and assured him that the detour wouldn’t take him out of his way – after all, Adelaide is the way to new Zealand! (Heather, rest assured that some fibs are totally excusable, and this was one of them!)
For one whole intriguing hour, which seemed like five minutes , Croall engaged with Bailey in a TV chat show format and talked about the book itself and his life’s work in “giving a voice to marginalised communities and society's oddballs”. Initially tentative, Croall quickly settled into a routine of carefully listening to what he was saying and offered just enough comment or asked a probing question that kept Bailey on a roll that demonstrated to the spellbound capacity audience that he was a man of substance, a force for good in a troubled world, and a man with a rich life experience.
Along the way we were treated to gloriously funny gossip, insights into the lives of celebrities such as the iconic RuPaul, and implied hints at how to achieve one’s ambitions in business by never not believing in oneself.
It could have all been froth and bubble, but it wasn’t, as evidenced by the quality of the searching questions and the incisive answers given during the Q&A at the end of the event, which traversed all manner of topics from Trumpism, social justice, and human dignity. Of course there was a book signing, with the obligatory selfie, and the available copies were quickly snapped up! (Screenage hasn’t yet been released officially in Australia!)
An enlightening and attention-grabbing event. A gem of the Fringe!
Kym Clayton
When: 28 Feb
Where: The Yurt at Migration Museum
Bookings: Closed
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Ukiyo at Gluttony. 28 Feb 2023
Moist is about as homoerotic as the Fringe is ever going to get, and it’s great fun. Dressed in brightly coloured orange jock straps (most of the time!) and tight form-fitting lavender coloured leotards, two buff (and two not-so) lads strut their stuff and leave little to the imagination about what’s inside their provocative costumes, and which side they bat for! The whole thing is a joyous tease that firmly puts a smile on your face and leaves it there for a full hour!
Armed with spray bottles and bubble guns, they take to the stage and ensure the audience is gently moistened (!), and give a fearless display of circus antics that are a mix of lusty masculine strength, alluring grace, and high-camp silliness. There are fluorescent hula hoops, balancing tricks, human towers, a cyr wheel, beer keg tossing, and more!
There is a narrative of sorts, as one of the troupe forlornly searches for his former lovers hoping they can quench his thirst in a dystopian world where water has become beguilingly rare and is found in all sorts of attention-grabbing places. The narrative barely works, but who cares?! It’s the spectacle of colour, gymnastics, clowning, celebration of the male form, and out-and-out wacky silliness that matters!
The show is fast moving, and the banter with the audience is easy and never forced. The antics of the high-energy cast is underscored by disco lights and a funky soundtrack that includes fabulous gay anthems such as It’s Raining Men. How appropriate!
The show culminates in a fabulous display of dazzling and provocative body art as the cast seductively pour brightly coloured fluorescent liquids over their almost naked bodies as they provocatively pose upstage in a dimly lit setting.
It’s a risqué, sexy, and cheeky show – very cheeky – and the intimate venue ensures the cheekiness is always in your face, so to speak!
Kym Clayton
When: 28 Feb to 5 Mar
Where: Ukiyo at Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au