The Bubble Magician. The Jade Monkey. 15 Feb 2015
The most magical thing that Doctor Bubble does is to introduce an audience to Iulia Benze.
She goes by the clown name of Milkshake and, in harlequin pants and jacket with a big silly wig, she does the audience warmup, she plays the foil, the provocateur, the bubble monster, the cheer squad and, at all times, the clown.
This actress is one terrific clown, a clown who draws on ancient European roots of clowning, but yet is a very modern clown with fantastic voice training and considerable dance skills.
With such a sensational sidekick, Doctor Bubbles, aka Kurt Murray, really could just walk through a performance.
But the pair has worked hard to bulk out the simple business of bubble-blowing with a proper little story line and a lot of shtick.
So it comes to pass that Doctor Bubbles has a sad face (well, a white paper bag over his head) and is trapped in a soulless urban life of work and sleep. He hates bubbles and he hates happiness. He is a miserable grouch.
The set is a big, fabric book-fold of lovely backdrops, the pages of which are turned according to need. So he plods to work in long-toed, patent leather clown shoes and he sleeps vertically leaning against the appropriate page of the book.
Then, one day Milkshake steals his sad face and embarks upon a mission to make him love bubbles and life like the rest of us - for she has established with much audience shouting, that everyone reallllly loves bubbles.
The show has been devised for a 3-12 age span, so the performers throw in some dance and constrained acrobatics. The Jade venue is absolutely stunning, but the stage is smallish. A smidgeon of juggling is attempted by grumpy old Doctor Bubbles. He is having such a hard time finding the joy of things, so much so that Milkshake almost gives up on him.
But not quite. Bubbles get flowing, from small controlled ones to huge rope sweeps of bubble masses. Audience children who earlier had promised not to run and break the bubbles are allowed to do so, albeit they have been doing it all the time despite the vows. Doctor Bubbles gets his mojo back - with help from the children sticking coloured discs onto the velcro stripes of his coat.
And the grand finale is a soaking soapy celebration.
Samela Harris
When: 13 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: The Jade Monkey
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au or Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
By William Shakespeare. The Little Fish. Kay Brothers Amery Vineyards. 14 Feb 2015
One might imagine that sitting in a barrel room of Kay Brothers on a 40 degree day, without fans or air-conditioning, would be a pretty uncomfortable experience. If you step outside however you instantly appreciate the last minute indoors location change and are grateful for the roof over your head.
Surrounded by stone walls, towering timber trusses and raw hardwood floors, it turns out this space is perfect for a Shakespeare play like The Little Fish’s ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’. It is the perfect play for an afternoon in the Vale.
One of Shakespeare’s least performed works, the plot is remarkably straight forward. When the King of Navarre and three members of his court, Berowne, Dumain and Longueville, take an oath to study for three years and not see any women, four young women rock up and they immediately fall in love. The rest of the play follows the characters as they exchange quips, puns and put-downs in the pursuit of love.
An early work of Shakespeare, the play is thought to have been written in the mid-1590s. Whilst the plot is relatively straight forward the language is not. It is, in fact, a play about language and, as such, requires a strong ensemble and precise diction. The Little Fish cast is varied in capability with some stand-out performers and a few rough diamonds, but the director, Russell Slater, has found a cohesion which makes the production highly enjoyable.
Mark Drury plays Berowne with a wonderful pace and rhythm. His understanding of the character’s intention is superb. Costard is a rustic swain, played by Ronald Densley. He is, like Bottom, prone to malapropisms and Densley is witty and energetic in this role; the supreme mischief-maker. When Amelia Lórien sings she commands attention. One can almost hear the walls breathe as her smoky voice, accompanied only by ukelele, fills the room; hers is a commanding presence. Phoebe Shaw is utterly delightful in her dual roles of Maria and Jaquenetta.
The hard-working ensemble’s strength grows with the production, though their focus when not speaking is an area for development. Damien White is wonderfully intense in his portrayal of Don Adriano de Armado, but his reluctance to make eye contact takes the shine off. Ian Seymour-White and Isabella Shaw both also have excellent diction. Similarly Leah Anderson’s Princess is beautifully clear though slightly too loud for this intimate space. James Millward, Linda Edwards, Christopher Searle, Ashley Dunn, Bianca Payne, David Whittlesea and Harmony Kapsley round out the talented ensemble cast.
The production is embellished by wonderful interludes of song. They are performed by Amelia Lórien and Aiken Newnham and the compositions have been originally arranged for the production, incorporating 400 year old lyrics. Bravo!
Valentine’s Day marks the last performance for this show, but not for The Little Fish.
Their mid-year production of Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ is sure to be another success.
Paul Rodda
When: Closed
Where: Kay Brothers Amery Vineyards
Bookings: Closed
Presented by TJ Dawe. Bakehouse Theatre - Main Stage. 14 Feb 2015
Did you ever notice how utterly impractical is the layout of the typewriter keyboard? It could be so much simpler. TJ Dawe has pondered this and why the keys fall beneath such inappropriate fingers. This is not what his monologue is about, but it is an interesting sidetrack. He comes back to it a few times before he really hits his straps with the story of ‘Medicine’.
TJ Dawe has made his living studying and performing his own life. He's a Canadian and he says his one-man show career happened because he was lousy at auditions. He's a bit of an oddball, anyway. His parents were very strict. They met at church. His father was the principal at the school he attended.
He says he's always been a bit of an outsider. He has been in therapy and he has read a lot about psychology and human behaviour. He met one of the authors he admires and had the opportunity of going along to a retreat, to sleep in a yurt and have ayahuasca psychedelic medicine treatment. Here, in group therapy, he found himself admitting to things he had never broached before. And then there was the drinking of the opaque brown liquid and what transpired as it took effect.
Dawe is a lean and gangly bloke. Bespectacled. He stands alone, dressed in black, on the black stage of The Bakehouse. There are just the lights, rising and dimming for mood and emphasis. There's a snatch of soundtrack to illustrate backgrounds of the ayahuasca ceremony. Mainly, it is just Dawe talking. He talks for 75 minutes. He talks fast. Audience members are glued to their seats. He tells us things so raw and personal, so very different, and so desperately revealing. His intensity becomes such that he seems to be reliving those experiences - and we are right there, living them with him.
Reality is that TJ Dawe has become extremely accomplished at what he does. Not only does he present with extraordinary observations and recollections but also he is highly informative. Perhaps a chip off the old headmaster block that he teaches his audiences so much. But we go away richer for the new knowledge and dashing off to Google to learn more.
Samela Harris
When: 14 to 21 Feb
Where: Bakehouse Theatre - Main Stage
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
McArts. Producers Warehouse. 13 Feb 2015
It looks like a hospital, but it's really a nursing home. The residents are a pair of Elvis impersonators showing the symptoms of cerebral palsy, a condition acquired at birth or early childhood. They both dress up as the fat Elvis in the white jumpsuit and red scarf. The nurse is a bitch from beginning to end - screaming, ranting, sulking, plotting - one of the most unlikeable characters I have seen in theatre. Oh, yes, Elvis hates her. After a few crude remarks on disability and racism written by Philip Stokes that sets the tone of the show, the Elvises begin to animate in Elvis-like fashion.
Craig Antony McArdle (McArdle/McArts - get it) is more than a good actor. Not only did he do a fetching impersonation of the shy "Yes, ma'am" Elvis, he merged his own body language with that of the King to come up with whipping novel hip gyrations that knocked my eyes off into the scaly walls of the Producers Warehouse. Bravo! And he threw in a minute or two of Johnny Depp's interpretation of Hunter S. Thompson from ‘Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas’, which was equally good eye candy, but irrelevant.
The other Elvis, Aaron Broomhall, was less appealing but cute in his own way. Susan Cilento as the nurse was definitely Return To Sender. Where was director Craig McArdle when you need him? Oh, he was right next to her on stage!
Your critic has to confess he did not get the plot, even though the show flyer foreshadowed that "an unhinged nurse (I got that bit) [would be] planning to destroy them but her dirty secret may result in the greatest comeback ever!" Bugger the plot or what I can make of it, I thought, what I was seeing was the Elvises going in and out of cerebral palsy like it was a bad dream, one of them getting helplessly trapped under his wheelchair, and interesting and sharp changes in the mood of the absurdist script directed with some crispness by McArdle.
The show has crazy legs...it's been around the traps since 2008. Maybe playwright Philip Stokes is the next Harold Pinter, and some critics like me rubbished him, too. I didn't have a burning love for this show.
David Grybowski
When: 13 Feb to 27 Feb
Where: Producers Warehouse
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Rock Surfers Theatre Company. Tuxedo Cat – Cusack Theatre. 13 Feb 2015
Sign of a fine writer is diversity, fearlessness and, in Caleb Lewis's case, perhaps one should add, shamelessness.
Lewis is celebrated for his play ‘Death in Bowengabbie’ which scored rave reviews at The Bakehouse last year. To the Fringe he brings a semi-autobiographical work which is so original and out-there that it has no peers or comparisons.
It is all about his breakup with girlfriend, Lauren. It is about how they meet, how he gets his first unsettling uncertainty about the relationship when choosing videos in a video library. She wanted ‘Ice Storm’ and he wanted ‘Godzilla’. The relationship went downhill from there and they had rows. They were not ordinary rows. Lewis employs no less an example of their conflagratory nature than Little Boy and Hiroshima. And there, corollary to the plot are the characters of Nakajima and Oppenheimer who are doing their own thing there on stage with Godzilla and bombs, life and death and all that.
Lewis, in welcoming the audience to the quaint but comfy little Cusack Theatre in Tuxedo Cat, warns that it is a preview and he might stop the show. So, when he stops actors Phil Spencer and Rebecca Mayo in the middle of a tense scene to make Bec play it again, and then play another scene, the audience initially assumes that it is indeed a preview. However, it is a scripted interruption and as the play progresses, the playwright's discontent with the way things are working out between the characters, they being he and his ex-girlfriend, becomes more exaggerated.
The actors start expressing concern about him and his unresolved issues with Lauren. The playwright is not only the subject of the play but a player in the play. Of course, he's very believable as himself - a rather manic self, too.
Spencer and Mayo carry the action and the script and the introduced characters of Nakajima and Oppenheimer on one hand and Caleb and Lauren on the other. Spencer plays it rather over-confident and ho-hum since, he brags, he has been playing this part for ages. Mayo has to deliver it as an audition piece as well as the play she is in, since part of the playwright's mania is that he can't stop auditioning for the perfect Lauren. Yes, it is a play about unresolved issues.
There is one other character in this work. It's Lewis's mum, Gay. She appears on film being interviewed by Lewis as she cooks some sort of mince and potato bake at home. In episodic takes, interleaved with the drama on stage, Lewis asks her what she thought of Lauren when first she met her and what she thinks they would be doing now if they had not broken up... Gay, pausing at stirring the pot, spoon in hand, patiently gives a mother's caring responses. She adored Lauren. They may have had children by now...
Ever so subtly, Gay becomes the star of the show.
Of course, there is a dramatic denouement. No clues. It's worth popping along for this interesting Fringe oddity.
Samela Harris
When: 13 to 28 Feb
Where: Tuxedo Cat – Cusack Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au