★★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Raucous Behaviour. House and Grounds, Carclew. 16 Mar 2024
There’s a book sitting next to Noah (Gianluca Noble) as he plays solitaire sitting on his outstretched sleeping bag on the floor of the library he’s sheltering in from a fierce climate change induced snow storm. In Adelaide.
It’s entitled ‘Facts.’
Facts, feelings, history and survival struggles are rolled out, then intertwined in The Ark.
Director Playwright Thomas Liddell’s sparse, wonderfully illuminating exploration of what surviving apocalyptic outcomes of climate change would mean, beyond the terrifyingly obvious, is deeply thoughtful, at times, a raw eye opener.
Noah’s safe solitude is rudely interrupted by Eunice (Catherine Carter) and Grand Daughter Eve (Maya Carey) barging into the library in search of shelter.
Immediate survival battle lines are drawn.
Why should Noah help them? Doesn’t Eve’s ideas of communal sharing of the resources they have make solid sense in a world that’s completely broken down? No idea if anyone’s actually out there alive?
An eventual truce allows the three means to tentatively build relationships, and test where the edges to them are when it comes to what’s important to them in a world effectively dysfunctional, to completely non-functioning.
Catherine Carter’s Eunice is in the throes of early onset dementia. Eunice’s dementia, alongside her clear memories, operates as a kind of symbolic sieve though which a ‘forgetfulness’ of one generation has spawned the world Eve and Noah are struggling to survive in. That point is driven further home when Emma (Caitlin Hendrey) crashes into the library with her baby daughter.
Emma’s wife has abandoned her and their child.
Just as the world seems to have abandoned its inhabitants hopes of living.
Liddell brilliantly structures performances and pace in such a way ever growing and tightening tension of this tiny group’s claustrophobic circumstances leaves enough room for moments of hope and new understanding to flare up.
An experience and process not without very dark, extremely cruel moments.
Liddell’s cast manage a tremendous challenge giving life to ideas and experiences in a context matching a yet-to-evolve dangerous future. Liddell has written a future present epitaph for our world, in which his characters supply a warning we need to heed.
David O’Brien
When: 15 to 16 Mar
Where: Carclew
Bookings: Closed
★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. The Bally, Gluttony. 17 Mar 2024
Sky Scraper (aka John Hugo) is an accountant by day and a drag queen by night, and she’s tall, very tall. In fact, when she races into the venue late for her own show and mounts the stage, she almost gets a nosebleed, and audience members close to the stage almost put their necks out as they strain to look upwards to see her!
She looks very corporate, dressed in her power suit replete with incredibly large shoulder pads that put anything from the 1980s to shame. In the best of drag queen style, there’s more than enough hairspray to hold her wig in style, and her bling and makeup is just … gorge! She immediately brings a wide smile to your face that stays there for the whole performance.
And what a performance it is – everything you would expect: fabulous lip synching with an Ethel Mermanesque lip quiver that creates a draft, high kicks that are so high the light rigging is at risk, fabulous dance moves that are sequenced to a formula (which she divulges so that we can all release our inner drag queen at the next opportunity!), and repartee that is quick, razor sharp, funny, and at times poignant.
The best comedic acts have a narrative that holds the gags, banter, and business together, and Skye Scraper: The Life and Times of a Drag Queen Accountant has all that, although the pace is a little slow to start off with. As the show’s title suggests, it is a tad autobiographical and Skye outlines the tension in her life between eking out a living in the corporate world doing something she’s not really fond of, and living her drag persona alter ego after hours. She wants to be herself and to love herself (and have others love her) for what she is, rather than conforming to whatever norms and expectations society demands. It’s quite touching really, and her sincerity makes it clear this is not just an act. Both Skye and John are on stage, their guards are down, and the struggle is palpable. The writing is intelligent, and rarely does she resort to gratuitously bad language.
Skye engages your heart strings, and when she is done, you are left laughing, but with a tiny little lump in your throat. This show is fertile for continuing development.
Kym Clayton
When: 12 to 17 Mar
Where: The Bally, Gluttony
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Festival. Elizabeth Streb & Streb Extreme Action. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 16 Mar 2024
Time Machine is physical theatre/circus with a difference. It is not just about acrobatics and subjecting the human body to extreme manoeuvres. It is also about blurring the boundaries between apparatus and body, so that the body not only uses apparatus but also becomes it at other times. The performers at times become hinges, levers, fulcrums, surfaces, and other geometrical and physical forms, and interact with other performers who use these anthropomorphic apparatuses to bounce off (literally) and interact with.
The visionary behind the mayhem is the legendary Elizabeth Streb and her company Streb Extreme Action. She is the creative behind the human circus acts that were part of the lead up to the London 2012 summer Olympics, including abseiling the London City Hall building, and ‘inhabiting’ the spokes of the London Eye! She has been producing her brand of ‘circus theatre’ (it really defies nomenclature) for four decades, and Time Machine comprises significant excerpts from a number of her shows. In a way, it is a journey through time and her artistic output. But. this could be the Achilles heel of Time Machine – it is too episodic and lacks a narrative. Even though many of the excerpts are exciting, the whole thing becomes a ‘best of’ and invariably some acts are more impressive than others. A narrative to stitch the whole thing together would have given context to the individual excerpts and prevented unnecessary comparison between them.
There is great comedy in the show, and there are nods to the antics of the likes of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. The music and sound effects that underscore the performance characterises the punishment the performers subject their bodies to. The staging is bright with stunningly fluorescent primary colours that in some ways trivialise the danger of the various machines the performers use. It looks like a child’s playground, and the audience actually has lots of children in it and they are whooping with delight (including many adults who have no qualms in exercising their inner child as well!).
Two segments stand out in this reviewer’s mind. One featured two very large sheets of wood panelling that the performers manoeuvred around the acting surface variously inhabiting every available location. Mathematicians might say the panelling was used to tesselate the surface. As the panels were positioned and then allowed to fall, the performers moved in, around and between them in a hectic choreographed routine that had pace, grace, style, and precision.
The other standout segment featured a large open box in which a solo performer was ‘trapped’ and was feverishly trying to escape. She contorted her body and levered and propelled it around the box with purpose, anguish, frustration, and beauty. The audience was willing her to escape!
Time Machine is a fabulous display of strong and agile human bodies doing things that are strangely beautiful and machine-like, almost robotic, but infused with deep feeling.
Kym Clayton
When: 14 to 17 Mar
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed
★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. The Studio, Holden Street Theatres. 16 Mar 2024
Berliners is a gentle absurdist comedy about two guys (Nick and Tom) from vastly different backgrounds and contexts who strike up a romantic relationship that was never meant to blossom. But it did, because of unlikely events, and it eventually unravelled because it was based on untruths promulgated by Nick that would never have been exposed under normal circumstances.
The time is 1989 – the time the berlin Wall came down. Nick lives in an apartment close to the wall in West Germany, and Tom lives ‘through the wall on the other side’ in his apartment in East Germany. They are introduced by accident – a letter was delivered to the wrong apartment – and they start talking to and getting to know each other. They flirt, but then down comes the wall and they meet face to face and their life together begins. Before the wall came down, Nick and Tom were both journalists of sorts: Nick a second-rate video journalist, and Tom the anchor for a communist propaganda TV show. After the wall comes down, their working lives change dramatically, and Nick’s untruths force him down a path he would rather not. Eventually Nick and Tom split, with Tom moving to the USA and Nick remaining behind in Germany. Weird political events happen as fascinating alternate history unfolds, and they are reunited but don’t re-establish their relationship.
The narrative is humorous, with numerous puns and sideswipes at world politics, ideologies, and personalities. It is all firmly tongue-in-cheek, but there’s likely too much going on. The story line becomes dense and increasingly absurdist with layers and layers of detail that flit by with great speed. (The show is around 80 minutes long, which is probably 15 minutes longer than it needs to be. There is material that could be cut, such as an instance of audience participation with a jar of sauerkraut that added little.)
Sydney-sider actor/playwrights Nick Harriott and Tom Waddell – they play characters of the same name – have perfect faces for absurdist comedy: dead pan, sincere, never smirking, but always a glint in their eye that suggests they could easily burst out laughing. Waddell frequently spoke in a conversational style and at a conversational volume across stage, which rendered him almost inaudible at times. Some members of the audience thought the play was the best thing since sliced bread was invented and whooped and shrieked but Harriott and Waddell took it in in their stride.
The set was clever: dozens and dozens of empty milk crates stacked to form the Berlin Wall, walls in their apartments, and shelves and furniture. They were easily able to be moved to simulate the Wall coming down, and when it ….. (oops, almost a spoiler!). Lighting and sound was simple but effective, indicative of thoughtful design.
This is a fun show, and Harriott and Waddell have fertile comedic minds. Hopefully their alternate takes on history will remain in the annals of fiction, but they give pause for careful thought.
Kym Clayton
When: 12 to 16 Mar
Where: The Studio, Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Festival. Dance North. Space Theatre. 14 Mar 2024
Waiting in an overheated foyer for a delayed performance can dampen the spirits somewhat, but it doesn’t take long to lose the tension and go with the flow; go wayfinding. ‘Why are there white balloons on intermittent seats?’ wonders the audience as we find our way to our seats. But they’re not balloons, they’re weighty globes that quietly hum and emit the palest light. On the dimly lit stage, we can just see the shape of a figure, also holding one of these globes.
Suddenly, an explosion of light, sound and movement, and we’re off!
Wayfinder has played to Brisbane, Sydney and Perth Festivals and now it’s Adelaide’s turn. And what a turn it is. The eight dancers, dressed in myriad rainbow colours, put on a fusion of contemporary dance, hip hop and acrobatics with the most wonderful collaboration of light and sound to be seen on stage for some time. Choreographers Kyle Page and Amber Haines have not so much presented a narrative here as a series of conjoined vignettes, and their partnership with visual designer Hirome Tango (set and costumes), sound artist Byron J Scullion and lighting designer Niklas Pajanti has made for a production that is as entertaining as it is thought provoking.
It's so wonderful to see colour again; it’s like landing in Oz after the sepia tones of Kansas. And it’s not just the costumes; the frenetic and affirming opening gives way to an avalanche of coloured woven woollen threads falling from the sky, which soon form a motif for the piece, returning again and again. And when I say avalanche, I don’t use the term loosely. The bespoke inflated stage (appearing like an extremely large camping mattress) is literally covered in the brightly woven rope strands. These strands were apparently woven by a large volunteer cohort around Townsville and give a whole new perspective to the term ‘yarning’.
And the white globes? You hear the music before you realise it’s coming from your lap where you’re nestling this object. And the one next to you is making a different sound, and the harmonic chorus fills the room; the globes glow brighter and brighter, almost as bright as the smiles of the audience.
The stage becomes more inflated, and dancers bounce from corner to corner; a mesmerising ballet of percussive arms morphs into more colour, more sound and a second inflated stage cum wall (at one point what appears to be the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey) and oh my, smiles from the dancers! The whirling cacophony of coloured choreography seems sometimes to have faltered, to have lost focus, to be slightly out of sync; then the synergy kicks in and the tightly synced dancers are exactly where they should be, when they should be. Wayfinding indeed.
There’s no point singling out highlights from this production; this is a collaborative effort from start to finish, and everyone is a star. Wayfinder is a glutinous feast for the eyes and ears; a journey of light, colour and sound. We are the richer for being navigated here by Dance North.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 15 to 17 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au