★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Kingfisher at Gluttony. 11 Mar 2022
This is a show that puts a smile on your face at the very start, broadens it as tears of laughter start to flow, and leaves it there long after it’s over. It is an energetic, song and oh-so-funny dance fuelled feel-good show that reaches out to and draws in all age groups. In short, it’s great fun, but it’s not just froth and bubble – it is also thoughtful and provocative.
Grant Busé is easy on the eye, has a warm and engaging personality, sings well, plays a mean guitar, tells funny jokes, and writes his own songs. He’s got it all. His show, SentiMENTAL, is a tongue-in-cheek mockery of nostalgia. With dizzying speed, he celebrates everything in popular culture that we never wanted to know (and want to forget), currently do know (but wish we didn’t), and will probably ever know. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the right side of twenty years of age or the wrong side of sixty, Busé identifies your sacred and not-so-sacred cows and happily slaughters them all to guffaws of laughter from the audience.
This is a show with some audience participation, but, importantly, it is totally non-threatening. It is so joyful that members of the audience are almost disappointed when they are not ‘chosen’.
This is a fun show!
Kym Clayton
When: 12 to 20 Mar
Where: The Kingfisher at Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Art For Earthlings. The Vault, Garden of Unearthly Delights. 6 Mar 2022
This show is absolute rubbish.
Of course, that is to say it’s all about rubbish, and three fine comedy exponents are on hand to talk us through. A show for kids, and all the family, Holy Bin Amoley has a title which rather defies explanation and common sense, progresses in a way which rather defies common sense, and talks about recycling and rubbish and dog poops in a way which rather defies common sense.
It also seemed to be more relatable and get more kids-audience reaction than any show I’ve seen in the last two years. I know schoolkids are taught about the environment and how to treat rubbish in Year 1 and 2 these days, so I suspect they identify more fully with a familiar topic. I’m okay with that, but a note to the performers: it’s rubbish not trash. DO NOT call it trash. Anyway, the kids love it, especially the six year old who bopped up and down from his front row seat to offer his take on everything. There was also an annoying kid over to the side who shouted over the top of everything, but you can’t buy audience engagement like that.
Anyway, the three of them pull quick costume changes; Jennifer, Nicholas and Samantha have a thing going with Converse Hi-tops, matching but for the colour. The opening scene - the show is really a selection of vignettes – deals with what has become all too familiar, the discarded pandemic face mask. Hint: it goes in the general waste.
The performances race through Rhonda from Recycling, a wonderful and lengthy piece about bin chickens (they’re here, but nothing like as much as in the eastern states), and Suzy at a dog show. I got a horrible feeling that the last bit was a longwinded lead-in to a poo joke, and so it was. Eating a baggie of dog poo is gross, so the kids loved it. Somehow (I’m not clear on this bit) it all finished with a car chase involving a grannie who thought it was her right to throw things out of her car. The kids put a stop to that rubbish.
Alex Wheaton
When: 6 to 13 Mar
Where: The Vault, Garden of Unearthly Delights
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Hands Down Comedy. Gluttony – The Squeaker. 9 Mar 2022
A couple of years ago, Pat McCaffrie was described by Rip It Up as "the next big name in Australian political satire" and he’s still next. But I wouldn’t be surprised if next year, he’s not next, but really is a big name in Australian political satire. Grown in Adelaide and living in Melbourne, he’s been doing stand-up since 2013 at major comedy events and was a writer for Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell. McCaffrie claims to be a little rusty, but there’s no flies on him in this year’s Fringe offering.
He's up to the minute, gazing his wry eye on the “crazy brave” Ukrainians. After seeing a clip of a Ukrainian tractor towing away a Russian tank, he opines that Zelenski might boost aggression with self-interest by decreeing that the value of stolen tanks needn’t be declared on tax returns. McCaffrie has a rapid-fire delivery with perfect clarity, and a sharp lookout for the ridiculous. He is fresh and inventive. One of his more interesting observations is that Morrison, unlike other politicians, never talks about his past. What is he trying to hide – who he is?
McCaffrie’s material comes from an insider’s-like knowledge of the political process and also of sports broadcasting. He’s easy going and comfortable. A great 45 minutes of intelligent political satire stand-up.
David Grybowski
When: 8 to 13 Mar
Where: Gluttony – The Squeaker
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Chaser.com.au and The Shovel. Gluttony – The May Wirth. 9 Mar 2022
Charles Firth and James Schloeffel are back again with their tried-and-true format for political satire and a very funny show. To know James Schloeffel is to subscribe to www.theshovel.com.au. There you will find the headlines, pictures, and short articles, neatly tabbed into categories like The Nation, World, Business, etc that will split your sides with laughter. Eg. “Starbucks to punish Russians by continuing to operate all 130 Russian stores.” Charles Firth is famous for his contributions to television’s The Chaser, CNNNN, and The Chaser’s War On Everything which broke new ground and alarmed authorities with their cheeky and risky antics, all to prove a point, of course. The Chaser similarly has spoof news at chaser.com.au with stuff like, “Scott Morrison selflessly agrees to isolate on remote Hawaiian beach.”
This year’s offering is extremely funny. Schloeffel and Firth sport fluoro vests and hard hats knowing it’s the only way to fit in with Scomo’s ensemble. Doffing them early reveals their trademark ill-fitting out-of-fashion suits. They advertise this show as a masterclass in lying and deception and it’s clear who they learned the trade from. Firth and Schloeffel gee up the audience with examples of masterful spin by the federal cabinet and demonstrate the detailed methodology. They are a wonderful team bouncing around the ideas and every point is visually enhanced on a large back screen. The Year in Review was a hoot, but to be fair, some credit is due to federal Liberals and Nationals for providing a cornucopia of satirical opportunities at such a consistent rate. To promote vaccinations to their constituency, how about no jab, no negative gearing. And just when they thought they were running out of material, Barnaby Joyce re-joins the front bench.
Charles Firth would not be Charles Firth without a Chaser sting operation to show us. He created an internet storm over renaming fairy bread to fun bread and garnering over 1000 signatures in 2 hours for the cause. Even after the scam was exposed by Ben Fordham on 2GB Breakfast, a second wave of getting it out there showed how lazy journalists from even major outlets like the ABC and News don’t check sources.
SPIN is tag-team political lampooning at its best, two comedians and political and social hawk eyes for the price of one and the whole is greater than its parts. I think I’m now fully prepared to run in the May federal election!
David Grybowski
When: 8 to 20 March
Where: Gluttony – The May Wirth
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
In association with Live Nation. Village Green, Adelaide Oval. 8 Mar 2022
It’s beautiful in the warm sunset on the Village Green laying at the foot of Montefiore Hill behind the Adelaide Oval. The grass on this practice cricket oval is pitch perfect. I find myself sitting between two other rock music reviewers and we chat about the old concerts back in the 70s. One says he sold an Icehouse ticket stub to a collector on eBay for $135! However, none of us saw Icehouse when they opened the Festival in 1988. Iva Davies claimed to have sold forty thousand tickets that year, but played to 120 thousand due to gate crashers.
The Welcome to Country ceremony is refreshingly cosmopolitan with a focus on International Women’s Day and a mention of Ukraine. Then blues and roots artist Emily Wurramara from Groote Elyandt tames the restless audience with charm and soothing dulcet tones. Next the formidable and much-awarded William Barton frenetically picks his guitar – transparent yet infused with candy colours – while eliciting the most sonorous notes from the didgeridoo. His uncle said that the didge is a language; a language Barton has clearly mastered as noted by the embrace of classical composer Peter Sculthorpe and a world tour in 2004.
Icehouse then takes the stage to anticipatory applause and begins with Icehouse, the title song of the 1982 album of the same name, when Iva Davies’s band was called Flowers. “No love inside the icehouse.” A melancholic or dark theme is repeated in many of Davies’s lyrics if not also in the riffs.
The fans will know that Davies literally chews his way through his canon. Sporting a black leather jacket and a head sprouting a mane of silvery hair, Davies indeed is burnished rock silver enjoying his place in history. Each song is accompanied by an upstage display on a gigantic screen. Some songs co-exist with abstract graphics. The dynamism of virtual reality’s multi-dimensionalism makes some quite trippy. Other songs are paired with re-imagined old videos in which we delight in the various ages of Davies - his youthfulness and the defining hairstyle of the decade – who was synced with the live music. Very effective. I loved the overlong mullet Davies sports while endlessly traversing the back-alleys of love-wonder in Crazy. Street Cafe has an even younger Davies exploring memories of something like Marrakech. But Hey, Little Girl ought to be dropped from the song list – it just sounds like an unsympathetic lecture to a young woman in need of help – in spite of its catchy melody.
All the favourites are played. Electric Blue is wonderfully realised. When it comes to lyrics, Davies is a man of few words. Man Of Colours is a haunting tribute, with melancholy of course. The cover of the 1987 album of the same name was co-designed by Davies with a Matisse flare. It’s a downbeat song that is saved by the powerful vocals of Michael Paynter. Bravo! Generally, the soaring notes of the synthesiser heard on the albums were successfully substituted with the fantastic sax fingering of Hugo Lee.
Naturally, we’re all hanging out for the title song of the Great Southern Land 2022 tour, but it is disappointing. William Barton returns for some introductory didge but he is quickly overwhelmed by the instrument mix. The eerie and haunting longing of the original that makes the song uniquely Australian goes astray. The initial evocative image of a red-hot sun on the horizon gives way to 1970s-quality tourist videos - including a kangaroo chewing on some grass - and cliché natural attractions. Not an Indigenous Australian in sight in these images of the false frontierism.
With Can’t Help Myself and We Can Get Together, the audience is finally on its feet, which it might have been much earlier except people are generally unsure how to act post-Covid and in a seated Festival format. Icehouse returns with two more cover songs from their heyday, and the dancing in the aisles compels them to finish with Nothing Too Serious.
Davies is foremost a song writer, and most of the audience received a nostalgic re-association with his famous songs, and those who didn’t are probably too young. But it is the amusing banter and guitar playing from veteran Icehouse musician Paul Gildea, the virtuosity of Michael Paynter, and Hugo Lee’s sax playing that gives the concert its colour. For a band desperate to get out post-covid on a national tour, the overall performance was lacking in vigour.
David Grybowski
When: 8 March
Where: Village Green, Adelaide Oval
Bookings: Closed