Adelaide Fringe. Mark Drama SA. St Barnabas Croydon – Main Auditorium. 16 March 2019
The Mark Drama is a dramatic presentation of the Gospel of Mark. Every incident in the whole of Mark’s Gospel is performed in theatre-in-the-round in 90 minutes and the audience will hear nearly all the words of Jesus as quoted in Mark. Englishman Andrew Page conceived of the idea some years ago and The Mark Drama is produced all over the world in many languages. No props, lights, costumes, or even actors are required – all you need is to throw fifteen Christians to the theatrical lions. Page thoughtfully provides a guidebook called The Mark Experiment through which the participants learn each of the six key parts of Mark’s Gospel in just ten minutes. The technique of learning and staging the play is copyrighted. For the St Barnabas production, the players had six weeks to memorise their speeches, but as per usual for The Mark Drama system, they only started working together on their interactive movements - under the direction of Reverend Ben Woodd and Henry Davis –shortly before the performance. Rehearsals for Saturday night started on Thursday and finished on Saturday morning, just in time for opening the two-night season later that evening.
The interior of the cavernous St Barnabas Anglican Church is bare, like somebody took all the fixtures and stripped the walls. Seats are arranged in a circle around a tiny acting area the size of a bathroom. The house was packed on opening night. The Gospel comes to life with the exuberance and enthusiasm of the mostly young adult players. They convey the excitement of witnessing miracles and the joy of gratitude from those restored - Jesus gets a big hug every time. Wry humour resides in gossipy asides and ironic flourishes. Amusing is the laziness of the disciples and their initial failures in belief, such as the storm and the walking-on-water incidents during the several crossings of the Galilee - wonderfully portrayed with some imaginary sculling. Yet the disciples do grow in faith and respect, and attempt to protect and advise him, as the end draws near. With a cast of fifteen whooping it up, the audience gets a palpable sense of the awe and agitation created by the presence of Jesus. It’s sometimes electric as the closely packed audience provides additional crowd.
David Lang’s demonstration of Jesus’s distress and anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane, and during the torture and crucifixion, were a startling contrast to his busy and capable Jesus of earlier chapters. Though he had little chance in his role as the Son of God to demonstrate his prowess as a PhD in musical composition. The theatre arena is used very effectively when the players perambulate down the three aisles and along the rows to demonstrate a Jesus constantly on the move throughout Palestine. The production is swift-paced, fun, spontaneous and educational. An unpolished gem.
Whether you are a reader of the Gospels or not, or a believer or not, this is entertaining, grass roots theatre where the didactic discourse is delivered with zesty passion.
David Grybowski
4 Stars
When: 16 to 17 March
Where: St Barnabas Croydon – Main Auditorium
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Fringe. The Peacock at Gluttony. One Fell Swoop Circus. 15 Mar 2019
By A Thread is the creation of One Fell Swoop Circus. The show’s title is inspired by a single prop; a “Long spool of white rope run through pulley sheaves”, suspended high above the audiences head.
This apparatus provides a catalyst for a demonstration of cause and effect which is supposed to explore the relationship between trust and play.
It is an intimate venue. Lighting by After Dark Theatre creates a dramatic effect. Spotlights cut sharply through the lightly dusted atmosphere. The single strand of pure white rope which hangs from the top of Gluttony’s The Peacock, is illuminated by a single sharp beam all the way to its coiled mass on the floor. The anticipation builds; despite the show getting underway nearly a full 30 minutes late.
The ensemble performers – Sam Adlham, Ryan Darwin, Sarah Gray, Ellen Grow, Alyssa Moore, Jonathan Morgan, Charice Rust, and Latonya Wigginton – approach the rope, at first cautiously, as if it were a thing to be feared. The performance promises to be something more than just circus acrobatics.
For almost 50 minutes this talented gang of highly trained aerialists and acrobats find all manner of ways to use the rope, and each other to slip, swing, leap, fly, twist, spin, and dance through the air and across the floor. The ethereal soundscape created by Lee Stout perfectly underscores the action. There is a lot of talent on show.
But it is the narrative context of this production which is held together ‘by a thread’.
The show contains a solid 20 minutes of high octane, impressive tricks. The rest feels more like filler. Like a warm up. There is a lot of repetition.
On further reading one discovers that the directors created the work with the aim of adding a new dimension to how audiences understand acrobatic relationships. To show the parallels these relationships draw to everyday human interaction, and to explore play, risk and trust. It just does not translate.
The performers are having fun. Their more impressive tricks garner worthy applause. There is no doubt about their talent. But the vehicle on which this show is built needs further development and direction.
Paul Rodda
3 Stars
When: 15 to 17 Mar
Where: The Peacock at Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Traverse Theatre Company of Scotland. Dunstan Playhouse. 15 Mar 2019
He’s an Oscar-winning American superstar and he’s signed up for a new play bound for London’s West End.
It’s an Irish play. That much he knows. On the eve of rehearsals he is meeting with the director and the playwright for a briefing session. Everyone is nervous, especially Jay, the American star. He is a cyclonic blusterer of arrogance and half-baked lifestyle philosophy. He’s in AA, of course. He’s keen to thrash out hypotheticals with Leigh, the English director. To which end his bellowing tirades of self-congratulatory Hollywood political correctness lead the conversation to cross the boundaries of gender acceptability progressing from the “N" word to R for rape.
And thus does the audience find itself laughing against its better judgement at the outrageous monstrosity of this beast of blinkered Americana.
The English director cringes and twitches, his voice a whiny shrill of defensiveness. He will do anything to appease this star whose name is box office magic.
They are waiting for the playwright to arrive. She’s very late. They discuss feminism in the light of this being a play written by a woman. They both brag that they are avid feminists while uttering monstrous abuses of the #metoo ethic. The result is a hilarity of hypocrisy, so appalling, so outrageously this-is-not funny that it is hysterical.
And so Ulster American moves on. The playwright arrives and reveals that, as an Ulster woman, not only is she not an Irish playwright but she emphatically identifies as British and the heroic role for which Jay has been engaged is not an IRA Catholic battler but a protestant bent on killing those very Fenians. He wants the play changed. He is Irish Catholic, he says. Oh, no, but he has never been to Ireland. The religious and geo-political passions escalate and one wonders that the actors don’t lose their voices, so vehemently do they roar and bellow and rage.
Warnings that the audience may be so shocked at this work that some may walk out were laughable. Adelaide audiences are only shocked by bad theatre. This was not it. This play written by David Ireland was standing ovation, wild, edge-cutting, daring, satirical theatre of the moment. Adelaide devoured with the relish of a ravenous arts animal.
It blessed Scotland’s wonderful Traverse Theatre Company and whooped acclaim at the actors: Darrell D’Silva as the brash American; Robert Jack as the writhing Englishman, Leigh, just a bit reminiscent in comic body language of the great Michael Crawford; and Lucianne McEvoy as the playwright, Ruth, a glorious, complex, dazzling performance.
Applause. Applause.
Samela Harris
When: 15 to 17 Mar
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Restless Dance Theatre. Space Theatre. 14 Mar 2019
All creatures, great and small, inhabit the stage of Meryl Tankard’s Festival creation, Zizanie.
From a quizzical rabbit to plagues of wasps and monstrous humans, they slowly but surely invade the stage. They come sidling, dancing, looming, and spreading forth, sometimes in fabulous animal masks, to the sound of tinkling bells and against cartoon projections upon the back wall.
Zizanie is darkness and light, new and old, serious and capricious, clever and absurd.
It draws on the classics while commenting on the current. And it is all rather good fun into the bargain.
In other words, Meryl Tankard has not lost her magic touch.
Restless Dance is the company of performers with and without disability now directed by her former dancer Michelle Ryan. Tankard has honed these dancers into her own kaleidoscope of humanity, a series of truly endearing characters, fun-loving, vulnerable, kind, smart, quick, deft, and thoroughly interesting. Everyone can relate to them.
The performances are highly disciplined and rich in the choreographic idiosyncrasies audiences have come to know and love of Tankard.
She choreographs repetitive tasks for all and spreads them around the stage under moody Chris Petridis' lighting and the photo imagery of Regis Lansac until they achieve the aesthetic of a latticework of moving humanity. There are segments with a diversity of simultaneous ball play, scenes of street games, and scenes of ghostly mystery.
The dancers are not identified in the program but they are Chris Dyke, Kathryn Evans, Jianna Georgiou, Michael Hodyl, Dana Nance, and Michael Noble.
They are exquisitely costumed by Jonathan Oxlade who also has created a thrilling graphic otherworld of a set, much of it projected as backdrop. Therein dwells the grumpy man, an everyman figure who is at odds with the world. He is all power tools and noise, eradicating insect life and mowing down nature, replacing the songs of crickets with roaring, filthy machinery. It’s a familiar picture; right now in the endlessly venal in-building of suburban Adelaide.
He builds a huge Trumpean wall and retreats, poking his head up only to disapprove of the outsiders. He is a comically sad fellow, sunbathing in dressing gown and hat, swatting at flies, all alone. The kids play in the shadow of his world, occasionally trying to befriend him. There's a sad scene in which he washes off his wall and removes the joyful graffiti of little cartoon figures. The artist can only stand and weep. Her playmates come to her one by one bringing tissues to soak up her tears. She stands in a little island of tissues. And the man finds his heart and comes to comfort her. He has a proper handkerchief. And compassion evokes love evokes joy and the world breaks out with riots of daisies and sound designer Luke Smiles throws in wild Arabic music and Oxlade throws in the spirit of Escher design on the backdrop.
And, for the explosion of happiness, the audience is invited for a singalong of If I Knew You Were Coming I’d have Baked a Cake. The grumpy man’s castle has transformed to a cake factory. He takes centre stage costumed now as a waitress, and delivers the special gift of a piece of pure classic Pina Bausch momentum, as only our Meryl Tankard can and should be able to do. This is a tribute to the choreographer who changed the face of dance and whence Tankard gained much of her training and inspiration. It is even more delicious than the cupcakes the cast is handing out into the audience.
Zizanie is a whole lot of vivid zaniness, full of good spirit, lively imagination, warm heart, and sweet hope.
Furthermore, it has the biggest, longest, most outrageous curtain call in the business.
Bravo.
Samela Harris
When: 14 to 17 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Jopuka Productions. Breakout at The Mill. 14 Mar 2019
One of the joys of the Adelaide Fringe is that it brings to town some of the country’s bright new talent to risk evaluation of their work amidst a huge and discerning national and international program.
From the NSW Central Coast comes a neat little youth-theatre company called Jopuka. It brings to the fairly primitive theatre space of the artists’ collective, Breakout at The Mill, a tight little production called Because There Was Fire. It also brings home the playwright, South Australian Jamie Hornsby, whose creative light was shining before he left town and who comes back with a couple of awards under his belt.
It is a smart, hour-long work on a Bonnie and Clyde theme; a bored teenage girl from the wrong side of the tracks hooks up with a handsome rich boy and off they go in his Monaro to have a daring life of crime on the road.
Ironically, for one with a vivid way with words, Hornsby has settled on a really oblique and unattractive title for the play. Of course, it reflects the content, from BBQ fire to further fire, but it is a squib of a marquee drawcard.
The script, however, is rich. Its eloquent prose and tight dialogue underscores the description of Hornsby as one of the most promising young playwrights in the country today.
Jopuka travels complete with it its artistic director/stage manager Joshua Maxwell, a warm and hospitable presence albeit a bit scatty with the lights, and its director Danielle Brame Whiting, who would be well advised to get her leading lady to slow the delivery of her opening speech. The words are wonderful. Don’t gobble them.
That said, the rapid-fire pace of this show is its very essence. It is about fast cars, risk, flight, fear, and adrenalin rush. Its actors, Gabrielle Brooks and Beau Wilson, sustain the sense of urgency. Theirs are excellent performances. Vivid and ferocious, both. Like the playwright, they are performers of considerable promise.
Hence is this out-of-the-mainstream Fringe offering quite a shining jewel of young Australian talent.
Samela Harris
4 ½ Stars
When: 14 to 16 Mar
Where: Breakout at The Mill
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au