★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Breakout. The Mill. 24 Feb 2022
Occasionally The Fringe throws up morsels of profound humanity.
Here comes Matthew Barker to champion the strange scattered and shattered world of those living in care with dementia.
His work, The Fishbowl, performed with Evie Leonard and directed by Stephanie Daughtry, presents a series of vignettes of the often chaotic world within “the fishbowl” of a care home. He plays it all disturbingly close to the bone since he has had a day job as a carer in just such a home, working with music as a tool of connection and release for dementia sufferers. So, one could call it almost docu-theatre, since its verite is first-hand.
However, there are about twenty characters, staff and patients, thrown into the mix of this show. There is even one audience member roped in to say lines - doing so very well on the night this critic attended.
Of course, the Breakout is a very intimate space and the action of the show itself spins in a contained round in the centre. The audience is provided with a laminated page of words for Loch Lomond which Barker uses as a demonstration of the significant connecting power found between dementia sufferers and singalongs. His own voice is so powerful and beautiful that, indeed, even the shyest of audience singers is emboldened to join in.
That powerful voice is a little too strong when the play’s dialogue calls for shouting. Some consider shouting to be a weakness onstage albeit in this instance it is showing just how intolerably violently some of those hapless Alzheimers patients are treated by poorly-paid and harried carers.
Barker pulls no punches when demonstrating how roughly old people often are handled and how indifferent some staff can be to the individuals in their care. He uses assorted tools from projections on suspended sheets to a wonderful soundscape of the layers and layers of prosaic sounds which background daily life.
The depiction of a dementia patient lost in real or imagined music is both moving and enlightening. Indeed, those words encapsulate the production: moving and enlightening.
There is nothing ordinary about Barker’s play - except that it observes that which has become very ordinary in the ever-more-common world of dementia.
That’s his “fish bowl” allusion - their no-privacy enclosed world staffed by observers. It is apposite.
While Barker can no more explain the epidemic phenomenon of dementia than can the medical world, his play studies its facets and illustrates compassionate ways to communicate with those beloved lost ones.
One gathers that it is a work with future plans. In this case, it is an important work which should be powerfully supported and, perchance, soon seen by every care worker in the world.
With, perhaps, a bit more singing from Barker. And a few grammatical amendments.
He has created memorable work about not remembering.
Samela Harris
When: 24 Feb to 6 Mar
Where: The Mill
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Donmar Warehouse. Old Queen’s Theatre. 23 Feb 2022
Equipped with headphones and a few at a time, the masked and vax-checked audience is carefully guided into the half-light of the cavernous Old Queen’s. Collapsible wooden chairs are distanced back to back so people face in various directions. They are instructed to raise a hand if they have any problems.
A layout of light bars is the only set along with one wise piece of graffiti on the far wall: “If you can see, look; if you can look, observe”. The audience waits and soon is enveloped in a voyage of dark and light unlike anything in the real world. Through the headphones comes the beautiful voice of Juliet Stevenson at first describing the oddity of man suddenly going blind at the traffic lights. His wife takes him to the ophthalmologist whence others in the waiting room soon become infected with the same mysterious white blindness. Pretending also to be blind, the wife remains the only sighted person as gradually the entire city goes blind with a panic-stricken government locking away the infected under armed guard. And thus does she describe the contagion of blindness, as created by Jose Saramago in his Nobel Prize-winning novel.
It is not surprising that this production, adapted by playwright Simon Stephens and directed by Walter Meierjohann for the UK’s Donmar Warehouse, has been received with effusive acclaim around the world. It is immersive theatre at its sublime best. The technology by which Stevenson’s voice is delivered through the headphone is so acute that one actually believes she is breathing in one’s ear as she whispers the terrible truths of this other plague. From time to time, a great rumbling soundscape designed by Ben and Max Ringham oppresses the senses. One recoils in shock from occasional crackling flashes of blinding white light. Bodily defences alert, one is carried deep into Saramago’s fearful dystopia for 70 intense minutes. When, finally, one is released into the light and air of the outside world with a glimmer of hope, it is to emerge into our own ongoing plague and the worlds merge in a surreal after-wash sensation. And Adelaide’s clear blue sky is the most beautiful thing in the world.
Samela Harris
When: 23 Feb to 20 Mar
Where: Queens Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Safari Street Creative. The Holden Street Theatres. 23 Feb 2022
Off with the heads of the dominant patriarchy! At least that’s what the daughter thinks. The action opens with parents Chris and Kate angsty-busy on their phones, tolerating a waiting room, delving out political diatribe and trading withering repartee worthy of David Williamson or West Wing. Don’t try to grope for the details, the gist of it will get you by. Actors Spencer Scholz and Samantha Riley exude who they play; Chris is a political leader in government and Kate is the party’s campaign manager. They have all the charm of snakes. But while Scholz and Riley only just got engaged, Chris and Kate are a confusing and messed up un-coupling. And they have been called into the school to deal with their daughter’s mischief. But we learn it is they who should have their hands slapped.
In this world premiere, playwright Spencer Scholz parrots the claptrap and cliches we’ve come to expect from these shallow characters but he creatively entangles politics with poor parenting, and amply shows how destructive are the party games of their work lives when turned on each other and applied to their daughter. The play takes on a fistful of social and political issues and is very sophisticated for a new writer. It is biting satire with nifty phrases, like “do you want to be right or do you want to win?” as Chris and Kate assess and reassess the pros and cons, and the core of what they do. Yet the actors rip through the script, shout and trounce on some nuance. So many potent moments deserve more time and the dialogue dissolves into ugly bickering. Maybe there wasn’t a director as no director credit is given. But whoever was boss managed to turn a radio play into lively theatre with dynamic doses of movement and body language. Riley is especially watchable – she looks the part and Scholz generously gave her the best opportunities for character backgrounding and garnering audience sympathy for Kate.
The power parents are caught in the headlights of their political careers, and it doesn’t appear like anything will change, so sadly the Chris and Kate you saw at the beginning is what you get in the end. A tragi-comedy.
David Grybowski
When: 22 to 27 Feb
Where: The Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Veda Hille and Amiel Gladstone. Holden Street Theatres. 23 Feb 2022
Creative director Martha Lott of Hindmarsh’s Holden Street Theatres has innovated again. Using loot from the Holden Street Theatres’ Edinburgh Fringe Award, she had brought to Adelaide four 70-minute film renditions of theatrical productions emanating from Vancouver, Canada, that were first shown at the 2021 Edinburgh Fringe, and called it the On Screen Program. In today’s Covid-compromised world, this is another way to see world-class theatre as it can’t always come here by Qantas. Lott makes the viewing experience a very comfortable one with widely spaced comfy chairs - and side tables for your dinner and drinks purchased on site - facing a wall-mounted screen in a lovely room of a Hindmarsh heritage home.
Call me a luddite, but I never heard of Craigslist. It’s a comprehensive way of connecting with people about all sorts of things: buying and selling, jobs, housing, discussion forums, community events including rants, etc. I looked it up for Adelaide and it’s under-utilised compared to what I saw on the Vancouver site. I quickly found this little gem, “To lady who bought us hot chocolate at Timmy's on 8th Avenue in New West thank you very kindly that was so sweet of you and may I say you are one attractive lady.” Now take this nugget, make a song out of it, visualise it for theatre or camera and multiply by 100, and you have the crown jewels of a wonderfully whimsical show. Bravo!
In our Covid-compromised days, Craigslist would have been a terrific outlet for the locked down and lonely (and also the prowler as my example could indicate, but this show doesn’t go down dark alleys). Writer, musical director and producer Veda Hille is classically trained and is the pandemic artist-in-residence at The Clutch in Vancouver. This project, a collaboration with Bill Richardson and Director Amiel Gladstone, is one of a few to get the company through. The production values of single performers shown in isolated squares of black stacked together like unconnected apartment dwellers epitomises the sadly sweet people driven in droves to the Craigslist community. All the songs are of the musical theatre variety keying off the quirky posts.
The performances without exception are of top quality that speak with body language, props, eccentric accoutrements, fine voices and zany personalities to match the material garnered or interpreted from Craigslist postings.
This production is entirely covid-influenced in choosing the Craigslist community as its topic, devising a production style to reflect quarantine, creating the show with social distancing in the studio and filming it for export. Craigslist is a lesson in how to make theatre about isolated people in a way where nobody sees anybody and then to show it around the world without leaving home. Bravo!
The other three shows of the On Screen Program are: Inside/Out: A Prison Memoir, 1 Hour Photo, and The Darlings: A Provocative Evening of Drag from Vancouver.
David Grybowski
When: 15 Feb to 20 March
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Electric Dreams. SA Museum Pacific Cultures Gallery. 22 February 2022
Producer Electric Dreams from Britain creates dynamic amusements using interactive virtual reality (VR) technology originated by London’s StudioGoGo. There are a number of VR shows at the Fringe and Electric Dreams is presenting two of them, as well as a day-long conference on immersive storytelling and this one.
Wonderful that a show entitled Anthropocene is located in the midst of the museum’s collection of objects from the Pacific. The geological timeline of the earth is divided into time-chunks and we are living in the Holocene. However, there is a movement to have all or part of it renamed the Anthropocene to reflect Humankind’s effect on the geological record through anthropogenic effects like increasing CO2, cultivation, urbanisation and other processes.
On stage is a large QR code giving audience access to the performance guide which is rather difficult to read given the background colour is slate grey and all the writing and symbols are far too small - ironic given this work is based on good design. Composer Jamie Perera gives an introduction and some explanation concerning the origins of the work. It’s complicated. Perera and his team accumulated data relevant to climate change and its social implications eg GDP) - all of it harmfully rising in accelerating trends especially since 1850 - and converted it into sound; a process known as sonification. Perera makes a good example by holding out his hand and singing tones that vary high and low with the length of his fingers (something to try at home.) These data are displayed in a chronological chart in the performance guide along with major anthropological events like the origin of farming and the Industrial Revolution over the last 12,000 years. Good luck trying to relate these data to the music, but that’s not the point, just taking in the audiovisual components is enough for your role.
The show comprises a film and score. Who created the film is not clear, maybe Perera did? The music is increasingly complex - strident and rather unrelenting. As layers of sound are added so are layers of imaging, similar to the way sediments are layered in a geological section. Finally, you view over a dozen thin strips of images on the small screen which are associated with the sonified data. Occasionally, screen-wide images are overlain and recorded voice-overs compete with the orchestral score. The whole thing increases in tempo and urgency – one is reminded of Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance from 1982.
Anthropocene in C Major was all of contemplative, mesmerising, hypnotic, cacophonic and a little tedious at various times due to the stability of the overarching audio and visual theme. Some help arrived with Julian Ferraretto playing an electric violin, but one wonders how he felt competing with the electronic orchestra and voices? Perera remained on stage the whole time behind a PC. At the end of the film, he explained that every show is different, but his own role in the live showing is not clear.
Perera spoke of climate change anxiety and even grief in his epilogue. If you’re feeling either or both of these, you will find no comfort here. But if you are in denial, this show will give you a good shake. It’s a curious and technical project matching the data to your senses.
David Grybowski
When: 19 & 22 Feb
Where: SA Museum Pacific Cultures Gallery
Bookings: Season Closed