★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Adelaide Town Hall. 21 Feb 2020
When Marika Marosszeky slips off her black dress to reveal what she’s wearing underneath, there’s no real surprise. She already has her mammarian gifts on full display, welcoming the audience to her husband Wolfgang’s funeral, waving around her wine and making clear it’s not her first of the day. “Do you think this dress is appropriate?’ she asked the guests at the wake.
Wolfgang has died unexpectedly, and she’s at a bit of a loss to deal with the whole thing. Because Wolfgang (Michael Whittred) hasn’t actually gone away; he’s sitting behind her, haunting her, and playing electric guitar. So she does what most people do in funereal situations; she tells the story of how they met, runs through their marriage, and tells a few secrets along the way in story and song.
From what I could gather via the interweb, the show originally had three women in the cast; all ex-lovers of the deceased Wolfgang, they meet up at the funeral and exchange stories. It’s now devolved into a one woman show, and I’m not convinced it’s as effective, with Marosszeky indicating that she is a women with many roles, and that Wolfgang unknowingly had many wives.
It doesn’t help when the sound isn’t balanced – Whittred’s guitar was far too loud for much of the production, although initially this didn’t matter, as the vocals were so poorly tuned it was difficult to understand what she was singing for the first half of the show. This detracted from the narrative somewhat, as those songs probably set up the scenario.
When we did hear Marosszeky’s voice undistorted, it showed she was quite a capable singer, and while she worked hard, the production didn’t really deliver. Perhaps because of the sound and the distortion, it was difficult to engage with the characters, which was unfortunate, as there are clearly some skills at work which just weren’t displayed as well as they could be.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 21 to 26 Feb
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
The Flanagan Collective & Gobbledigook Theatre. Open Air Theatre, Adelaide Botanic Gardens. 21 Feb 2020
Edinburgh is grey. Grey buildings, grey streets, grey skies. Alex Wright tells you this, so you understand the world of Dave. It’s Dave’s 30th birthday, and he lost the ability to see colour when he was a child. He used to sing flowers, but the world of colour was bullied out of him by his peers. He’s hanging out in bars with the sort of mates that inspired Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping, singing Springsteen karaoke, when suddenly, colour breaks through. It is Eurydice, and she is coloured love.
The transformation of Dave is both eloquent and elegant. Wright’s rewriting of the classic tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is filled with the humour, despair, joy and brutality of love. The gods giveth, and the gods taketh away.
Phil Grainger is the perfect accompaniment to this tale; he plays the guitar and sings a libretto for the star-crossed lovers, for how can a man who sees grey keep to himself a tree nymph?
This is two handed theatre at its finest, and it’s what Fringe theatre is all about. Set in the Botanic Rose Garden at dusk, there is no set, no props – just two men, a leather bound book and a guitar. The engagement is immediate, and there is a pure pleasure in listening to the mellifluous words and music as Wright and Grainger guide us through this tale.
Eurydice’s death (note: this is not a spoiler) makes us bleed for Dave, and we quite willingly suspend our disbelief to journey with him from karaoke bar to Hades, crossing the River Styx with Charon and soothing the multi headed Cerberus to rescue his love.
See this show; the language and the music will wrap itself around you like a warm blanket. Bliss.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 21 Feb to 11 Mar
Where: Open Air Theatre, Adelaide Botanic Garden
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. Domain Theatre, Marion Cultural Centre. 23 Feb 2020
Presented by composer/pianist Riccardo Barone and singer/actress Nikki Ellis Souvertjis, Amore e Morte is essentially an art song cycle that tells the story of a man and a woman who are impacted by him witnessing a crime. They uproot themselves and flee to another country to avoid any repercussions of being witness, but their new found peace is destroyed when he is eventually called back home to give evidence. She chronicles the events, and according to the supplied programme notes, does so “…in pursuit of writing a prolific exposé.”
Barone is clearly a capable musician – he definitely knows his way around the piano (and the Melodica for that matter) – and his compositions are passionate, but for the most part the songs in cycle have a ‘sameness’ about them. The music for the most part is fast paced with very little variation. The melody lines are mostly structured around rapidly executed rolling broken chords and almost excessively used arpeggios. Early in the cycle some of the songs are jazz inflected and Ellis Souvertjis’s relaxed vibrato fits the music like a hand in a glove. Some of the more densely figured songs provide a less direct and more challenging accompaniment for the vocal lines.
The songs about the couple’s departure have more clarity and Souvertjis demonstrated command of scat singing. One of Barone’s songs, and perhaps the most interesting and best executed, is sung by Souvertjis at a typewriter as she produces her “exposé”. The sound of the keys is completely empathetic with the spiky rhythm set by Barone on the piano.
Overall, the lyrics of the songs are overshadowed by the intensity of the piano playing and by the density of the music, to the extent that the narrative is not as clear as it might be.
That said, the audience were enthralled by the obvious passion and musical skills of the two performers.
Kym Clayton
When: 23 Feb to 28 Mar
Where: Domain Theatre, Marion Cultural Centre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Interactive Theatre International. Terrace Ballroom at Stamford Plaza Adelaide. 21 Feb 2020
There would be few people in the Anglophile universe who would not know the jist of the hit BBC TV series, Fawlty Towers. An amazing achievement, given that there were only twelve episodes shown in only two years, 1975 and 1979. In 2000, the show was numero uno in the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes list drawn up by the British Film Institute, and in 2019, it was named the "greatest ever British TV sitcom" by a panel of comedy experts compiled by the Radio Times. John Cleese and his American-born British wife at the time, Connie Booth, modelled Basil Fawlty on a hotel proprietor they encountered while filming on location for Monty Python. John Cleese famously played the snobbish, tense and rude hotelier.
Interactive Theatre International first presented Faulty Towers The Dining Experience in Brisbane in 1997 and never looked back. The show had a sold-out London premiere in 2009 (talk about taking coals to Newcastle), tours all over Australia and appears in 20 countries every year. It’s played at the Adelaide Fringe I don’t know how many years.
The fan, or if there are such things, the uninitiated, will love it. Everything you might expect is included in the generous two-and-a-half hour show complete with a three course meal followed by coffee or tea (buy your own drinks). Rob Langston comfortably fits the Cleese bill with his physically and emotionally domineering Basil. Basil is abrasive to the audience, to its delight, and frustratingly feeds Manuel his opportunities to mangle meaning. You see, Manuel the waiter – played with irresistibility by Anthony Sottile - is Spanish with a deaf ear for English, and his interpretations of phrases whose meanings we take for granted are invariably hilarious and expressed with unsuppressed physical comedy. Rebecca Fortuna - playing Basil’s wife, Sybil - is a newby to the Interactive Theatre International company and looks like she has a job for life if she wants it. Her diminutive Sybil made the towering Basil cower and cringe. A suitably unusual voice affectation brought the house down with her rendition of Happy Birthday. The show does not seem to have an author; the actors are guided by the TV series, previous Interactive Theatre International interpreters and their own improvisations. Langston outperforms near the end of the show with some classic Cleese.
The Terrace Ballroom at the Stamford Plaza Adelaide lacked atmosphere and the company doesn’t bother to decorate either. Food service was beautifully timed with the comedy. The show is highly interactive – it’s like being on the TV set. Tables of eight engender lively discussion and at some point you’re likely to be part of the show. There are many surprises and it’s all huge fun being at the mercy of these wonderful characters and actors.
David Grybowski
When: 23 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Terrace Ballroom at Stamford Plaza Adelaide
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Octagon at Gluttony. 22 Feb 2020
Presented by Melbourne based company Head First Acrobats, Circus’Cision is another event in the seemingly ever increasing and popular genre of Circus and Physical Theatre. With many such events to choose from, punters are looking for a point of difference to encourage them to choose one event over another.
Circus’Cision has one point of difference – four of the cast, who are all buff and beautifully built lads, get there full kit off (yes, everything) and spend five hilarious minutes performing to Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy while trying to hide their ample packages from the sustained and direct view of the audience. They go to great pains, literally, to give as many fleeting glimpses as possible, which is the whole point really, and the audience laps up the good humour of it all. Guys in the audience have tears in their eyes, and so do the gals, but for different reasons. (At this point the title of the show makes sense!)
There are many of the other usual circus suspects on display: hoop tossing and swirling; aerial strap work (including what almost amounts to a suicidal death drop – scarily impressive!); juggling an impressive number of balls, as well as 10-pin skittles with an umbrella!; seemingly impossible and painful body balancing tricks; contortionist antics; a choreographed sexually ambivalent body balancing nod to Game of Thrones; and more.
An amount of this, or similar, has been seen in other events and in other festivals. What makes this show different is the Sugar Plum Fairy routine and the sexy and cheeky patter of the MC. He doesn’t provide a narrative to give the show a sense of coherence, because it’s not that type of show – he simply exposes the show (pun intended) for what it is: a tongue in cheek good-fun time with impressive bodies and circus tricks.
Kym Clayton
When: 22 Feb to 14 Mar
Where: The Octagon at Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au