★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Goodwood Theatre. 17 Mar 2023
Written and performed by Ty Autry, A Southern Fairytale is not an unfamiliar story, sadly. It is about a young, gay Christian growing up in a small and out-of-the way town in Georgia, in the ‘deep south’ of the USA, and coming to terms with the way God has made him in an intolerant society. The very expression itself – ‘deep south’ – is enough to warn us this is not going to be a pleasant story, and it isn’t.
The use of the term ‘fairytale’ in the title of the show is not just a nod to its gay themes; it also points to the fact there is eventually a happy ending (oops….no pun intended!). Fairytales usually involve a central hero/heroine who is rewarded for successfully carrying out various challenges and in A Southern Fairytale the hero is named Alex Belmont, and he is played by Autry. Belmont is Autry, for this is an autobiographical one-hander – it is Autry’s own turbulent story.
The play unfolds chapter by chapter and Alex recounts all the usual milestones in the life of a young gay man: his first crush, his parents finding out he is gay, punishments, confusion, bullying, ostracism, anger, acceptance, retreating back into the closet, masquerading as heterosexual, dealing with gossip and innuendo, and the list goes on. As previously said, this is familiar territory, and of course it is not just confined to the ‘deep south’, but they excel at cruelty. And it gets worse. The story also delves into Alex’s excommunication from his church, him being sent to conversion therapy, and dealing with a disturbed father who thinks the root course of his son’s problem is him being possessed by a demon!
Autry explores the ‘routine’ events with sincerity – after all, it’s his own lived experience – but he shies away from deeply looking into the more toxic aspects, such as conversion therapy, and this is perhaps the Achilles’ heel of the show. People can be crushed by the obscene, repugnant, and immoral practice of conversion therapy. It is blight. Some survive it, as did Autry, and their stories need to be told. The inclusion in the text of richer descriptions of conversion therapy experiences would undoubtedly make for a much weightier theatrical experience, but Autry’s not insubstantial performance skills are surely up to the task of tempering the bleak with drollness and ‘light and shade’.
As Belmont, Autry is totally likeable. He moves around the minimalist set comfortably and engages with every member of the audience at various times. It feels very intimate. He directs a smile to a woman, and a pained and penetrating look to her husband. A sharp glance here, a quizzical look there. There is the occasional silence while he waits for laughter to fall away, but the silence is also poignant, almost heart-breaking.
As with all fairytales, our hero safely comes out the other side. Autry is certainly a little damaged, but he looks forward with wonderment and anticipation to the next fairytale to see what life has in store for him.
A Southern Fairytale has been around for several years. It is performed with style, sincerity, humour, wit, charm, and much confidence. Autry might now consider applying his talents to refreshing the script to ensure that it transcends the familiar and becomes an even more important weapon in the ongoing struggle against homophobia, especially in the increasingly conservative US where anti-queer legislation is a growth industry.
Kym Clayton
When: 17 to 18 Mar
Where: Goodwood Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Kidd Pivot in association with Eponymous. 17 Mar 2023
Canadian mob Kidd Pivot have been a long-standing force for entertaining entanglements of dance with theatre. In Revisor, the highly credentialed artistic director, Crystal Pite, and Writer-in-Residence Jonathon Young have created a cracker situation in re-interpreting Russian Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 play, The Government Inspector, utilising all manner of theatrical trickery.
Gogol apparently was surprised his deep and meaningful tale was interpreted as farce, which is how everybody ever since treats it, except for an expressionistic Russian production nearly 100 years ago and its descendants. But Pite and Young have positively supercharged it. Brilliantly costumed like their egos, the village bureaucrats are anxious about the news of an inspector from headquarters checking up on them. The mirth is non-stop as they mistake a penurious minor official for the inspector, who readily accepts bribes and largess from the gormless rubes.
The opening combination of dance, acting, and voice on a minimalist and moody set accompanied by chiaroscuro lighting and tension-laden original music is absolutely thrilling to behold. Bravo! The dancer/actors exaggerate and angulate with crisp precision. Individuals morph into swarms and tableaus are swept away as fast as they are formed. And here’s the kicker; whilst the performers mouth their words, their voices are dissociated with slight mistiming recreating everything funny about a bad Zoom meeting. The whole thing was a feast.
And then everything changes. Smack in the middle of the show is a very long tranche of modern dance de rigueur in comfortable clothing and abstraction to convey Gogol’s more serious points about corruption of the soul. It is enervating and while well executed and a thrill for the pure dance fans, it misses the theatrical panache of the first segment.
Eventually, the devices of the opening scenes return and the focus is on the letter, but the delicious fright on the faces of the bureaucrats when the real inspector is announced is missing. Nonetheless, the excellence of the performances both on stage and by the voice artists are unchallengeable. And Crystal Pite’s choreography and direction are awesome. The whole shebang is technically extraordinary to watch but it’s two speed format was peculiar.
David Grybowski
When: 17 to 19 Mar
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Jack & Jill’s Basement Bar. 15 Mar 2023
Eric is a former submariner with Her Majesty’s Navy. He served on nuclear submarines and has signed the Official Secrets Act, which prevents him from disclosing any information that might be against the interests of the British state. So, what can fifty minutes of ‘tale telling’ by a submariner really get into? Well, as it turns out – lots, and its intriguing and funny.
The show is billed as comedy/storytelling, but it’s not stand-up, which is a blessing in disguise, because if it were it might well have inevitably slipped into gratuitously bad language and sexual innuendo. This show has none of that. Rather, it is a heartfelt and genial rendering of Eric’s time in the Royal navy and the adventures he has experienced. And there are lots of those: some very funny, others achingly sad (but usually with a well-timed rib-tickling punchline!), and one or two that are genuinely distressing.
Eric’s description of his initial training, especially about how to escape a submarine, are jaw dropping. The stories he tells are richly described – you almost feel you are there but are glad you aren’t! – and they come thick and fast.
Eric is a generous and warm fellow, and you can believe that the safety of the free world was in good hands when he was below the waves. He has a free and inclusive style with the audience, and it seems there might always be former servicemen and women at his shows. They keep him sincere (but I don’t think he has a dishonest bone in his body!) and can be heard muttering agreement and endorsement of his reflections.
When the show was over, I walked back up the stairs in the daylight with a smile on my face and better appreciation of the life of a submariner – with its danger, deprivations, mateship, and salty humour – but all the time glad that it was never me!
Kym Clayton
When: 15 to 18 Mar
Where: Jack and Jill’s Basement Bar
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Festival Theatre. 15 Mar 2023
The curtain lifts and a giant fabric is risen into the air, and then another. They twist and bellow with unworldly suspension. And then they are let go and infused with a life of their own; the fabrics defy gravity. They are beautifully lit and dance to music in a mesmerising show. The audience applauds. That was only the first five minutes and a harbinger that, for the following fifty-five minutes, we would also feel a lightness of being.
Circus performers Seth Bloom and Christina Gelsone have developed a sublime show in collaboration with kinetic sculptor Daniel Wurtzel. From their base in New York City, their touring physical theatre company, Acrobuffos, has taken Air Play to over ninety theatres worldwide and has been seen by 150,000 people.
The clowns appear in monochromatic outfits of yellow and red dressed like Depression-era young adolescents. An older brother teases his sister mercilessly as they playfully bring out their aerially unchallenged toys from their colour-coordinated suitcases. There are stunning kinetic tableaus of floating orbs and twinkling stars abiding in the heavens, and one gasps at the wonder of it all. It’s all coordinated with mood-altering musical selections and subtle lighting by Jeanne Koenig to create a visual and audial feast. Bloom and Gelsone are highly expressive with childlike gestures and grimaces of pure joy and wonder, and their physical clowning is delightful. Some of the balloons are big enough to fit into and they do a hilarious scene within the giants.
Director West Hyler can direct the performers but the activities of the gravity-defying objects is unique every show. So is the audience participation and it’s amazing how frequently people seem more mischievous or incompetent than helpful. Consequently, the balloon-over-the-audience bit, like at a rock concert, lingered longer than it should have. And like siblings, they had a falling out and seemed to go their separate ways with their suitcases; this was emotionally charged but laden with pathos.
Air Play is a show for all ages. It’s a simple idea but extremely difficult to actually create and execute as the six years of development attests. This is a dream of flight come true in all its beauty and grace. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 15 to 19 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. James Clark. Crack Café. 15 Mar 2023
Finding the Crack Café can be a challenge, since it’s tucked away behind Victoria Square in what seems a seedy locale, but find your way upstairs and there’s a perfectly presentable venue with a perfectly presentable host. James Clark hails from Sydney, where he works in a bank (‘Which bank?’ I have no idea). He has a luxurious spread of hair and a presentable manner, except perhaps when he begins describing nurses by their attributes rather than their skills. To be fair, he seemed to find most women offensive, from their weight (which affects his ability to get an erection while being nursed) to their skill sets (Serena Williams? Oh, yeah, she gets paid the same as men for playing three sets instead of five…).
He began his evening show with an observation; he’d recently seen SAPOL’s police greys, opining that he was taken aback to discover a police force who still used horses. ‘How did they perform an arrest?’ formed the basis of the next little sketch. In the same way as anyone else might, I suppose, since the NSW Police have horses, as do Victoria Police and many others, I’m sure.
That little warmup over, it was on with the show, James engaging audience members to help him flesh out his corporate ideals. This was confusing. We learned later that he had once been caught in flagrante delicto in the bank, but little else. This seemed odd for a show which billed itself about being for Corporates and the work/life balance, for James was most comfortable interrogating his audience and using their material rather than developing his own, or indeed delving into the corporate world.
He found an HR person from the Police (she quickly pointed out she was not uniform branch), a cagey man who ‘did things’ and ‘traded things’ and ‘procured things’ (who he labelled a drug dealer), and there was a teacher in the front row who wore red shoes and had been with his partner for 40 years. These are not corporate types. Lastly, through judicious questioning James unearthed a woman who confessed to having been sent penis pictures, and to having saved them on her phone. In a photo album. Why this became quite the cause celebre I cannot say, but it is clear James’ fancy was tickled.
Also, clearly, this had little to do with comedy for corporates. Now I know this review seems sour and confused, and the 55 minute show was in no way bad, but the lack of real direction, the fact that little of the show seemed to have anything to do with ‘work life balance’ and the fact that he seemed quite interested in pictures of penises made me wonder if a scripted show existed or if ‘seat of the pants she’ll be right’ was more the order of the night.
Perhaps he was here to practise a little social anthropology.
At one point he mentioned murder and barrels, so he’d done some research into the state’s finer points, although at several responses to questions he suggested South Australian ‘flexed’, which I assume to be a posturing display. And just like that – with a hastily thrown in ‘I’ve been James Clark. Goodnight’ it was over. I do wish they’d practise a wrap and an outro, at the very least. It would make all the difference.
Alex Wheaton
When: 15 to 18 Mar
Where: Crack Café
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au