★★
Adelaide Fringe. Derek Tickner. The Sky Room at The Griffins. 3 Mar 2022
Don’t expect anything as fetchingly sophisticated as the multi-armed musician of the poster. This show comprises three goes at a Theatresports game making a shared yarn from audience suggestions. Which means three times 20 minutes of sustained improvisation - a big ask if you ever tried it (and why you haven’t?) Using a couple of movie titles or themes, or places and times, the eager-to-please team turn a few words into a blockbuster musical. At least, that’s the idea.
So what do you get when you cross - for example, in my viewing - The Devil Wears Prada with The Twilight Saga? The Prada Saga? Not the greatest in live entertainment, but a terrific showcase for the fine voice and acting of Dane McFarlane to shine as the powerful fashion magazine editor. He can sustain a whole bunch of spontaneous lines and sound like a rehearsed Broadway musical! Moving on, how about the suggested place of Boston with the time of 1776? The American Revolution was a bit more knowable and consequently flowed a little easier. English-raised Derek Tickner swaggered as an overconfident British officer and is ever-eager to jump in with some game changers. The aforementioned McFarlane created another hit character in George Washington’s mother. The ever-good natured Matt Eberhardt is the team’s spiritual leader and has fun with the challenge. On the other hand, Emma Losin seems happier coagulating in a corner, hiding her talent under a bushel. Whenever prised to centre stage, her eyes plea for assistance. Keylan Davidson goes with the flow well enough but lacks initiative. Thankfully, this is where Courteney Hooper tickling the keyboard keeps things moving. Hooper senses the thrust and parry and occasionally pounds out an introductory flourish inviting a thespian to break into song. In contrast, the fellow players are decidedly blunt, calling out, “Sing it!”
Improvisation is different every night, and every moment. Sometimes it’s gelignite, sometimes it’s gelatinous. The potential for genius is however hamstrung by an unevenly skilled team.
David Grybowski
When: 1 to 5 Mar
Where: The Sky Room at The Griffins
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Matt Harvey. Warehouse Theatre. 3 Mar 2022
Periodically, the Fringe Festival suffers through an outbreak of ‘whatt-aboutism’ and ‘lets-get-back-to-our-roots’; a brief irritation of startup companies, small backstreet venues and aspirant stand-up comedians who aren’t particularly funny. Bravo for that, because it puts in place all which is required for a genuinely subversive, diversive and challenging Fringe Festival, helping to water down the seemingly endless pap of established comedians from the ‘nineties on, still extracting maximum ticket price from your credit card.
The Warehouse Theatre is just such a venue, tucked just in behind the main roads at Unley and Greenhill, freshly painted black and with a tiny bar serving shockingly good cocktails. Its performers, so far as I can make out, are just such performers, and Matt Harvey is not particularly funny. More power to them all.
Harvey’s show is an extended monologue in which he goes through his work history, the employers who have ripped him off, and his subsequent battles with Centrelink. He talks of dodgy medical claims and dodgy pay deals, and even dodgier Robodebts, so that explains the direction of the show. Referencing such seminal politically inspired band (Killing In The Name Of) should lead to some righteous rage, some emotional high, some other way of namechecking his (obviously) formative years. But no.
Towards the conclusion of his hour Harvey opines that standup comedians need to script their shows such that they circle back to the starting point; in his case working on the rides at a theme park. I’d have thought this notion might be just the way to finish off what had become a catalogue of complaints, bringing us back to the highs and lows of the roller coaster, and ending on a high. But no. “That’s the end of my show,” he observed, then paused, in the way that performers do.
It is not that Matt Hawkins is not adept; he is, but he must make more of his material. He must also overcome telegraphing the puns he has crafted, and become more natural in his engagement. He is not stilted, or poor in the craft, but undeveloped and not a natural communicator. His scripting is largely good, but needs tightening up, losing much of the rambling detail and asides. Most importantly, his show – his performance art – needs a direction and a purpose. A potted life story is not enough for most people.
Alex Wheaton
When: 3 to 6 Mar
Where: Warehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Derek Tickner. The Sky Room at The Griffins. 3 Mar 2022
Producer and musically inclined comedian Derek Tickner has been an ambitious force of comic nature for the last three Fringes and in this new show brings together four of his amusing amigos for some fun and games. Adelaide vs The World is an impressive challenge, so how does it go? I thought the show might not even start when compere Eric Tinker (Tickner in batik) lost the blue clipboard that held the precious running sheets. I know it’s blue because he asked our help to find it. It was weird enough to be part of the act, like the absently left-on mic during Tinker’s timeout for a tinkle in the toilet.
The chaos and confusion never ended. This is what Fringe shows used to be like before all these slick, well organised and rehearsed professional acts with expertly trained talent took over. Maybe we need a Fringe of the Fringe…of the Fringe.
Based on a game show format with challenges and point scoring, comedians Rich Jay and Rishi Chadha represent Adelaide in head-to-head comic combat with Team World represented by multi-tasker Finn Saara Lamberg and American funny man Matt Eberhart. Tinker sat between the teams on his stool and squashed it (his joke, not mine).
The first challenge is for each comic to say three accomplishments and the other team to guess which statement is not true. Besides the humourous banter and the fact they kind of knew one another, this was a great way to foster some audience empathy. Another game guessing the city or country from a photo is entertaining, as was naming a song from only a few bars. Interspersed with the jovial repartee and the loudmouth scorekeeper were samples of stand-up by each contestant. Rich Jay had some very decent lines like “the Gold Coast is full of fake looks but real assholes.” Rishi Chadha focused on humourous reflections of his traditional Indian upbringing, while Saara Lamberg squeezed a few chuckles out of Finnish gloom (after all, they border Russia). Doing some filling in during the clipboard hunt, we aurally adduced she left her song skills in Helsinki. Matt Eberhart looking troppo in a pineapple print shirt employs a ukulele for some improvised songs which are catchy. MC Tinker chimed in with a bit of irony and droll takes, and kept the cats herded.
It is an evening of sustained shambolism, unsophistication and slapdash that at any moment seemed capable of tipping toward a rush downstairs for a beer, but lo, it didn’t, and the momentum miraculously never ceased. Underprepared and honest, it’s whacky enough to laugh out loud.
David Grybowski
When: 1 to 5 Mar 2022
Where: The Sky Room at The Griffins
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. The Green Guys. Bakehouse Theatre. 2 Mar 2022
It is a light folly, this play by Neale Irwin.
It’s a send-up of the late King Leonard of Hutt and his famous micro-nation, Hutt River Province. This king is King Henry and he reigns over the Kingdom of Hobbes. It is actually an onion farm and an onion flies proudly on the kingdom’s flag.
The plot revolves around Henry’s rancorous twin children, Hal (short for Henry) and Henrietta. The dog called Henry has died.
The King has summoned his children home in the name of royal succession. Not that the twins are too keen to inherit the throne. They have long been estranged and now thrown together in their father’s world they have gone into some sort of manic childhood regression of jealousy and bickering.
There is plenty of fuel for laughs in this plot-line and the production has its moments.
Oddly, it is Steven Nguyen as Kenny, the kingdom’s super servile and often officious multi-tasking factotum who steals the show. He embodies the kingdom's royal herald, border guard, policeman, tourism official, immigration officer and very loyal subject. Nguyen wins laughs with his good timing and careful underplay. Similarly, David Arcidiaco’s embodiment of Prince Hal is light and bright and he impresses as a very personable young actor. These performances are in dramatic contrast to both the slovenly King, played by Mick Young and his pregnant daughter played by Nicola Grant. They both over reach for the humour with excessive volume, something director James Harvey should reign in, so to speak.
The play moves along snappily on a minimalist set of milk crates with the horrible king humming about with a walking frame.
It’s is all a bit of cheerful Fringe nonsense and an excuse to spend a precious night in the soon to-be-no-more Bakehouse Theatre.
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 19 Mar
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Lane Hinchcliffe. Hartstone-Kitney Productions. Black Box Theatre online. 1 Mar 2022
It’s best to have a big screen and good sound for this online show because, oh my, here comes the singing doctor.
Known to his patients simply as "Dr Lane”, Hinchcliffe is a medical maestro with a mission.
As he points out, on one hand he’s a GP and on the other, he’s a musician. He’s highly trained in both arts and now is using one to service the other.
He devised this autobiographical cabaret performance as an outreach to those, especially the young, who have struggled with mental health, identity, and self-esteem issues.
He was 25 years old, he says, before he could say that he was a “gay” man. Coming to terms with it consumed a vast chunk of his emotional and psychological life and he has emerged happily married and confident, determined to be there for youth in distress. That’s his day job.
As for his night job. He is one very serious musical theatre talent.
He is a one-man package because he arranges music, plays the piano sublimely and is a gifted singer with a daunting range.
In this Black Box show directed by Amelia Ryan, he illustrates his life story in hits from the musicals he encountered, breaking them nicely into a timeline. He sings snippets of Showboat, Hair, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Rent, Cats, and Chess.
The frustration one may feel as an audience member is that he gives short change on some songs and too much of others, which of course is the prerogative of someone telling their personal song history.
But, therein he dismisses Jellical Cats after an exquisite wee light tenor snippet and gives Old Man River short shrift having just proven that he is really at home in that bass baritone range and it is sublime on the ear.
Of course, he can’t sing all of everything and he does seem rather to like a spot of religion in his repertoire, which completes the ticket of something-for-everyone.
His costume is fancy stage scrubs and he pops some humour into his patter and a bit of medico yuk for good measure. Oddly, his speaking voice is light. But there’s a whole world in those tubes of his and one looks forward to hearing more.
Meanwhile, The Black Box works fabulously well. Tom Kitney with Joanne Hartstone have worked out the best tech for sound and image so that audiences can comfortably relish a quality theatre piece in a state of absolute domestic bliss.
It is a covid gift which can keep on giving, and for the Fringe their Black Box Theatre offers a suite of shows.
They have always been cutting edge good theatre and this comes highly recommended.
Samela Harris
When: On Demand
Where: On Demand at Black Box Live
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au