Adelaide Festival. Lion Arts Factory. 27 Feb 2020
Kate Tempest is exactly that. A storm of spoken words, ideas, dreams. Standing on the stage in front of a backdrop featuring a large circle, she thanks us before the show; she might not get to it later, and she really wants to say thank you.
Opening her Festival show with Europe Is Lost, we are immediately plunged into her apocalyptic world view: “Europe is lost, America lost, London lost // Still we are clamouring victory // All that is meaningless rules // We have learned nothing from history”
Her head shorn of the curly red locks we’ve come to associate with her, Tempest doesn’t keep us down in the despair that it is so easy to sink into; in People’s Faces she brings a vision of hope, understanding that, “It's hard, we got our heads down and our hackles up” but there is an end, there is an end.
Tempest featured pieces from her two previous albums (both nominated for the Mercury Prize) and the most recent The Book Of Traps And Lessons, produced by the legendary Rick Rubin, who also produced the remarkable American Recordings for Johnny Cash.
It is tempting to just keep telling you what she says, but there are albums, books and plays for that. But the words just hammer, they grind, they imprint, and all the while Clare Uchima’s synthesiser loops and swirls, sometimes pounding, sometimes soothing.
The lighting was the least successful part of the show; shining bright white lights directly into the audience’s eyes is known as ‘crowdfucking’ and there was far too much of it during this performance.
But all is forgiven when Tempest croons Lessons, then bursts into Circles, reaching a crescendo of pulsating light and synth rhythm, noise and light assaulting the senses.
“I go round in circles // Not graceful, not like dancers // Not neatly, not like compass and pencil //
More like a dog on a lead, going mental.”
Kate Tempest is a force to be reckoned with.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 27 Feb
Where: Lion Arts Factory
Bookings: Closed
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Spiegeltent, Garden Of Unearthly Delights. 25 Feb 2020
What is one to make of Tim Rogers? He is a man who can do anything. Accuracy demands that be amended to ‘he is a man who can do a bit of anything’, and I feel that is partly the issue.
Liquid Nights In Bohemia Heights opens with a pretend cricket commentary on the pretend Bohemia Heights team, hosted by Tim as the pretend Reginald Tuttle on the pretend 3BH community radio station, located in the pretend town of Bohemia Heights. In this scenario, the BH first eleven are under the pump, their opponents (The Budgerigars) score is an impressive 3 for 746, before the narrative takes a turn.
In this case, truth is stranger than fiction… the show morphs into a talkback episode hosted by Tim, who is so curiously laidback he almost allows his sidekicks to steal the show, and the pearls are the pretend local advertisements, presented in 1950s fashion with live inserts and sound FX (the Foley artist).
And so, after a waffling start the guests are introduced: comedian Frank Woodley does a great bumbling turn as himself, turning in a song about Groucho Marx, the role of sadness in comedy, and empathy. His poise and his self-deprecating humour make him a community radio natural (no slight to be inferred).
Malia Walsh & Cassia Jamieson from Circus Trick Tease prove that circus and acrobatics are not really radio sports able to be easily commentated, and the final guest of the evening is Ben Marwe, singer for Adelaide rock band Bad//Dreems. I reckon they’re great, but I question how many of the audience have heard any of their stuff. Perhaps Rogers felt that was reason enough to introduce him into the show, and ask whether he was ‘an exemplar of men’.
“Yes” is my note of Marwe’s deadpan reply.
Liquid Nights In Bohemia Heights is a curious show which seems to struggle for reason. It may be a metaphor, therefore, for Rogers himself post You Am I. As one of the greats of Australian rock n roll, Rogers is to be congratulated for leaving behind his music and seeking fresh horizons, but the script is sometimes tangled and verbose, the idea behind the show likewise obscured by a lack of direction. I note the programme notes describes Tim Rogers as ‘louche’, but he appears onstage more laidback and less louche than advertised.
It may be that this review is best read as a companion piece to that of fellow luminary Tex Perkins, who played the same venue two nights later.
Alex Wheaton
When: Closed
Where: Spiegeltent, Garden Of Unearthly Delights
Bookings: Closed
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Spiegeltent, Garden Of Unearthly Delights. 27 Feb 2020
This really was quite something: Tex Perkins as himself, running through a catalogue of the swampy blues he loves, in the company of a musician as talented as Matt Walker.
In front of a full house Perkins was comfortable and in control; the showman in his natural environment, even when his concentration was being sorely needled by the incessant huckster calls from the venue adjacent. He has a stage presence which Walker does not, and the two combined effortlessly in their strengths.
Having said that, Tex Perkins is no guitarist, a fact he ruefully acknowledges as he hams up a single string solo in Whenever It Snows.
And so to the music itself: a run through the lives and loves of Tex Perkins (real name Greg), who arrived in Sydney from his hometown Brisbane sometime in the 1980s and immediately began carving out a reputation. To my delight he included Marguerita (written with Danny Rumour, later a band-mate in the Cruel Sea) and a slice & dice version of Psycho from the Beasts Of Bourbon debut album The Axeman’s Jazz. Perkins introduced the song as “the first song I ever recorded”, which I suspect was not entirely accurate. Thug perhaps claimed that honour.
No matter. This was a warm evening’s entertainment from two of the best in the business. Walker employed some gorgeous style in his 12 string guitar backdrop to Pay The Devil His Due, and Cruel Sea aficionados got two of the best; Anybody But You and The Honeymoon Is Over. For fans, this really was a show to savour.
It may be that this review is best read as a companion piece to that of fellow luminary Tim Rogers of You Am I fame.
Alex Wheaton
When: Closed
Where: Spiegeltent, Garden Of Unearthly Delights
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Festival. State Theatre Company and Belvoir Theatre. 25 Feb 2020
In the world of the 13 year old, there is little that gets in or out. You want what you want, and most people on this planet exist to stop you from getting it.
For the dancers from Pat’s dance Academy in Liverpool, Ohio, in training to make the finals in Florida, the world of the hormone driven 13 year old inexorably begins to unravel around them; friends are lost, passions are ignited, ambitions are thwarted and reality is denied.
The teens are played by a cast that aren’t anywhere near 13; grown women (and one male) of varying ages take up the roles, stepping out in sassy sailor costumes for the opening number, and for the most part, despite the cute red leotards, they just don’t look like dancers. But they could have been, and that nostalgic nod to what might have been is referenced throughout the production.
Mitchell Butel plays dance teacher Pat and is very understated. He does little to inspire either us or the company; one keeps waiting for him to break out, and he just doesn’t.
Playwright Clare Barron has taken on some meaty issues in this play; ambition, expectation, friendship, love, sexuality and broken dreams.
To the fore is sexuality and its concomitant power. Men know this power, and they own it. In Dance Nation, these sexual neophytes are exploring their bodies, trying to understand the changes that are going on, what this means for them, and for their dancing.
Yvette Lee plays teacher’s pet Amina, the best dancer in the company and best friend of Zuzu (Chika Ikogwe). When Pat announces that the competition production will be an homage to Ghandi, everyone expects Amina will get the main dancing role, but it goes to her friend. Zuzu knows she is a good dancer, but she also knows she will never be “sensational”, as she explains in one of the moving soliloquies of the piece. Zuzu comes to understand that this a turning point in her life, and turn she does.
Amina also learns that she needs to own her talent, and in the way of many women, suffers from ‘imposter syndrome’; she doesn’t think she has the skills that she so obviously does, and Pat challenges her to understand this.
Rebecca Massey plays the gentle Maeve, who wants to be an astrophysicist. It helps, as she secretly acknowledges, that she can fly. And one day, she bluntly states, she’ll forget how, and that she ever did.
It is Amber McMahon as Ashlee who most deftly shows what the results can be when women work to own their sexual power. Ashlee is right into masturbation, and eager to learn about new sexual experiences. She tells us that men think she has a fantastic arse; that she is beautiful. But she denies their compliments, knowing full well that they are true. She’s brilliant, and she’s going to get 100 per cent on her SATs, and she’s going to be a surgeon - but men don’t want to hear that.
Ashlee’s monologue is shocking, breathtaking, funny, confronting. As she owns her body, her sexuality, and her explicitly named body parts, she screams, “I am your god. I am your second coming. I am your mother and I’m smarter than you and more attractive than you and better than you at everything that you love and you’re going to get down on your knees and worship my mind, my mind and my body, and I’m gonna be the motherfucking KING of your motherfucking WORLD.”
The ensemble work well together, and the device of older women playing 13 year olds really works. It helps to accept some of the dark, strange thoughts of the girls – because young girls do have dark, strange thoughts. It’s why they love Sylvia Plath.
It’s a tight production from Imara Savage, and an intelligently rendered ‘dance studio’ set.
This is not a production for everyone; the coarse language is really coarse, and some of the concepts are very confronting. But if you think theatre should be confronting, then this is absolutely for you.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 25 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Scott Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Patch Theatre. Queen’s Theatre. 25 Feb 2020
Geoff Cobham has had an illustrious career lighting up Adelaide high art since 1992, principally special events designing for the Adelaide Festival, as resident designer for the State Theatre Company of South Australia, and most recently, as Artistic Director of Patch Theatre since July 2018.
The Lighthouse is a triumphal exhibition of inventive virtuosity in the lighting department, but also an experiential interactive theatre piece complete with live and recorded soundtrack. The small audience is guided through a number of intimate rooms full of variations of all things light, with influences from Cobham’s considerable theatrical lighting design career.
Mirrors, lasers, miniatures and mime form an astronaut and fairy tale wizardesses. The sheer delight as you play hopscotch with beams is signaled by the squeals of amazement from the kids, as this is definitely a family-friendly event. Best not to describe, to preserve the element of surprise. When you exit into ordinariness, you’ll realise that an hour was not long enough. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 25 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Queen’s Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au