★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Token Events. Rhino Room – Drama Llama. 1 Mar 2023
Little Victories? It’ll take a while to understand the why, what and where Hamilton is going with this show and its title, but it’s totally worth it.
Hamilton, a man who just turned 50, in the midst of an age of intense, totally insane global and local dislocation found there’s loads to laugh about. All of it hilariously dark except, in the eyes of right wing Christian fundamentalists. Their happy place has arrived.
Hamilton regales his audience with tales great and small of his shambolic Covid pandemic and post pandemic life experiences with artful throwbacks to childhood.
We’re sucked into a cyclone of beautifully crafted, hysterically funny anecdotes and observations of just how mad 21st Century life has turned out to be (so far). The observations reverberate within us all with a universal ‘that’s me’ sentiment. We roll on with Hamilton, united as one in sympathy and cheery laughter, even at the darkest most morbid tale.
Hamilton attempts with gusto to articulate the total ‘what the actual?’ zeitgeist of this improbable age. It seems impossible. Yet he does it with tales of friendships ended over a YouTube Duck Marathon, Yoko Ono and the most stupid ordinary way Covid itself creates friendship stress.
Where are these victories the title promises?
They’re right there in our face. They are our laughter and one final punch line story summing up an hour of seemingly discombobulated madness, hiding a simple truth.
David O’Brien
When: 28 Feb to 4 Mar
Where: Rhino Room – Drama Llama
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Art Gallery of South Australia in association with Adelaide Festival. 2 Mar 2023
This is a blockbuster exhibition not to be missed! Art Gallery of South Australia’s curator Julie Robinson has spent ten years working this one out. Incredibly, AGSA has a collection of 45 Warhol photographs – all of which are on display together for the first time. Julie has augmented this with more than 200 additional photographs and their derivative artworks garnered from around the world from private and public collections.
Warhol is as quotable as Winston Churchill. “The idea is not to live forever; it is to create something that will.” Julie chronologically guides you through the Warhol oeuvre - room by room. The first gallery is lined with silver paper to replicate the 1st Factory – the Silver Factory. Silver is also emblematic of chemical photo development. In 1965, Nat Finkelstein took a snap of Warhol and Bob Dylan with the famous full-size Elvis (1963) in the background. Warhol gave the painting to Dylan who strapped it to the roof of his car.
Sometime later, he traded it with his manager for a sofa! The exhibit name plates are full of titillating minutiae and all are to be thoroughly read. Campbell soup cans (1968) aren’t far away, nor a polyptych of brightly coloured and repeated screen prints on paper - Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) (1967). Where possible, Julie establishes the creative chain – available for viewing are the photos from which the screen prints were derived.
“My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It’s being at the right place at the wrong time.” There are numerous galleries of photo’d celebrities. The famous wanted to rub shoulders with the famous artist. He would have film stars do “screen tests.” Warhol said if I could have another face, it would be that of Debbie Harris of Blondie fame. You will also see Sylvester Stallone, Mick Jagger, Yves Saint Laurent, etc. He was a fantastic collaborator experimenting with new photography technology and its derivative art forms, so also on display are many photos of himself. One of his protégés was Christopher Makos, who shot the famous Altered Image portfolio (1981) of Warhol dressed in men’s shirt, tie and jeans, but sporting a gorgeous blond wig and make-up. Makos shot many portraits of Warhol hanging out with the glitterati at Studio 54 – Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli and the fashion designer Halton. Makos recalls, “Andy met Salvador Dali at a restaurant in New York and he gave him a small painting. Dali reciprocated with a medium-sized, clear plastic bag full of trash from his studio, as a joke. Andy’s feelings were hurt.”
But you don’t have to just read what Christopher Makos wrote, you can ask him yourself. He’s here! Courtesy of the exhibition. You can attend, for a small charge, a conversation between Makos and Julie Robinson on 3 March.
“I think everybody should be a machine.” This quote is often associated with Warhol’s fascination of the machinery of the camera and the repeatability of screen printing and the repetitive imagery of the famous. There is a whole wall of Warhol self-portraits taken with a Polaroid camera.
“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Warhol made this prediction in 1968, well before the explosion of electronic social media and digital photography, so you can posit that he thought this was going to happen anyways with just magazines, artwork and interviews. What would he think now?
There is Australian connection. Henry Gillespie was introduced to Warhol in the early 1980s and Warhol asked him to sit for a portrait. He is presented clean-cut and looking over his shoulder dressed in suit and tie. Gillespie was the Australian editor for Warhols’ Interview magazine and he paid him with his portrait. There were three others in the set which were recovered from Warhol’s studio after his death. All four are reunited in this exhibition. If you want to know more about this, you can ask Henry. He’s here, too! And for a small fee, you can hear Henry in conversation with Julie Robinson on 5 May.
The photos and artwork continue right to the end when Warhol succumbed to complications during surgery in New York on 22 February 1987. In 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) sold for $195 million.
At the media launch, Christopher Makow offered many insights. He said both he and Warhol went to Catholic schools and that’s where they got their work ethic. Warhol wanted to make art for everybody. Mission accomplished.
This exhibition was created here in South Australia and is an Australian exclusive. Makow opined that there has never been such an extensive and intelligently curated exhibition of Warhol et al photography and its artistic derivatives. He said this is a show worthy of Paris, New York and London. An exceptional, brilliantly curated display of a fantastic collection. Double bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 3 Mar to 14 May
Where: Art Gallery of South Australia
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. James Seabright and Play The Spotlight. Tandanya. 28 Feb 2023
Apphia Campbell, playwright/actor has taken on a great challenge.
Daring to subsume the iconic jazz songs of Eunice Kathleen Waymon, known to us as Nina Simone, into a fabric of story celebrating a life devoted to song as activism supporting black civil rights. She did not fail the challenge.
Songs serve as a fully integrated strand of narrative, illuminating Simone’s deeply personal story and informing her art and life, as support acts throwing light on the greater story - not as the star attraction.
Campbell’s script is so winsomely deft in construction, centred around Simone’s mournful longing for her late father three days after his death. This simple linchpin is powerfully effective in providing a point to which Campbell can return to, each time she prepares to launch into the next stage of Simone’s story. Moving from childhood hopes of a classical pianist career to the face of a human rights movement.
Equally effective and simple is the set design and props. A simple single bed at which a suitcase sits on the floor end, cane chair and table with a telephone.
From the suitcase props are drawn out; letters, hats, a dress, a coat. Each simple thing adds more emotional nuance to the performance. It is show and tell with profound, yet understated, poetic depth.
Campbell as Nina Simone shimmers with passion and a deep, unaffected simple humility of being. Her interpretation of Simone’s songs is rich in the love and pain they are famed for, each filled with an expression of loss and yearning that nonetheless, has light of hope at the heart of them.
David O’Brien
Where: Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute Ngunyawayti Theatre
When: 27 Feb to 5 Mar
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Greg Fleet. Holden Street Theatres. 28 Feb 2023
The show wasn’t ready on Media Day prior to the premiere, but it’s ready now. Greg Fleet wrote himself a character disturbingly close to his own character, but they say write about what you know. Greg plays Matt, a comedian and legend and troubled mind who is looking for his comeback project. He hooks up with Amalee (Kru Harale) - a bright and bouncy young up-and-coming comic - for a podcast. But Matt is struggling with his demons.
We are introduced to Amalee during her stand-up. Amalee/Kru is Indian-Australian and Kru makes the most of the racial difference. Prior to the show, Greg asks the audience to respond to the stand-up sequences as if we are watching stand-up, but that was unnecessary. Amalee slays them with her schtick because Kru really is a comic appearing in her first play. The way she expresses irony and attitude and talks with her hands was wonderfully animated and delightfully charming. Bravo!
Greg, presumably also the director, has the actors achieve a natural, easy-going, conversational style, with ums and ahs, and thought bubbles and broken sentences. The characters are oh so real - vulnerable and relatable. You want to jump onto the stage and give them a hand – one is so at ease and empathetic with these people. Brant Eustice well plays Matt’s exasperated agent to further flesh out our protagonist’s past.
At one time, there is a series of short scenes that disturbs the flow, and in the scenes with Amalee and Matt working on the podcast, they are physically too far apart to see both at once, and if you’re eyes are on the speaker, the reaction is unviewed. More filmic quality, please! We don’t want to miss a thing. However, there’s a bit much of a bewildered Amalee struggling with a lugubrious Matt in the middle of the narrative.
It’s not a sad play, but it’s a realistic situation, and it’s sad to watch a slow burn-up, a fall from greatness - you see it unravel in front of you but there is nothing you can do. All the more poignant because of the support Matt got from his pals, and aren’t comics supposed to be funny all the time?
Once again – wonderful performances!
David Grybowski
When: 14 Feb to 12 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Arch
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Kallo Collective & A Mulled Whine Productions. Holden Street Theatres. 24 Feb 2023
Mime is great entertainment. It goes without saying. Thom Monckton studied the circus arts in New Zealand from where he hails and spent another two years at Lecoq in Paris where Geoffrey Rush learned what he does. Thom won good awards for previous shows, and here we have the Australian premiere of his newest production.
Thom has created a delectable premise where the Fool dons the crown and thinks he’s the King. It goes mostly without saying as he stumbles about the throne and has trouble with the slippery floor. His King’s double takes, sense of exasperation, inventiveness and childish joy are joyful to watch. The Fool flexes and bends and contorts his way out of trouble. He’s a problem solver clown.
The audience is invited to bring the King a present. He loves presents and will unwrap each one with great delight. One hour of dreamy and delectable fun. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 16 Feb to 5 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Studio
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au