Run By Stephen Laughton

★★★★

Adelaide Fringe. The Warehouse Theatre. 18 Mar 2023

Run, written by accomplished British writer Stephen Laughton, is another in the growing canon of gay coming of age stories. (This Fringe Festival featured at least one other: A Southern Fairytale). It is about Yonni, a gay Jewish teenager, who can’t get as excited about his religion as his pious. Yonni is much more preoccupied in exploring his emerging sexuality and fantasising about his first boyfriend Adam.

The story begins with Yonni’s last day at school, and its ‘muck up’ day. References to the pranks that students play serve to locate Yonni as a fun-loving ordinary sort of lad. Almost, but he’s not. He’s gay, and coming from a devout Jewish family that would rather have him celebrate shabbat than go out with his mates on a Friday night, likely means his ‘coming out’ is not going to be straightforward. But this is not a typical coming out story (what’s typical anyway?): there are no confrontations with disappointed parents, no crises of faith, no ostracism. Rather it is about the fundamental significance of family, falling in love (and in lust), being tested but remaining faithful, glamorizing both real and imagined realities, grieving, and coping with tragic loss.

The text often explores these themes simultaneously, which is both its strength and weakness. As an audience member you are confronted with a rush of detail and thought bubbles – just as if you are in the mind of a hormone drenched teenager – and this allows you to feel Yonni’s excitement and confusion. But the transitions from one thread to another are sometimes insufficiently distinct, and this is not helped by the modest lighting rig in the Warehouse Theatre; indeed, the most effective and empathetic lighting state occurred when the actor used only the light from his mobile phone and the rig itself was fully dimmed.

Laughton’s text borders on poetry. At times the beautifully constructed language fits both the action and Yonni’s state of mind, especially in the almost schmaltzy scenes where Yonni is gushing about his boyfriend. But in other scenes, such as when Yonni is describing an antisemitic/ gay bashing, the flowery language doesn’t sit well with the visceral nature of what is being described. But, having said that, it is not always entirely clear what is real and what is being imagined, and, arguably, the language helps achieve that dramatic ambiguity.

Run is a play for a solo actor. The text is intricate, the themes are profound, the set is austere, the underscore soundtrack is often ethereal and ominous. It all adds up to a show where its success is largely dependent on the skills of the solo actor, and young actor Ben Stuart makes a good fist of it. It is a huge role, and it is emotionally demanding, and Stuart is at his best when he is playing Yonni ‘in love’. His performance is alive, electric and sweet. In the more dramatic moments, when life and limb is at stake, he gives Yonni more confidence and bravado than fear and desperation, but the dense text gets in the way of him giving creating more nuanced moments. Stuart’s overall performance, however, is impressive.

At the conclusion of the play, the stage is dramatically plunged abruptly into darkness. Is it over? Has Yonni snapped back into reality? What is real, and what is imagined? What is real are the tears in Ben Stuart’s eyes as he gently extricates himself from Yonni’s persona, and announces to the appreciative audience that this performance marks the end of his two year association with Run. What an epic journey.

Kym Clayton

When: Closed

Where: The Warehouse Theatre

Bookings: Closed

The Sheep Song

Adelaide Festival. FC Bergman / Toneelhuis. Dunstan Playhouse. 16 Mar 2023

Branded as a contemporary fable based on old Flemish tales, The Sheep Song is, firstly, visually stunning. It is dance theatre, more dance and movement based than theatre; there is no dialogue and the expressive form of the actors (performers) is therefore entirely reliant upon a mood and visual cues.

A naked man in a red cowl rings a cast bronze bell, thrice, a curtain is raised. A herd of sheep are grazing onstage, occasionally raising their heads to observe the audience, who are transfixed by fifteen live sheep on stage. One of those sheep is not like the others, it appears curious, lifting itself above the others to regard the humans, to experiment with standing, and walking, and to boldly go where no sheep has gone before.

The Sheep Song thus reveals itself as a parable of sorts, a comment upon the futility of the human condition. To the sheep it appears the human form is alluring, to us in the audience is revealed the notion of a sheeplike existence. Through a series of vignettes the sheep tries to be accepted into human society; the initial walking routine is beautifully powerful due to its simplicity. When the humans and the sheep synchronise their steps the audience have an unmistakable representation. A ‘road to Damascus’ scene has the sheep attacked by three men and left lying in the road, and there is a pantomime doll who masturbates and ejaculates blood. This latter, apparently, represents a Faustian pact made by the sheep to become ‘human’ but seems to represent more nearly the male fascination with their penis.

This is a performance which draws darkness around itself as a protective cape. There is no joy in the notion of an animal ‘raising’ itself (in the manner of the pigs in Animal Farm); one might almost describe it as bleak. The stage is most often shrouded in haze, which billows in the perpetual half-light. Gradually, the sheep (Jonas Vermeulen) assumes those aspects which make them more and more human. The woman and a live dog make an appearance. The Sheep is attracted to her, begins wearing a coat, and loses the obvious hoofs. We may leave aside the obvious implausibility of a sheep (the female of the species) breeding with a blind woman and accept this may be history’s second recorded Immaculate Conception, and they have a child, who does not survive long.

Several times through the performance the sheep is presented with a banjo, and it becomes apparent that the inability to play it is a measure of just how ‘human’ the sheep is becoming. When the disfigured sheep is finally in a position to play the instrument, the tune shows that despite best endeavours, assimilation is impossible. The ability to play a baa chord, it must be assumed, is too great a requirement. In the final scene the sheep returns to the fold (and the flock return to the stage). Beautifully managed, the sheep are at first skittish around their former companion. Truly, the sheep does not easily fit into either world.

This is a performance rich in symbolism, and rich in imagery, but it is the music score of Frederik Leroux-Roels which brings the performance together. The simple banjo based intonation, augmented by looped recordings and reverb pedals and some simple programmable samples for the industrial and syncopated rhythms occasionally used make this a piece to savour. It is so simple, and so simply realised with the musician onstage through the majority of the performance. Powerful, evocative, and at time confronting, The Sheep Song is like no other performance piece.

Alex Wheaton

When: 16 to 19 Mar

Where: Dunstan Playhouse

Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au

Best of British

★★★★

Best of British Productions. 16 Mar 2023

Best of British is taking place upstairs in the Belgian Beer Café where superstrength Belgian beers are available. Host Dan Willis is also the promoter and producer. Now residing in Palm Beach, Dan could only present Aussie-Brits during the Covid years, but this year’s line-up, at least my night, were all ridgy-didge visitors from the failing state, and their perspectives on things Oz are funny. No Brexit jokes so maybe it’s no joke. Dan appears in his own show, The Meaning of Wife, only this Saturday night, 18 March.

Scotswoman Jo Jo Sutherland delivered witticisms with a lovely lilt and was quick on her feet hamming it up with some Scottish types in the front row. Focusing on family and ironic dysfunctionality, she easily sprayed idiotic bureaucracy and irrelevant behaviours. Sutherland was very playful with a mother of four in the front row who was immensely enjoying her empathy with Jo Jo. Besides this best of British sampler, I recommend you spend a whole hour in her presence in her own show, Growing Old Disgracefully, this Friday and Saturday, 17-18 March. Growing old disgracefully was certainly a theme of my night of Best of British.

I was disappointed Andy Askins did not compute in the Fringe website search engine as I want to see more on him. His schtick is beautifully deadpan and ironic, extending ideas to the ridiculous. Plenty of funnily disturbing self-deprecation, including claiming he didn’t play the guitar he was hiding behind, but then he did so and proved accomplished, especially in flamenco. Pretending to be a meek man, he knows how to out-stare an audience after a funny line, waiting for it to sink in as Jack Benny did, which takes enormous confidence. Like Jo Jo’s material, kids do factor in, and Andy seems to get into trouble just being himself in the playground.

Carey Marx comes across as a bit stiff and uncomfortable but don’t be fooled by his tomfoolery. His audience antennae are always on as he switches deftly between topics. Carey’s mad word pictures of extended ridiculousness are painted with rusted-on irony. “We need more male feminists because women have done a shit job of it.” He gauges the audience and tests the material for boundaries and hopefully he finds none. He is absolutely delicious when on a roll. Carey appeared at the Adelaide International Comedy Gala at Thebarton early in February and his show, British Comedian, Carey Marx: The Dead Don’t Heckle is also on this final Fringe weekend.

I recommend all of them! It’s the last weekend of the Fringe and these comics would be a great way to turn off the lights.

David Grybowski

When: 17 Feb to 18 Mar

Where: Belgian Beer Café ‘Oostende’ - Upstairs

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au

Reuben Solo - Palindrome

★★★★1/2

Adelaide Fringe. Hell's Kitchen at Rhino Room. 17 Mar 2023

Reuben Solo is a rarity. His comedy has a unique style all of its own, and it’s not merely about telling jokes which would be lamentably formulaic. His own publicity describes his humour as “off-beat”, and it is certainly that: it is eccentric, unconventional (thank the lord!), and intelligent.

Reuben Solo’s curiously titled show Palindrome doesn’t rely on vulgarity and bad language, but it does turn sharp observation and oh-so-funny acidic comment on the seemingly ordinary things we do and the trite things we say in our daily lives, which, when unpacked, border on being meaningless. By way of illustration, Solo seizes on the debut single What Makes You Beautiful by British-Irish boy band One Direction. The song includes the lyric ‘You don't know you're beautiful, oh oh / That's what makes you beautiful’, and Solo examines this in hysterical detail. If she did know, Solo asks, then she wouldn’t be beautiful, and so she mustn’t be told, because if she is told then she’d know and she’d no longer …. you get the idea! This gag goes on and on for some time, and as it ludicrously and hilariously unfolds, and becomes more and more convoluted, the audience is falling about the place with tears rolling down their faces. Literally. And all the time, Solo has a dead pan look on his face, with an occasional wry smile.

Solo loves paradoxes, and his show is brimming with hilarious examples. He talks about skydiving, and the nature of the backup safety parachute. He quips with a playful glint in his hypnotic eyes that there isn’t a third parachute because it is assumed the backup parachute is failsafe. So why isn’t it the primary one, Solo asks? Again, Solo harvests this gag for all its worth, and although it seems we are falling down a bottomless rabbit hole like Alice, it truly doesn’t get tiresome, and it seems our well of laughter is also endless.

Audience interaction is one of the basics of a classy comedian’s bag of tools, but Solo does it differently. He gives a very funny Ahn Do brush with fame demonstration, but his guest is someone from the audience. Solo asks the guest questions, listens very carefully to the answers and steers the conversation in surprising ways. His guest is all the time surprisingly comfortable and unwittingly gives up personal titbits that Solo uses to advantage. The final result is side splittingly funny. In another routine, Solo ‘sabotages’ the microphone that his guest used, and the repartee takes on a very distinctive and hilarious direction.

So, why Palindrome? This reviewer surmises that Reuben Solo delights in dissecting what people say and do, and then putting it all back togetheragain in order to expose its essence. But as he reassembles it, unlike a palindrome, the process is not perfectly reversible, and this is one of the kernels of his comedy.

Reuben Solo comes across as self-deprecating and humble, or is he? What if he was? Whatever...… his material is excellent, and his (next) show is not to be missed!

Kym Clayton

When: 17 to 18 Mar

Where: Rhino Room

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au