Essential Theatre. Holden Street Theatres. 2 Mar 2017
This snappy eighty minute Julius Caesar is brought to you by Essential Theatre - the same mob that have performed their excellent outdoor productions from their Shakespeare in the Vines program at Coriole and Sevenhill wineries for more than a decade. Having seen and reviewed a few of those, I knew I was in for another goodie, and I was not disappointed.
Everyone on and behind the stage - save Justin Gardam who contributed a fetching soundtrack - are women. Women who are pissed off that only one in four roles in Shakespeare are for females, and traditionally even those were played by men. Since Sophie Lampel and Amanda LaBonte run the company, they're gonna do it their way. And it worked a treat. Although I never got over the "her" pronouns and possessives instead of "his" and "him," the references to themselves as girls instead of men (why didn't they use women?), and Caesar potentially being a queen instead of a king, I loved the emotional values: sensually confusing when the "men" were feminine, amusing when they were women pretending to be men, and powerful when they presented sturdy androgynous characters.
Tick, tick, tick. Time is running out on Caesar and later, on the assassins. The narrative hewn out of the original is urgent and full of menace. Whispers in the corridors of power, collaborators regrouping and mutually bolstering their courage, the excitement of the kill itself, and the confusion over the change of leadership definitely reminded me of Australian federal politics since the Rudd dump of 2010. Peak emotional moments were complemented by Gardam's soundscape, effective lighting and a bit of theatrical magic. They had me in such a state that the murder of Caesar took my breath away.
Performances were not all up to the same standard, but the regal bearing of Helen Hopkins's Caesar convinced me from the get go, and Alex Aldrich played the chilling duplicity of Casca with a comical bent that invited close watching. Costumes designed by Aldrich looked like Salvation Army uniforms that would be at home in a Star Trek episode. Having your apron over your back instead of your front makes for a nifty cape.
I was enthralled with director Fleur Kilpatrick's tight, earnest, and most of all, intimate production of extreme clarity and crispness, with a genre twist. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 28 Feb to 4 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. The Garden of Unearthly Delights – Corona Theatre. 2 Mar 2017
Luke McGregor is a relative new-comer in terms of his career on the comedy circuit, and yet his comedic trajectory is something anyone would be proud of.
McGregor burst onto the scene in 2008 and his achievements since then include being a national finalist in Raw Comedy, winning Best Newcomer 2013 for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and appearances on television in series such as Rosehaven, The Time of Our Lives, Legally Brown and Utopia. He is also the creator of the six part documentary series Luke Warm Sex.
Needless to say this evening’s performance is completely sold out, and in true GoUD fashion we are all sandwiched into one of the not-so-cosy performance tents on offer. Venue qualms aside however, McGregor quickly has his audience in the palm of his hand.
McGregor endears himself to the audience with his nervous, awkward, anxious personality, captivating us in a way few other comedians can; one almost feels like giving the poor fella a hug. Despite his clear insecurities – not put on as part of the act – he possesses the bravery to do what few others can; stand up and talk about his own life.
It is almost therapeutic; for him and for us! McGregor isn’t always rolling-in-the-aisles-funny with his stand-up; but he is always very interesting to listen to. A great storyteller.
This particular performance takes place in the Garden’s Corona Theatre, and the seats to the sides are definitely not the best. Unfortunately on a warmer-than-usual autumn evening the audience on our side of the auditorium has to contend with the rumbling of the air-con, combined with speakers focussed closer to centre, and low mic volumes. It is certainly hard to hear.
Despite this, the bulk of the audience are raucous and certainly seem to be having a good time. The one-hour set, over in the blink of an eye, leaves many hungry for more.
McGregor is a very funny man, and in particular where the events of his television shows are set up to highlight and accentuate his awkwardness. His stand-up, if nothing else, is a great night of storytelling with a few laughs thrown in for good measure, and a very enjoyable evening’s entertainment!
Paul Rodda
When: 3 to 5 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights – Corona Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Star Theatre. 28 Feb 2017
One of the beautiful things about the Fringe Festival is that it allows new talent to stretch its wings, to put on a show.
So it comes to pass that unknown director Milton Penhaligon has rallied a group of mainly old school friends and gone all the way with a production of Don’s Party.
It is a great big, beautiful, vulgar David Williamson play, a window into Australian suburbia and sexism of the 1960s and the night of the 1969 election in which Liberal John Gorton defeated Gough Whitlam. For the young cast, not even a gleam in a parental eye back then, this is a history play and a lot of research has gone into putting it on stage. But, of course, they are about the same age as the protagonists.
Penhaligon has done well in casting the characters to type.
The production has worked hard on period costumes, too. The women float around in the long smock dresses of the time, albeit with one jarring fashion element: an awkward stretchy mini skirt. It’s a good, tight set. Somehow they have found an old TV with bunny ears, a ghastly pop art style bar and an assortment of chairs which squeeze on to the tiny stage at Star. It is all very intimate, which it needs to be for some of the actors for whom projection does not come naturally.
It is a passionate and sincere production and, in the end of the day, a winning one.
One might give more credit where it is due but the program is extremely skimpy; more focused on a wry comment on the characters than on the actors or behind-scenes crew. It describes the play’s content as: "Right Wing, Left Wing; Toilet talk; Misogyny; Pizza; Failed Adultery”. It states: “The cast of Don’s Party acknowledges that we are performing in Ghana (sic) land”.
All very offbeat and Fringe.
It was wonderful to see this great play after many decades and also touching to see the intensity with which a new generation revives the absolute worst of yesterday’s boozy Australiana - molesting women, wife-swapping, crass male beer talk.
Penhaligon has looked for laughs and there are plenty. The bottles mount up as the party degenerates. The flagrante-delicto high moment has Rohan Gaskin as lothario Cooley running exposed across the stage. It’s overall a nice, fearless characterisation from Gaskin. Everyone has to bring something pornographic to the party. He brings Susan who is rather appealingly played by Nora Goodbourn. Ben Tymukas, sucking on a pipe and rocking on his heels as Simon, is copybook for the 60s poseur. Brendan Boyce plays agro Leftie sod, Mal, with a streak of disarming affability while James Gaffey as the defensive dentist finds audience sympathy. His wife, Kerry, played by Hannah Weir, is vain and self-serving. Weir is quite convincing. Ditto Don’s sour wife, Kath. Carla Gaskin is not always easy to hear in this role but she nails the long-suffering, dreary predicament of many young wives of the period. Husband Don is played by the director, Milton Penhaligon as a bit of a lacklustre no-hoper. He gets quietly drunker and drunker until he seems upright but barely awake. As for Jody, wife of repressed and posturing Simon, she’s the admitted right winger at the party, smug, bourgeois, twitchy and very funny; a nice performance by Rita Horanyi. The character of Mac was famously played by Graham Kennedy in the film so it is a hard act to follow. Dylan Johnson does not try. With a totally absurd drinking mug around his neck instead of the classic stein, he is the great sleazy Aussie good bloke. Anisha Pillarisetti plays Jenny, the stuffy one of the group, married to Mal, and delivers a character who is tired, bored and unfulfilled. She represents a mass of womanhood of that period, part of the very reason for the rise of feminism.
Clearly Penhaligon is finding his feet as a director but, having rounded up such a dedicated cast of enthusiastic amateurs and mounted quite passably such a very demanding Williamson play, he shows that he has the grit to go places. Bravo.
Samela Harris
When: 28 Feb to 5 Mar
Where: Star Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Brett Brown / Parrabbola in association with Holden Street Theatres. Holden Street Theatres. 28 Feb 2017
Holden Street Theatres presents in this Fringe a trio of Shakespeare-based one person/small cast - one hour adaptations: Signifying Nothing (Macbeth), Julius Caesar, and Henry V [Man and Monarch]. Shakespeare's Henry V of 1599 eulogises the eponymous Henry's tremendous victory over the French at Agincourt in 1415, and is the final play of his "king tetralogy" following Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2.
As the audience files in, a King is exorcising his anticipation of the violence to come on a paper cut-out of a human figure. Adaptor and actor Brett Brown has performed with Royal Shakespeare, the BBC, and even Opera Australia, and indeed, shows off a startlingly beautiful baritone voice in a few short bars. Too few bars. Under the direction of Philip Parr, the York International Shakespeare Festival's Artistic Director, Brown assumes the King through the major speeches of the famous play, with a superbly executed focus on those demonstrating the anxiety of the King before the battle, and his wonder at the contrast of his humanity and comradeship with his warriors against his awful responsibility of commanding these same men to die in his name. The famous St Crispin Day's Speech and reference to a "band of brothers" will make even the non-Shakespeareans among you sit up in your seat. Brown and Parr make imaginative use of a sparse set of props to heighten the drama.
While the many scenes of intimacy - and in the case of his ironic post-war wooing of the French princess, a relief of humour - are performed most tenderly, it looked like hard work rallying the troops when you are all by yourself. And while the performance is technically expert, I felt that Brown could have been more emotionally expressive - there was more room to be moved by the material.
For the Shakespeare lovers, and those who maybe won't ever avail themselves of the opportunity to see a full-blown production, this is still a must-see, and why not see all three Shakespeares at Holden Street Theatres?
David Grybowski
When: 18 Feb to 5 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
The Holden Street Theatres' Edinburgh Fringe Award in association with Redbeard Productions and Gilded Balloon. Holden Street Theatres. 28 Feb 2017
I'm a sucker for a play with a poster photo of a girl with a Kalashnikov and angel wings, but there are much better reasons to see English playwright Henry Naylor's Angel. Unfortunate you if you didn't see Naylor's Echoes in last year's Fringe, which won the BankSA Best Theatre Award. The show you're not going to miss this year - and which may win the BankSA award again - sold out in Edinburgh and won that festival's Fringe First Award. The Times in London nailed it onto its UK's Ten Best Plays list for 2016. More importantly, Angel won Holden Street Theatres Edinburgh Award, which means theatre impresario Martha Lott thought it good enough to help bring it to Adelaide.
Angel is the third instalment of a trilogy entitled Arabian Nightmares - Echoes being the second. A hallmark of at least these two productions is the painstaking research apparent in what might be called historical docu-drama set within the present and past conflicts of the Middle East. Another common theme is Naylor's uncanny ability to write intimate stories about women that seem to ring true with women (I had to ask around about this last bit). Whereas Echoes was a comparative study of the harrowing experiences of Victorian women joining the British occupation of Afghanistan, and western jihadi tale. This is the true-in-the-main-points-but-drawing-on-others's-contemporary-experiences biography of Rehana, who by circumstances is compelled to convert from pacifism to fight with her Kurdish comrades against ISIS during the latter's siege of Kobane in northern Syria in 2014.
The young Rehana is a cheeky child and then earnest law student dancing to Mariah Carey and imbued with the utopian dreams of Star Trek. The conversion of this innocence to the famous yet reluctant sniper is an absolute marvel to watch. Theatrically couched with exciting Lara Croft adventurism, actor Avital Lvova leaps away from bombed trucks and is thrown by mortar blasts, strips machine guns blindfolded and escapes rape attempts. She encounters - and superbly performs - a panoply of family, friends and odious foes along the way. It might be easy to get lost in the video game visuals of the action, except that Lvova emotionally brings you back to the visceral story - none of these characters leave this play alive. They die the horrible deaths of war, often after much suffering. And as Rehana actually did compile over 100 kills, this reality hits you like swamp gas and takes your breath away. A bit of her dies with every kill and Lvova makes us feel it. Bravo!
Naylor has written another exceptional play and tosses the distant war of the Middle East off the television right into our lap, still bleeding. Another Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 17 Feb to 19 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au