Adelaide Fringe. Scott Theatre. RCC University of Adelaide. 22 Feb 2019
She’s a living legend of the American avant garde, an icon of the emancipated and a performer long beloved of the Adelaide Fringe.
Returning with her most famous production, Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, she packed Scott Theatre with fans and adorned it with erotica glam, importing half the cast of Hindley Street's famous strip clubs, describing them as among the world’s best. She seems to think Adelaide would be surprised that talent came from Adelaide. Yawn. Adelaide ever was a crucible of creative talent, and exports it to the world. And, indeed, this crop of erotic dancers is sterling; slinky, writhing skin in perilously slim g-strings. They are strong, sexy, beautiful, lithe, muscular, acrobatic, and personable. To highly-amped music, they perform extensive pole dancing, twerking and exotic acrobatics as a pre-show feature and are interwoven between the subsequent content of Penny Arcade’s wonderful monologues.
Arcade says burlesque was reborn through her use of such performers. In which case, it certainly suggests that procreation follows sexy since the Fringe and Cabaret festivals have seen something of a population explosion of burlesque.
For decades, Penny Arcade a.k.a. Susana Ventura has been the great evangelist of gender tolerance and understanding. Her monologues are erudite, insightful, compassionate, and funny. For one who left school at 13 and lived 16 years in a borstal for her petty crimes, she has turned out as a jewel of humanity. Perhaps “being raised by gays” is the secret. Of course, the now lost world of “fag hags” is a big part of her schtick. Takes one to know one, Ms Arcade. She points out that now that gays have gone mainstream and have grown moustaches, fag hags are obsolete. Yet, it was these symbiotic women who helped gay men to move up in society.
Gay liberation has its down side and Arcade steams with frustration at a culture and a media which brags that “AIDS is dead”. HIV and Hep C are epidemic in many places. It is serious. Let the world know.
Penny Arcade finds that she has been repeating herself for decades. Much that which she once predicted has come to pass. Many of society’s ugly shortcomings are unchanged.
But one element of the gender world may rejoice. It is the era of the lesbian, she declares, to rousing cheers from the back of the auditorium. Maybe it’s not such an easy time to be a woman, though.
Penny Arcade’s audiences are more diverse than an LGBTQIA convention. But there is something in her monologues for everyone: alarm calls which resonate like a fire siren; messages which are taken away to ponder; reflections which tickle the funny bone; deft political swipes; snatches of absurdism in among tirades of sensible satire.
This critic did not make it to the grand reveal. Frustratingly, the amped-up disco volume of the epic everyone-dance-on-stage finale was beyond aural endurance. One posits that sound people are so deafened that they don’t know they are being deafening. Sorry, Ms Arcade. But, Aldinga Beach and all…
Penny Arcade has a thrilling and seemingly timeless repertoire of monologues. These are her gifts of enlightenment. She is the angry wise woman of our times and we salute her.
Samela Harris
4 stars
When: 22 Feb
Where: Scott Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Fringe. Presented by Global Arts Management. Tandanya. 22 Feb 2019
Ingrid Garner’s Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany is a hard act to follow. It was a 5-star award-winning hit of the Fringe in 2015, a breathtaking and heart-rending work even out there amid the hubbub of the parklands. It was derived from her grandmother Eleanor Ramrath’s harrowing autobiographical account of her childhood years growing up amid the terrifying tensions of living in Hitler’s wartime Germany as an alien. It has toured widely and it is even on this year’s Fringe program for anyone who missed it. It is best they catch it now since Ingrid is now presenting its sequel, Eleanor’s Story: Home is the Stranger.
Still channelling her grandmother’s vivid memories, she brings to life the sensations of a teenage girl who is at last allowed to leave Germany and return to her native USA with her father and brother. She has to find a place in a blithe other world among peers who have never gone hungry let alone seen death or crouched in bomb shelters. She tries to adapt to different values, teaching styles, and dress but when she least expects it, spectres of the past emerge to trip her up. Traumas of war are not easily sidelined.
Garner once again slips into her grandmother’s skin to tell her story. She has it down to a fine art with just two chairs and a trunk as a simple, moveable set. She darts easily between characters, voices, and accents as the narrative moves between present and memory. She is deft and graceful and beautifully committed. The audience is stilled, rapt and emotionally enveloped.
At the end, a snatch of the grandmother’s voice is played adding another dimension to the human power of the story. That her grandmother is still alive and living in California reminds us that Nazi Germany was not that long ago.
Samela Harris
4 Stars
When: 22 Feb to 2 Mar
Where: Tandanya
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Emma Knights Productions. The Cabinet Room, Treasury 1860. 22 Feb 2019
This is an amusing and clever production that is aimed at those of us who really get off on words and enjoy baroque-ish music!
David William Hughes is an actor, musician, historian, singer, and orator, and he has all of those skills in equal measure. Dressed in pompous attire in the style of the Elizabethan era, Hughes plays the role of Tobias Bacon, an Elizabethan who is poor in love and love-making, but is rich in ardour and even richer in lustful intention. Let’s be plain - he just wants to get laid, but he really makes a bad fist of it!
Hughes sings about Tobias’s various amorous pursuits and accompanies himself on a rather handsome lute which he plays with a certain flair. The songs are genuinely from the Renaissance, although , to be picky, the music isn’t entirely true to the musical modes of the period, but it sounds terrific and Hughes is obviously enjoying himself. The songs are unashamedly bawdy and there are even references to certain sex toys that remain popular today! Cleary the Elizabethans knew how to have a good time, and so does Hughes. His palpable enjoyment enthuses the audience and he has them clapping, booing, hissing and participating in no time at all. Most people hate audience participation, especially the ‘being reluctantly dragged up on stage’ type, but Hughes almost has people clambering to join him! He radiates warmth and genuine care for his audience and has his volunteers eating out of his hand as they play characters alongside him.
The narrative that Hughes creates around the songs is witty and delightfully lewd in an oh-so-clever and sophisticated way, and the audience just loves it. His use of language is so smart that one simply cannot take offence, and the fifty minutes goes by so very quickly.
There are two mores shows - February 23 and 24 – at various venues. Check your Guide.
Great fun and a welcome change to the usual sort of stand-up humour.
Kym Clayton
When: 23 and 24 Feb
Where: Various Venues
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Derek Tickner. Broadcast Bar. 21 Feb 2019
Ah, the Broadcast Bar, where the grudge is real. The steep stairs and the one lit light chandelier and the bar supported by ancient VHS movie covers. Yet inside a Beckettian version of somebody’s brain, one finds hospitality and escape, and the world premiere of Eric Tinker’s Tinkerings.
Tinkerings, you will learn, are songs with tinkered lyrics – either completely re-themed or satirical takes on the original. This Tinker is good at, and one finds comedy with music more immediately accessible than stand-up. Tinker takes melodies from the likes of Wilson Dixon, Tom Basden and Pulp. His own libretti, like Cow Meditation and Philosophy are actually brilliant, dripping with double entendres and fantasy. Tinker’s satires of Bowie and Jagger, while not polished, have humorous veracity.
Perched on a stool and strumming simply, Tinker has a fetching sonorous register delivering mid-country Pommie vowels. The lyrics are quirky and ironic, and extend to farcical conclusions using dollops of lateral thinking. There are references betraying an interest in history and science, somewhat in the Monty Python vein, like the song comparing the Tudors and the Vikings. At half time, Adelaidean Fergus O’Regan comes on for a funny song focusing on the phallus. Tinker returns in a ludicrous wig claiming to be Billy Ray Cyrus and after some chat exposing a wounded accent, launches into Achy Breaky Heart 2 – Zombie Apocalypse, another hit of the night.
There’s a naivety and honesty about Tinker – apologies for stiff fretting fingers, losing one’s place while reading the words, throwing sheets of music around, strumming to the lowest common denominator – it’s goofy but charming. All forgiven in a ten minute open mic set, but a one-hour one-man show commands a greater commitment to the gig.
David Grybowski
3 stars
When: 21 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Broadcast Bar
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Presented by Standard Theatre. Bakehouse Studio Theatre. 21 Feb 2019
When is a monologue not a monologue? Answer: when it is a lecture.
Bob Paisley, fondly remembered for his Bill Clinton Hercules a Fringe or so ago, has donned a brown suit and bow tie, popped a pipe in his pocket, and turned into a somewhat raddled and addled university professor who is giving his last lecture on western civilisation. To that end, he is trying to squeeze in a pressure cooker of topics, beginning with mathematics and the joys pi and ending with European art and the mystery of the Mona Lisa’s smile. Among many things, he has a go at iambic pentameter and why actors spit, sings a sweet wee song with a ukulele, marvels at the human and non-human phenomenon of book reading, sings praise to paragraphs, mocks poets, and in uproarious overkill, gives his expose on the Mona Lisa.
It’s all desperate machine-gun delivery from the fine Kansas actor; a torrent of Brian Parks’ quirky content, directed by John Clancy. It’s one of those things that provokes different laughs and guffaws from different parts of the audience at different times. But everyone laughs at the end, whether they want to or not.
Samela Harris
3 ½ Stars
When: 21 Feb to 2 Mar
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au