Presented by the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Le Cascadeur. 5 Mar 2015
Max and Ivan have arrived for the first time on the Adelaide Fringe so loaded with stars, comedy awards and critical acclaim that one wonders how they made the trip.
But they are talented fellows and are probably going to drag themselves away with an even heavier load.
Their show, Max & Ivan: The End is a narrative comedy describing the hapless occupants of an English town called Sudley- on-Sea. It's a lovely awful place which brags carparks, a reef of detritus, a nuclear power plant and a rest home.
It also has its local aristocracy, its gay arts icons, classic disagreeing councillors, a misunderstood aspiring children's book writer and woeful lovelorn nerd - among others.
These characters whisk in and out of the story, swiftly embodied by Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez aka Max & Ivan.
They call the show "sketch comedy" and, indeed, there are myriad little vignettes embodied in the overall story which tells of the evacuation of poor Sudley due to power plant malfunction.
The performers are of high-energy and quick reflexes. They shift patter and accents to and fro and establish a panoply of characters, some endearing and some repulsive. Therein lies much of the comedy. But it is not all funny. There's a thread of serious satire and a certain lampooning of British stereotypes.
Bottom line is that these are highly-trained and highly-disciplined performers working with a beautifully-crafted script.
They engage with chosen audience members, most successfully on opening night with a front row beauty called Melody who turned out to be a star in her own right.
Samela Harris
When: 5 to 15 Mar
Where: The Garden of Unearthly Delights - Le Cascadeur
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Luminato Festival and others. Dunstan Playhouse. 4 Mar 2015
The title sounds ominous, like somebody or something must fail. But it's nothing like that at all. It's a love story - a gentle, heartfelt, sweet narrative of falling in love. There are no actors. There are puppeteers, live-screening their beer bottle-high creations performing in tiny sets under dim lights right there on stage - not too visible, but projected onto the big screen to a filmic effect. The Afiara String Quartet pries open your heart with compelling compositions; think of Yo-Yo Ma. But it's Kid Koala of Montreal at the keyboard, and making the necessary strange sound effects, who is pulling the strings - his creation and his musical score.
The lead puppet reminds me of Scott Adams's office-inhabiting cartoon engineer, Dilbert. What spell have they cast that this puppet of a robot, yearning for a fine looking lady puppet, should make me sigh? There is enchantment when he teaches himself to play a heart-shaped ukulele to woo his girl. There is magic in the air as we see them walk city streets in new lovers' rapture or sad disappointment. How quaint that a woman could fall for a robot with spider eyes, who could erase his memory by snipping the magnetic tape in his chest, and who lives in a flat furnished like it's the 1950s.
I had a lump in my throat the whole time, and I cannot be the only one, what with the standing ovation at the Australian premiere of this exclusive-to-Adelaide production. I still don't understand how I could feel so alive. How did they capture something so utterly human with such blatant make believe?
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 7 March
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Gareth Hart. The Edments Building. 3 March 2015
One of the things I love about the Fringe is novel venues. This one is a zinger. The audience meets front-of-house staff in Fisher Place. This back lane would be at home in New York. We are led to the front of The Edments Building, are ushered into the elevator and subsequently debouched onto the rooftop. Here we faced east and the final reflections of the setting sun decorated the hills for the forty minutes of dance performance. The audience removed shoes and followed a thin line of dirty mulch to form a semi-circle round the dancer who was lying on a large mound of mulch resembling a turkey nest.
Edward Willoughby's haunting soundtrack of samples, sounds and chords would be at home in a horror movie and turned out to be the most pleasurable aspect of the production. Gareth Hart's choreography and performance did not live up to the "Superb" comment in the Fringe guide - which I suspect was applied to one of Hart's previous creations - or even to the accompanying picture.
Hart's dance motif reminded me of a chicken, scratching away the mulch for grubs and worms. Angular movements and tableaus repeated in variation without respite, change of pace, or progression for the entire show. His objective "to acknowledge, dredge up and pay attention to the past" was incoherent and not realised. Instead of conjuring up some semblance of human experience, I saw an alien in unsuitable shorts.
The irony of having a show called 'Excavate' on a rooftop was not lost. Your hard-earned Fringe dough is better spent elsewhere.
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 7 Mar
Where: The Edments Building
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Skagen, Richard Jordan Productions and Theatre Royal Plymouth. Space Theatre. 2 Mar 2015
Valentijn Dhaenens's 'Bigmouth' - in which he re-created a number of history's most stirring addresses - was a hit of last year's Festival. He's back with an ultra-personal look at the consequences of some of those exhortations - the tragedies of war's aftermath.
Dhaenens grew up in the Belgian killing fields of World War I and long had a fascination with that conflict and its aftermath. The battles continue, long after the shooting stops, in the hospitals, and later, in repatriation centres. Here are men, some without limbs, who are an embarrassing reminder of the awful sacrifices asked by their leaders.
Dhaenens has collated the stories of soldiers, nurses, orderlies and doctors from throughout the ages, but with an emphasis on The Great War, and conjoins them in this gentle, sympathetic and humanistic production. Dhaenens began as a hospital orderly, weary and world-wise from seeing a parade of carnage that ends in body bags, eternal care, or a forgotten fading away. She tends to an image of the actor as an amputee who dreams of being whole again by cloning into multiple ghostly images. These other survivors are a damaged lot representing a sad array of psychological and physical disability.
There have been millions of small wars like these after the big ones. It's going on today. The beauty and simplicity of the narrative belies the technical virtuosity in the seamless interaction of the digital imagery with Dhaenens's orderly, and in the conjoining of the original testimonies. The result is an incredibly moving and intimate production. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 2 to 4 March
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Lazy Saturday Productions. Holden Street Theatres – The Studio. 2 Mar 2015
There is a carefree attitude on stage as the lights come up. Sprawled across one another on cushions and beanbags, Cal, Holly and Brian appear to be carefree 20-somethings with too much time on their hands. But something more sinister is lurking beneath the surface.
The key theme in Darkle is said to be fantasy. It explores the consequences of relinquishing responsibly to live a life of fantasy alone. The playwright, Bill Gallagher, suggests that when we refuse to take responsibility we become vulnerable to fascism. It’s a stretch for any audience and an incredibly difficult sell in only 60 minutes.
It won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award in 1989 but perchance playwriting changed a bit since then. The audience's credulity is challenged by the characters undertaking very radical actions quite early in the play. The reason given in the production notes: boredom and fantasy. But what about motivation? What motivates three relatively carefree, yet gainfully employed, adolescents to carry out heinous acts with the justification of mere annoyance and stupidity on the part of the victim?
Cal, Holly and Brian make a conscious decision to torment and torture their landlord, Stringer, to teach him a lesson for being ‘stupid’. The inexplicable events that follow beggar belief and blur the lines of acceptable reality.
At the play’s denouement we descend into a nonsense of make-believe families that is intended to paint a picture of ‘patriarchal despotism‘ but instead feels perplexing and disjointed from everything that came before. Safe to say most of the audience will question what they have just seen and wonder, simply, why?
The performances are a different matter entirely. In the role of Stringer, David Macgillivray is a force to behold. His emotional energy is second to none on stage; a standout performance of an incredibly anxious and borderline neurotic character. Closely matched are Emma Bargery as Holly and Kat Jade as Cal. Bargery is particularly affecting when she discovers that fantasy has just become reality, and Jade is well balanced throughout as she manipulates the others to participate in the fantasy. Tom Russell rounds out the cast with his impressive CV of film appearances. Russell has solid acting chops but occasionally falls short of the energy required to maintain the intensity of his character’s ever fluctuating emotions.
The set is indicative of a rent-share apartment, and fits the action. It is not attractive, though. The lighting is also quite harsh throughout the production, and a fade to spot in the final scene is a welcome relief; more variation might have been utilised earlier for mood setting or transitions of time.
Darkle is an entertaining production. One is moved by the performances: from anxiety, to laughter, to sweating, to disgust. It is supremely enjoyable to watch.
I can’t say I buy what the playwright is selling. Each to his or her own.
Paul Rodda
When: 1 to 8 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Studio
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Note: This review was modified at the request of the production company to remove a plot point and maintain the element of surprise for future audiences. 4/3/15