Lion House Theatre, Joanne Hartstone, and Holden Street Theatres. Holden Street Theatres - The Manse. 20 Feb 2019
A tiny room in the old manse of Holden Street Theatres is filled with memorabilia and collectibles signifying a life well lived and souvenired. British actor and theatre creator Casey Jay Andrews makes the necessarily small audience comfortable on sofas and soft chairs. There is so much to visually comprehend; one is partly inattentive to her preamble.
Old photos, mostly of women in giveaway 70s hairdos, are gently tabled one by one and projected onto the wall above the fireplace for all to see. A catalogue of portraits and family gatherings. Casey shifts to poetic prose underlain by her score of gentle electronic music. Her narration is augmented by historical voice recordings of the principal women of the story and excerpts read from American Gelett Burgess’s 1923 manual on manners, courtesy and gratitude, Have You An Educated Heart?
The book and Casey’s story are tied by sharing the gift of life. A cancer in the family is bad enough, but what if your Mum and her three sisters were all affected by breast cancer? Casey’s art teacher has already fallen to the dreadful disease. If it doesn’t take your breathe away, maybe you stopped breathing already.
Forty minutes of poignancy, immediacy and honesty. How much time does one have left to see this show and read that book? One leaves with borrowed strength to be more grateful.
PS Cards are handed out after the show to acquaint you with the Know Your Lemons campaign that helps women identify visual symptoms of breast cancer.
PPS Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) is credited with inventing the word blurb in its meaning used today.
David Grybowski
4 stars
When: 16 Feb to 16 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Manse
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Analog The Company. Gluttony - The Peacock. 20 Feb 2019
Wow-wee! Hailing from Berlin, Analog’s Fringe show, Finale, epitomises the energy, music and drive of the nightclub scene in their jumping city. After two world wars, a murderous Nazi regime, Allied terror bombing, division by the Communists, a blockade and subsequent reunification - all in less than 80 years – Berlin was ready to party and the party is still going today. If you aren’t going to Berlin this month, this circus show is the epitome of party!
Eight artists bear their souls in gravity-defying acts – ropes, loops, poles, balls, boxes and books all come alive in their hands. There is a sense of grudge and casualness in each member expressing strong individualism but also a unifying camaraderie binds them. Long changes of equipment for the next jaw-dropped display of dexterity and daring-do are forgotten while being entertained by Ena Wild’s imaginative vocals. The whole hour is underscored by drummer Lukas Thielecke’s pounding that mutates between edgy, dance and rock. Indeed, Wild and Thielecke compose leitmotifs with each performer providing perfect synergy of performance and sound. Expert lighting used in shadow play or colour fill is mood-altering. A bit of clowning and team tumbling finishes the show with four lucky audience members on stage in proximity to the proceedings.
A wild hour where one will feel they are right there in the circus that is Berlin on a Saturday night.
David Grybowski
4 stars
When: 16 Feb to 17 Mar
Where: Gluttony - The Peacock
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Under The Microscope. nthspace Gallery. 20 Feb 2019
30,000 Notes is a touching and absorbing love story, but not your run-of-the-mill boy meets girl romance. This story is about something pure and deep: it is about that indefinable connection with someone who shows you unconditional love, and, interestingly, how that connection is strengthened and even redefined when that person is physically lost to you. That person can be a grandparent, a crush or your first real love, and gender is irrelevant. 30,000 Notes is also a coming-out story.
Written and performed by Josh Belperio, 30,000 Notes tells the story of Belperio’s personal discovery of love, and the script is pasted onto the wall of the performance space for all to see. It takes the form of hundreds and hundreds of written notes and, importantly, musical scores, because first and foremost Belperio is a classically trained composer and musician. The notes – words and musical notation – chronicle Belperio’s myriad thoughts over the years on diverse topics, but mostly on his journey in finding, receiving and giving love. Belperio moves around the performance space with choreographic style and selects and removes notes from the wall, glances at them, and builds a narrative that is funny, quirky, sad, but always uplifting. It is almost too joyous at times.
Much of the narrative is about his beloved grandmother who has passed away. As Belperio ponders how he remembers her, what role his notes have in that, and how his memories might change in the future, we hear music – his own compositions – that have been inspired by his sense of loss and love. Magna Gloria is one such piece: it is deeply affecting music and in it can be found the influences of both modern composers (such as Eric Whiteacre and Morton Lauridson), and those from the classical and baroque periods (such as Palestrina and Bach). Whatever the supposed influences may or may not be, it is Belperio’s own music and it is good. A Thousand Winds is another fine example of his compositional skills. It is Belperio’s musical response to pondering the mystery of what happens when we die: do we go somewhere? Or do we just remain in the minds of those who have a strong connection with us? The music is evocative, richly orchestrated and has numerous layers. It comes across as complex or as simple as the listener perceives it to be, just as the concept it is responding to can also be considered in simple terms or as something much deeper.
Belperio’s soundscape is scored for a string quartet and a sixteen voice standard choir (soprano, alto, tenor and bass), and it has been superbly recorded and produced by Neville Clark. The quality makes one think the musicians are actually somewhere in the performance space with us, but unseen.
Belperio is dressed in white jeans and a white T-shirt and is frequently silhouetted against the wall of notes by the impressively innovative lighting plot (Mark Oakley). As various notes are removed from the wall they are first highlighted by cleverly focussed lighting. At other times Belperio is bathed in video footage from old home movies of his childhood that have been lovingly filmed by his grandparents. It almost seems that Belperio is spectating his own life and forming a view about how he is living it. A key part of his life is his relationship with his partner Matthew Briggs, who is also the director of the production. By day, Dr Briggs is a research medical scientist, but by night he is one helluva producer!
The performance culminates in another of Belperio’s compositions – one that he has written to celebrate and express the love he feels for Matthew. The joy on Belperio’s face as he acknowledges the technicians and especially Matthew at the curtain call is joyous, and touching.
The technical aspects of this production are excellent. The lighting is an essential ingredient and is superbly designed and executed. Sound production is also of a very high quality. The walls of notes, and the skill with which they are navigated by Belperio is awesome. The ‘printed’ program comprises a cardboard wallet containing two microscope glass slides onto which the credits have been written – a unique memento that serves to remind us that the production company, which was created by Briggs and Belperio is called Under the Microscope theatre company.
There is much material in this production, and when the season is over and there is time for reflection, Belperio might consider making some judicious cuts to make the narrative tighter and ready for its next season, which it surely merits.
There is time to catch this wonderful production with performances every day from 19 February to 16 March at 9pm except on Sundays and Mondays. It is a generous 90 minutes in duration, which for the most part goes by quickly.
Highly recommended. There is nothing else quite like it in the Fringe.
Kym Clayton
When: 19 Feb to 16 Mar
Where: nthspace Gallery
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Will Tredinnick. Holden Street Theatres – The Arch, and Live From Tandanya – Tandanya Arts Cafe. 19 Feb 2019
This fabulous show starts off in the pink. We are invited to be a fly on the wall for the Grand Re-opening of a run-down restaurant restored with flamingo wallpaper and pink costuming. A nervous and most improbable waiter readies the table utilising silent movie slapstick-style physical comedy complete with tinkering soundtrack. With change of pace and a couple more eccentric characters, devisor, director and performer Will Tredinnick runs amok in a hilarious study of acutely excruciating embarrassment and trepidation – an Epicurean enigma of epic proportions . Constantly turning the tables on the audience, no caper is too ridiculous. Actions are timed beautifully with lights and sound operation to enhance the unease.
Tredinnick, on this night, is ably augmented by an audience member, and one can only hope that in your attendance - as attend you must – you have it as good. Will is a NIDA Emerging Artist award winner and cooked up this, his first show, nearly all by himself. A little half-baked, but so what. Bravo for bravado!
David Grybowski
4 stars
When: 15 to 24 February
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Arch, and Live From Tandanya – Tandanya Arts Cafe
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Hey Boss. Holden Street Theatres – The Studio, and Stirling Fringe – The Parlour. 20 Feb 2019
I have seen Melbourne comedian/actor/writer Damian Callinan in two previous shows of his own creation – The Wine Bluffs and Damian Callinan in The Lost WWI Diary; they were both terrific. The Merger began life in 2010 and is through the posts for six in becoming a motion picture in 2018 with Callinan in a starring role in his own screenplay.
Appearing first as the coach of the disastrous footy team of a clapped-out timber town called Bodgy Creek, giving the audience a half time pep talk, Callinan garners information from the audience that gets shelved for later hilarity. We learn that although the Roosters won six premierships, but none since 1994, they have excelled in winning environmental awards and in new age education. But that doesn’t win footy games. Faced with annihilation and a merger with their rivals, they bring in government subsidy and new players through a refugee rural re-settlement program. The food improves, a minaret is added to the scoreboard, and prayer rooms compete with the pubs. A most pertinent and heart-warming tale of a different kind of merger.
Callinan’s clever writing is deliciously indirect in getting to the point of each scene. It rambles about until an ‘Aha!’ moment. His comic timing is precise, facial expressions uncanny and the detail funny, funny, funny. Humorous voice characterizations and body language distinguish a plethora of personae. The satire on small town-ness is side-splitting but by third quarter time in the story, when the refugees arrive, there is also significant emotional substance. In the fourth quarter, one was all of laughing at the antics, cheering on the refugee project, moved by the poignancy of the grateful new immigrants, and weeping over the setbacks, sometimes all at the same time. Oh, what a world we could have!
Do the Roosters win the Grand Final? Go see for yourself. Double bravo for writing and performing!
David Grybowski
5 stars
When: 16 Feb to 3 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Studio, and Stirling Fringe – The Parlour
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au