★★★½
Adelaide Fringe Festival. Ukulele Death Squad. Grace Emily Hotel. 9 Mar 2021
The Grace has always been an intimate venue; it’s been made more so by the addition of tables to keep patrons apart in these COVID times. Putting five people on the small stage here is always a big ask, but as three were vocalists who didn’t need too much room, it worked okay for them. Including the bit where Matt Barker leaps over the foldback and sings Stagger Lee in our faces!
The Death Squad is usually comprised of at least three ukuleles, creating a brilliant and skilful wall of sound and raucous entertainment, converting many a ukulele sceptic into hard core disciple. That’s probably not going to be the case with this iteration; there’s only one ukulele on offer, along with a U-bass. As founder and sole uke player Ben Roberts explained, it was just too difficult (and probably not cost effective given reduced audience capacities) getting the others in and out from interstate where they now reside. The solution was to bring in Matt Barker, Alice Barker and Ashlee Randall to supplement Roberts and bassist Eamon Burke.
The five vocalists work hard to fill in the sound, and for the most part, it works. Opening with The Good Son, they make clear from the start that they have their own take on Cave’s songs. Randall and Barker use their voices to flesh out the sound, utilising sound as well as song, sometimes braying, screeching, with Randall creating great effects through a kazoo. For the most part, particularly on Red Right Hand, it works very well.
In contrast, the mellifluous Eamon Burke gave us People Just Ain’t No Good (featured in the great bar scene in Shrek 2); a stunning rendition, beautifully harmonised and mostly allowed to breathe on its own.
Where the Wild Roses Grow is given a forceful rendition from Randall, while Roberts demonstrates the skill of his playing with a very melodic Into My Arms. He also intros The Ship Song with some excellent playing, but the song itself is perhaps the least successful vocally, with the multiple voices crowding the song.
Roland S Howards’ teen angst anthem Shivers’ from Boys Next Door days gets an airing, which again could have used a bit more space in the arrangement, and the tempo picks up again with Matt Barker’s aforementioned high octane version of Stagger Lee. The quintet close out with Grinderman’s Palaces of Montezuma.
It isn’t really a night for the ukulele, but as a tribute to Nick Cave, it is entertaining and well presented. The impression is given that these singers will be joining the remaining members of the ‘Squad in a seven piece line up; now that will be something to see!
Arna Eyers-White
When: 16 Mar
Where: The Grace Emily
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival of Arts. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 7 Mar 2021
Igor Levit, one of the world’s best pianists, sits down at Steinway Model D Concert Grand Piano No. 582125 in Berlin and plays Beethoven’s mighty 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120, commonly known as the Diabelli Variations, to an audience half way around the world in Adelaide (and Mount Gambier). It is 11am in Berlin, and 8.30pm in Adelaide, and Levit and the audience are connected by the technical wonders of live-streaming. The result is an outstanding and joyous success.
Throughout the COVID pandemic we have all become quite used to the live streaming of almost anything, from keep fit classes to meetings, lectures and concerts. We take it all in our stride, and Zoom will soon enter the vocabulary as both a noun and a verb. However, live streaming a solo pianist performing one of the titans of the repertoire to a festival audience is fraught. Will the audience feel a connection to the artist, and will the artist be able to feed off that? Will the vision emulate how an individual watches a soloist in action: shifting one’s gaze from hands to face to instrument to the surrounding space, in almost random order? Will the all-important sound reproduction do justice to the music? Will there be technical difficulties?
Happily, the occasion is as close to a live and instantaneous concert hall experience as one could get, notwithstanding a few fleeting and minor issues with ‘crackly’ sound. The technicians and producers who put it all together know what they are doing and understand exactly what the audience is after. One becomes so absorbed in the performance that one soon forgets about the particular nature of the event. It soon becomes just another concert, but made all that much more special by its very nature.
Festival joint artistic directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy introduce the evening and speak briefly with Levit before he begins playing. The patter is relaxed and Levit comments that he appreciates knowing the audience is there and that the physical separation is irrelevant. He says it is all about “sharing the moment”.
The Diabelli Variations comprise a waltz theme by Diabelli with thirty-three variations for piano written between 1819 and 1823 by Beethoven. The work ranks alongside J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations as one of the mightiest and greatest of the form. Unlike the approach taken in the Goldbergs and in other substantial examples of the form (even those composed by Beethoven himself), it is often difficult to recognise much of the theme in the actual variations. For each variation, Beethoven seizes on mere ‘jots’ from the original theme – an ornament, a repeated note, a pattern, a rhythmic structure – and uses them to create an astonishing array of inventive pieces that are unconstrained by the theme.
Levit enjoys himself playing the Diabellis. At times it appears as if he is toying with tempi and probing the dynamics. He is lively: a smile here, a smirk there, a leg occasionally fully stretched under the instrument, his body sometimes rising completely off the bench, a head scratch, but throughout he has a steely concentration. The result is a performance that is unfussed, fresh, incisive, questioning, individual and deeply human. Above all, it is musical and technically brilliant with a clear narrative.
At the end, Levit appears not to be able to hear the enthusiastic applause from the audience, and calmly leaves the stage allowing us to ponder the comparative quietness and simplicity of the final variation as we to try and recall the now almost forgotten waltz
Bravo Adelaide Festival for creating this wonderful event.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Rhino Room. 3 Mar 2021
“15 naked cowboys in the shower at Ram Ranch” was apparently the recorded loop intro for Paul McDermott. He came out and berated his sound guy for playing it, but both of them should have known better than to use such pathetic drivel.
On to the show. Resplendent in red velvet frock coat, McDermott cuts an odd figure these days, part Wild West huckster, part Karl Marx, part garden gnome (his words). He is sharp, and focused, and thrives on appearing scatterbrained, but as his many odes to our Prime Minister proved through the course of the night, the rage and the passion and the determination to call out stupidity remains white hot after so many years, so many outlets, so many stages.
And so, to the Rhino Room, a dilapidated club environment where Covid-19 restrictions appear to consist of a selection of posters on the walls, once you’ve logged in using your smart phone, of course. McDermott constructs a show about the pandemic only to discover that South Australia remains blissfully unconcerned and goes about its daily business without so much as a sneeze. Or a facemask (again, his words).
“I’m a sprayer, ladies and gentlemen,” he warns the front row, building to his idea that a superspreader event might indeed begin in this Pirie Street building. Talking about the pandemic has become – for comedians – this year’s topic de jour (“isn’t it a long way to fly?” and “isn’t Coopers beer sooo strong?” are previous entrants). McDermott’s take is an ode to touchscreens (he hates them) and an ode to Canberra (he hates it), where he grew up. “Now every city in the world is like Canberra in the 1970s [on a Sunday]” he quips on Covid-19 shutdowns.
So far so good; this is vintage McDermott and along with his sidekick guitarist (later revealed as Glen) the crowd is brought to a simmer, at least. After another ode to our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison (Sco-Mo No Homo) and an extended singalong to Pete’s Magic Machine (yes, an ode to a well-known TV chef), it’s all over. A good show, a powerful show, but an excellent show?
As we – the entire audience – file down the steps to Pirie Street, we are greeted by McDermott and Glen on the footpath reprising Pete’s Magic Machine. “C’mon, it’s Hillsong for fuckwits” he enthuses, leading us into another 20 minutes or so of material which he may not have been able to fit into the show. Clever, winning, and wonderful.
Five stars because it does exactly what it says then goes above and beyond.
Alex Wheaton
When: 8 to 13 Mar
Where: Rhino Room
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★
Motley & Mac. The Octagon at Gluttony – Rymill Park. 8 Mar 2021
Maybe Holiday Monday evening wasn’t a good time to have the reviewer attend? Maybe producers Motley & Mac thought nobody would come because everybody would be tired after three nights of partying? The fact is there wasn’t much showing on Holiday Monday and there was a nearly-full checkerboard house of the entertainment-starved. Perhaps Motley & Mac actually thought their program comprised the ‘best’ of the Fringe? If so, they need to get out more. The show I’m going to describe isn’t the one you would see as the talent changes every night, so there are lots of ‘bests’ at the Fringe, if you can believe it.
The Mac of Motley & Mac is Irish-born comic magician Patrick McCullagh who MC’d this night. He’s an old-school performer adeptly merging jokes and baffling magic using simple things like a deck of cards, string, and rope. But how someone can swallow an entire metre-long sausage balloon and chat with you after like nothing happened is beyond me!
Apologies in advance if the following names are incorrect. Chanteuse Lizzie started the show with a lovely rendition of A Sunday Kind Of Love and later stumped up with an air-piercing aria from La Bohème demonstrating a great range, tight dress and very high heels. Next was Stunt Man Jim who did a tall unicycle and machete-juggling act of the common busking sort. Hoop artist Miss Jane Schofield performed an act of similar quality but dropped a few hoops that rolled into the audience. Being in the front row, one was glad they weren’t the machetes! An American refugee who jumped ship last Fringe showed off basketball-spinning skills and dribbled five balls at once – an act not repeatable by anyone else in Australia. He was funny, honest and authentic with his constant exchanges with the audience. Last and perhaps least was Eileen and her suspended hoop-size ring routine which missed the wow factor, but was a nice dance.
Mac told the audience to move off quickly after the show as they had to clean the seats – as if we were frozen there, mesmerised - and then Gluttony booted everyone out of the garden at 9 pm. One felt about as welcome as a blow dryer at an ice cream party.
Maybe Motley & Mac couldn’t assemble the A Team because they wanted a night off, not sure. Hopefully, the show you attend will be amazing instead of merely pleasing.
David Grybowski
When: 19 Feb to 21 Mar
Where: The Octagon at Gluttony – Rymill Park
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★
Black Cat Theatre. Star Theatre Two at Star Theatres. 6 Mar 2021
There have been numerous stagings of Bram Stoker’s Dracula since he wrote the novel in 1897, and Black Cat’s Isaac Gates has scripted his own for the 2021 Adelaide Fringe. His version seems a mash-up of the traditional story, bits of plot lines from previous incarnations – maybe even including the 2001 musical - and a tasty morsel of Brad and Janet from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. All good fun and great ideas. But it’s too unfocussed and meanders midway.
Director Isaac Gates no doubt was aiming for a lot of farcical silliness and we get that in spades. The unfortunate overexposure of ghoulishness detracts from the horror, and a bit of subtlety would have been a counterpoint to the humour. Gates gets it that sex sells, so no opportunity is lost, but a large chunk of the show is taken over by Minaaaaaa’s grossly exaggerated vampish behaviour, although I have to admit, her song – the only song in a show that might have had many – was a wonderful diversion (written by Hebe Sayce who plays Minaaaaaa and Cohen Feher).
Isaac Gates’s Dracula – in performance, accent, costume and make-up – is a wonderful invention, but surprisingly, he left the eroticism for the rest of the characters. And surprisingly, you don’t see him enough. Chiara Pepe as Lucy also gave a relatively nuanced performance. But generally, the characters and production values are cartoonish and not sustainably interesting through the length of the show, even with the elaborate costuming.
I’m afraid things just don’t congeal.
David Grybowski
When: 4 to 13 Mar
Where: Star Theatre Two at Star Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au