Adelaide Festival. Australian Premiere. Traverse Theatre Company. Odeon Theatre. 6 Mar 2020
Whose life is it, anyway?
Libby despairs that she is a complete loser. At 41 she is a disillusioned would-be playwright devoid of any sense of self-worth. She’s snatched from edge of the Edinburgh’s Salisbury Crags by another loser, Declan, a broken 17-year-old finding escape from a violent, working-class home by sitting and drawing on the Crags. And so an unlikely and awkward friendship begins. Gradually each character lets down their guard and confides in the other, and Libby sees an interesting cultural story emerging from the life of the boy. It sows a seed to break the curse of 20 barren writing years.
As performed by Shauna Macdonald and Angus Taylor, with direction by Orla O’Loughlin, Mouthpiece is an intense 90 minutes of achingly credible theatre. And for one who once lived, worked, and loved in Edinburgh, it resounds vivdly with a sense of Edinburgh: its crags and skies, vistas, and social contrasts. Libby lives in the elegant Georgian New Town while Declan comes from the struggling world of the housing estates on the wrong side of town. Although such cultural divides are not exclusive to Edinburgh, the city's contextual omnipresence adds a significant element to the play, which is spoken precisely in the two idiomatic Edinburgh accents denoting high and low society.
The play digs poignantly into the innocence and vulnerability of the disadvantaged as Libby proffers to Declan some of the privileges he had no idea were civic entitlements. His wonderment at her interest in him is edged by both hunger and resentment and he makes it clear that he has a dangerous streak.
Libby, on the other hand, retreats from the edge of real involvement in a damaged young human being and, tediously obsessed with the idea of being a “story teller”, chooses to leave him to his sorry destiny but to take his story. Funnily enough, Declan sees this as theft. And the age-old issue of who owns whose story emerges to keep the audiences debating long after the play is over.
While it is not historically earth-shattering, this is a very nicely observed and scripted study of humankind and is given consummate characterisation and tension by the two fine Traverse Theatre Company performers.
In a strange plot device in this work by young Edinburgh writer Kieran Hurley, the aspiring playwright snatches moments aside at a microphone to analyse the creative process. It strikes one as a bit arch albeit at times interesting.
Not once but several times audiences are reminded that the theatre experience can make their hearts beat in accord and, indeed, that the theatre is a “huge empathy machine”.
That’s one thing no one will argue. After all, it is why we are all there in the first place.
Samela Harris
When: 6 to 14 Mar
Where: Odeon Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★
Palmerston Projects Pty Ltd – Spoken Word. Star Theatres – Star Theatre Two. 6 Mar 2020
The loneliest woman was married to the greatest explorer Australia has ever produced. Describing Sir George Hubert Wilkins (1888-1958) as a mere explorer is a gross understatement and yet I bet you never heard of this unique South Australian from Mount Bryan East. A summary of his career – even just a list of his world firsts - would overwhelm this review, so you are directed to Simon Nasht’s un-put-downable biography, The Last Explorer.
Until eighteen months ago, Adelaide playwright Peter Maddern never heard of him either, and since smitten, counts The Loneliest Woman as his sixth play. His greatest success was Kokoda – a one-hander in the 2016 Fringe.
The opening scenes of The Loneliest Woman thrusts us into the middle of a crisis. Wilkins is piloting the first-ever attempt of a submarine voyage under the ice to the North Pole. It is 1931. The Nautilus carries a full crew of souls and there are rumors of sabotage. They have been out of communication for some time and Suzanne Wilkins - Lady Wilkins – is once again waiting at the telephone in their New York apartment for news.
The Murdoch of his age, American William Randolph Hearst, pays a call on Lady Wilkins to comfort her, he says, but there is much at stake for him in a failed adventure. He has funded the expedition to serialise the dispatches for his newspapers. This is a great set-up by Maddern loaded with potential for a rip-snorting dramatic exchange but it is disappointingly instead delivered as polite conversation. The submarine, oddly, isn’t even discussed until midway through the visit, after some reminiscence over good times culminating in a duet and dance. Without some visceral dynamism, it’s a radio play taking place in a tea room, and realiser Adrian Barnes’ attempts at coordinating some effective movement of the two characters on stage has no effect. However, all the information revealed about the situation is very helpful to the Wilkins fans.
The saving grace of the whole project is Michelle Nightingale’s stupendous performance as Lady Wilkins. She is a professional actor, vocalist and presenter with a list of credits to her name that the actress Lady Wilkins would have envied. She is every inch, in posture and poise, a convincing classy lady of Wilkins’ time. Nightingale indeed, her vocal caricature was a joy to listen to. Bravo! Her costume resembled haute couture of the time and she looked great in it (no costume design credit). An epilogue including actual footage of the famous couple and some movie footage taken from the Nautilus of the bottom of the Arctic ice were acquired from Byrd Polar & Climate Research Centre and helpfully turned a quaint story into an OMG that really happened. Mark Healy played assuredly a minor third character that one wanted to see more of. The poster picture reproduced on the program cover is compelling in evoking a sense of the ‘30s, Lady Wilkins, and what’s on her mind (no credit for graphics but Bravo!). The lack of full credits in the program is a pity. It wasn’t due to lack of space as the inner two pages are completely blank, and I’ll put them to good use when the toilet paper runs out during the course of the Chinese Flu.
PS, Wilkins failed Nautilus voyage did however prove that submarines could safely travel under sea ice. He was held in such high regard by the US Navy that they took his ashes by submarine to the North Pole and scattered them there as per his last wish. The US Navy did the same thing for Lady Wilkins years later.
PPS, Contact the Wilkins Foundation to understand more about Sir Hubert and the loneliest woman.
David Grybowski
When: 28 Feb to 8 Mar
Where: Star Theatres – Star Theatre Two
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Derek Tickner. The Griffins Hotel – The Sky Room. 5 Mar 2020
Since debuting his world-first Tinkerings at last year’s Adelaide Fringe and presenting in Brisbane and around Australia, Tinker is back with his brand two-thirds-new show – but if you didn’t see the first show, and it’s likely you didn’t – it’s Tinker’s brand new show! Tinker’s specialty is playing familiar or unusual melodies on guitar and replacing the original lyrics with his own off-beat inventions. It’s like telling jokes in rhyme and to rhythm – a nice twist to the usual stand-up. And Tinker’s humour is more unusual than most - a unique brew of nerdy observation, looney lateral thinking, and that’s a funny way of looking at it.
At the opening, a Dr Who-style automaton appears wondering where Tinker is. There is a bit of confusion and Voila! the straw-hatted tinkerer is joyfully amongst us. The opening number, Rocket Man, is a hilarious imagination of Elton John at the grocers. Philosophy and Cow Meditation (did you know that Oom is Moo spelt backwards? It’s enough to put you off your T-bone) were reprised from last year with good reason – they are solid contributors to his oeuvre. More funny hats and masks, please! An observation about mermaids was a brief aside but very chucklesome. When you catch on to Doop Doop Doop, you laugh. As Tinker works through the set, the gush of madcap slows somewhat. Many of the songs in the second half seemed incomplete and suddenly over before helpful momentum could take effect. And a decent-sized audience is needed for momentum most of all.
David Grybowski
When: 5 to 7 Mar
Where: The Griffins Hotel – The Sky Room
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Presented by Ben Anderson. The Parlour at Gluttony. 5 Mar 2020.
Jason Chasland aka Leather Lungs is larger than life, and his voice is even bigger than that! The lungs and larynx that powers his amazing voice are surely the envy of any drag queen. No lip syncing from this queen – it’s all his own – but there is the obligatory garishly outrageous costume replete with decorated black corset and boots, fishnets, outrageous wig, and even more outrageous makeup. Chasland is the full deal and a half!
Yas Queen! is almost a juke box musical comprising iconic songs that Chasland sings as a libretto to his own life’s story. In his own words, the songs “…are the soundtrack of my life.”
Chasland sings Aretha Franklin, Cher, Prince, Presley, Freddie Mercury and more, but not enough. His performance of Can’t Help Falling in Love channelled Presley and is a crowd favourite. Chasland doesn’t only sing the songs, he acts them out, and with a mischievous twist that exposes innuendo in the lyrics that you never thought was there.
Throughout the show, Chasland reveals some intensely personal things that have recently happened to him, and this adds a new dimension to the show that hasn’t been a key feature of his previous productions. There is almost melancholia, but it is always short lived as Chasland launches into his next outrageously funny remark underscored by athletic and oh-so-high camp choreography.
Yas Queen! is high energy and seriously good fun! Good show your Majesty!
Kym Clayton
When: 6 to 14 Mar
Where: The Parlour at Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Michele Ann De Mey, Jaco Van Dormael and Kiss & Cry Collective. Ridley Centre. 5 Mar 2020
It is surreal outside the Ridley Centre. Two massive queues are snaking around the building. Five hundred? A thousand people? None is young; Adelaide bluebloods and culture vultures, all. They wait very quietly, keeping a distance from each other. The fear of coronavirus is in the air. And they are here to see a show about death.
Inside the towering show hall, perched high on scaffolding bleachers, they soon forget the world outside as the Belgian performance company captures their imaginations.
The voice of Tony Regbo envelopes them like a soothing blanket. Think Jude Law in timbre and tone and perfect enunciation. This calm and gentle voice is to carry the audience through a strange wonderland of hands, fingers, special effects, and extremely unlikely stories.
Beneath a giant screen, black-clad performer/operators work as an artful team, moving miniature landscapes, water-baths, lights, and even cities around a complex of rail tracks whence cameras capture and project giant images to dance aloft. It is high-tech digital theatre, the digits being dancing fingers rather than algorithms.
The stories are enacted by hand alone. Hands dance in the darkness to music. Fingers make a glory of kaleidoscopic patterns. Wearing thimbles, they tap dance in a shimmering ballroom. They carouse in the water. They toddle around in perfect dollhouse rooms, designed to their size and projected immense on the big screen for the grand tier of massed audience. They finger pole dance. Oh, my, and how they pole dance. Sometimes their interplay is sad and serious. Sometimes it is sensual. Sometimes it is comical, none as funny or absurdly inventive as their adventure in the car wash. And the stories run one after another about a series of unlikely deaths, from swallowing a bra clasp to abreaction to mashed potatoes.
Music adorns their world, from Bolero to Major Tom, interspersed with the beautiful voice of Regbo, superbly paced so that not a word of the script is missed. It has been written by Thomas Gunzig and translated by Gladys Brookfield, and it is a thing of great beauty which sings with its own lyrical ingenuity, using similes such as “a scent like a day off work” or “death is like a sleeping cat”.
The miniaturist artistry is wonderful, reminiscent of the taste Adelaide audiences received with the production of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest with actors in sight of the audience using projectors to make a toy plane swoop as huge, terrifying crop-duster across the Festival Theatre’s backdrop.
In this case, much of the performance is meditative, sometimes ponderous, mainly fascinating. One occasionally hears spoken directions from the cast as they move their complex world of props, cameras, lights, smoke, and sound in the darkness. Seeing a figure seemingly flying vertically as a ghost on the screen, one also sees the technical reality of an actress lying flat on a black bench on the stage. Indeed, one could say there are two shows for the price of one. If only the seats were less punishing.
Samela Harris
When: 5 to 8 Mar
Where: Ridley Centre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au