★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. National Wine Centre. 19 Feb 2021
More than 40 years on, Fawlty Towers lives through its legacy as the best British sitcom of all time, in this case via a dinner experience hosted by the main characters; Sybil and Basil Fawlty, and Manuel, the Spanish Waiter.
With only three characters to ‘host’ the evening, it’s essential that the three are excellent and strong performers, able to exert influence upon a room of over 100 people. The simple truth is the characters from Fawlty Towers are grossly overplayed caricatures and must be played as such.
Nicholas Richard as Manuel was probably the best of the three, though Monique Lewis Reynolds (Sybil) pushed him hard, especially when she revealed her outstanding singing voice in wishing some of our number Happy Birthday.
Jack Newell as the quite youthful Basil Fawlty simply did not have the strength of characterisation to cut through the hubbub. He hovered around the edges, made acerbic comments to some tables (which no-one else could hear) and overused a newspaper prop to little effect.
This meant a great deal did not happen on this, the first night of the Fringe, in a new venue, when the dining ran well over an hour late. The result of this appeared to be that there was not enough script to cover the time period, so much of the extra time was used by the audience getting to know each other while nothing else was happening. My notes make mention of the spare table, the bread rolls, and the butter – all gags as the evening progressed – followed by Manuel’s solo turn when he is asked to ‘wait on table’, but these are highlights in a show which needs to get so much better. The inevitable Basil The Rat made an appearance late in the evening, which is nice.
By the way, the meal was perfectly acceptable, and may have been even better if it had come out on time, but that is speculation. How good people expect a show such as this to be is also open to speculation, but I saw this in a very early iteration (around 2000) and it was wickedly rude and so very funny.
Alex Wheaton
When: 19 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: National Wine Centre or Adelaide Oval Pavilion
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
The chaser.com.au and The Shovel. The Viago, Gluttony, Rymill Park. 20 Feb 2021
The dynamic duo is back in Adelaide for their second anti-experts-themed review of the year’s shenanigans. James Schloeffel heads up theshovel.com.au which is a very funny satirical fake news site. If you only have a minute, just read the headlines, but delve into the text when you can. Charles Firth is a co-founder of The Chaser (CNNNN, War on Everything) and was an executive producer of ABC’s axed satirical news show, The Roast. He currently has a host of news-related comedy projects.
The format is the same - their dialogue is prompted by slides illustrating their points with graphs, Twitter twattle, and photoshopped funny faces of politicians and influencers we love to hate. I hoped they had at least finished writing their show when I saw that they hadn’t finished dressing – appearing in white shirts and jackets with boxer shorts and thongs. More on that later.
The first theme, naturally, was the virus. They sold out last year filling every seat, so filling only every second seat thanks to COVID is simply cruel. There are some funny theories about the virus. Pete Evans’s Instagram and Facebook accounts have been removed for repeatedly sharing debunked claims, and his useless Biocharger got a good bucketing. The virus is having a big effect on Madonna but that’s because she wears her mask over her eye instead of her mouth. Firth was so upset at Treasurer Josh for misplacing $60 billion dollars in COVID relief funding that he yelled our ears off.
The second segment was on conspiracies. I never heard about online furniture ads having a subtext of selling children but I try not to hear these things - it’s their job to find them. And QAnon is closer to the PM than you think. But so it a rape scandal, which wasn’t mentioned because the show is older than one week.
The last segment on ScoMo was best of all. They focused on his incessant media campaign about his everyday self, which seems like a never-ending photo opportunity. Firth did some research to uncover an army of media consultants. And the picture of him working from home, gosh, the guys dressed just like him.
The international content promised in the ad pictures is absent – not a bo-peep about Trump - and the list of topics was quite different than advertised. While the guys are certainly thorough and sharp-tongued no matter what the subject, the format is tired. The mock-up of the Biocharger is not enough in the prop department. More show and less tell.
David Grybowski
When: 19 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: The Virago, Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
The Green Guys Company. The Arch , Holden Street Theatres. 20 Feb 2021
The parlour room set was exquisite and belonged to a teahouse called Monkwell Manor, not to be confused with Monkswell Manor. The usual suspects arrive, the power is dodgy, the storm is stormy, and the phone line is cut. Sounds a bit like The Mousetrap. This time, Agatha Christie herself is the guest of honour – but alas, she is gone missing yet the seven guests and bewildered host are hopeful she’ll turn up anyway. Will Agatha Christie arrive? To pass the time, Dr McQueen suggests a macabre parlour game that is a melange of The Mousetrap and Clue. Will the menace turn into malice? Aw, shucks, the subtitle of the play is Who Killed Agatha Christie? It’s a convoluted whodunnit, but I guess that’s the point.
Playwright Neale Irwin has a lot of fun with Agatha Christie by combining her life and her oeuvre. An epilogue provided some context for the narrative – a fictitious guess about the ten days of her real-life disappearance in December 1926 (her mother died in April and her husband left her in August). One of the characters is Major Belcher, a friend of the husband’s lover. And the husband’s lover was named Neele. Wait, isn’t the author also named Neale? Spooky. And I think I saw the makings of Miss Marple in the parlour?
Irwin, director Zoe Tidemann and the players channel the Christie catalogue with alacrity and verve, with the help of stunningly detailed costuming. The characterisations are bright and intriguing even if stereotyped and familiar. Tidemann gives each their star turn but the overplay inherent in a spoof was successful only to varying degrees. A difficult balance indeed.
Near the end of the play, audience members are invited to guess who the culprit is via a website vote accessed with a QR code - a useless gesture as it is subsequently unmentioned.
Charming idea to weave the author into one of her murderous plots in this world premiere production.
David Grybowski
When: 19 to 28 Feb
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Preachrs Podcast Online & Onstage. Grayson’s Room, Mercure Grosvenor Hotel. 19 Feb 2021
The Mercure Grosvenor Hotel Adelaide is as grim as a deceased estate with everything on the ground floor closed, while it was party-time next door at the Strathmore. One proceeds up the stairs to the first floor which had the hush of a funeral home. A hostess directs you to your viewing room. But wake for it; the Mercure is actually abuzz with Fringe shows, yet maybe due to COVID, nothing is happening in the ample common space. A perfect situation for MURDER!
Great Detectives did such great box office in Australian tours in 2016, 2017 and 2018 that a sequel was needed to keep a good thing going. Dressed in snappy black in front of 1950s mics, Benjamin Maio Mackay, Eden Trebilco, Julia Sciacca, and Jennifer Barry return to voice a couple of murder intrigues in an adventure each for reprised female ‘frisco private eye, Candy Matson, and insurance investigator, Johnny Dollar. Aside from our heroes are a plethora of hard-boiled voice portraits harking back to the popularity of American mystery radio drama of mid last century. The audience is invited into the recording studio and enjoys the normally unseen physical interactions.
With a satirical bent and scripts in hand, the performers convey the energy, risk, spontaneity and excitement of improvisation with versatile vocal virtuosity. Some accented characterisations are crackers. You are right there on a San Francisco tram or in some eccentric’s mansion with them. The plotlines are twisted and unguessable, yet thematically familiar of the genre.
If you need introduction to live radio serial drama or crave another fix, this is the ticket. And if you like what you see, this production company has another ten shows on in the Fringe.
David Grybowski
When: 19 to 28 Feb
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe Festival. The Studio at Holden Street Theatres. 20 Feb 2021
Lost Lives is a new play for two actors written by Spencer Scholz and is presented by the relatively new company Safari Street Creative. The company’s promotional material states they are committed to theatre that is “dangerous, exhilarating and unpretentious”. Lost Lives is a solid attempt to rise to that mission, but it would benefit from being workshopped to bring the grittier themes to the surface.
The action of the play centres on a bedroom that is the scene of a murder that has happened sometime in the recent past, and it’s a bloody mess, literally. A forensic cleaning crew of two is assigned to the scene, and both have back stories: ‘she’ (played by Esther Michelsen) has a former association with the murder victim, and ‘he’ (Ceejay Singh) is on his first assignment, wants to impress, and is keen for a positive recommendation from her. He is muslim and nervous that because the alleged perpetrator of the crime was also muslim this might somehow impact on her perception of how well he does his job. In a world where people are often unjustly ‘guilty’ by association, this theme might have been explored more deeply than it was. As the action unfolds, we learn more about the two characters, particularly her, but not enough of it contributes to shoring up the central story line, that the clean-up is happening the same day as the culmination of the trial of the alleged murderer.
Michelsen and Singh at times underplayed their characters but this is more likely the consequence of a text that, with few exceptions, didn’t demand heightened and more nuanced responses. The resonant ambience of The Studio at times combined with the distinct spoken accents of the two actors to impact vocal clarity. Speaking from behind masks and face shields, which were part of the realistic costuming, compounded this problem on occasion.
Scholz directed the production and capably moved his cast around the minimalist but effectively designed set.
Kym Clayton
When: 20 to 27 Feb
Where: The Studio, Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au