Adelaide Fringe. Empire Theatre at Gluttony, Rymill Park. 23 Feb 2019
Cazeleon: The Movies in My Mind is a high energy solo cabaret act about gender fluidity and the attendant tribulations experienced by individuals when they dare to be themselves, however different that might be. This show might be described as a classy drag show, and it is, but it is also much more that. To only see a man costumed as one glamorous woman after another (even though he does sport a beard), diminishes the important messages that pervade the production.
Cazeleon (think chameleon) sequences a number of vignettes that explore his struggles from childhood when he vehemently protests that he IS a boy despite what people may think, through to adulthood as he questions and explores the social construction of gender and discovers and emerges into his own identity.
The tile of the show – The Movies in My Mind – refers to how Cazeleon samples from and depicts the life-styles of the rich and (in)famous of the entertainment industry, and selects songs of iconic divas such as Nancy Sinatra, Shirley Bassey and particularly Lady Gaga to plead his case that “..there ain’t no other way / Baby I was born this way”.
Cazeleon’s costumes are lush yet elegant, and his make-up is flawless and striking. None of it is draggy – it’s classy. His voice is huge and easily handles the rigours of the songs of the divas, but the backing tracks do not always have a clear line against which he can accurately pitch to the key of the music. However, it is easy to see why Cazeleon has won an Adelaide Fringe Best Emerging Artist Weekly Award.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Empire Theatre at Gluttony
Bookings: Closed
Matt Hyde. Treasury 1860 – Bar. 23 Feb 2019
Arrrgh! I’ve had enough of office work, and strategic planning, and useless meetings, and birthday cupcakes, and piling the bags in the corner of the pub, and dancing on Friday nights with workmates I can barely tolerate, and small minded wingeing civil servants trapped in their jobs… oh, wait a minute, I’m actually one of those. I’m Dave and work in London.
Up and coming British playwright DC Moore wrote Dave a half hour rant about modern work and life in the big city - any city really – that nearly everyone who works in a CBD office will find embarrassing familiar and funny. Moore penned Honest in 2010, the same year his play, Empire, earned him a nomination for the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright, and a nomination for an Olivier award for outstanding achievement in an affiliate theatre. As Honest and Empire are only his second and third plays, I guess you can say he’s up and coming.
Producer and actor Matt Hyde performs at the bar of the Bar at the Treasury consuming what seems like an inebriating quantum of beer and shots (but it probably wasn’t) as his Dave escalates mere complaint into action. A massive miscue of honesty with the boss results in a self-pitying all-nighter of alcoholic wonder and wander through familiar neighbourhoods of London (and he slips in an informative running commentary on class and architecture).
Hyde brilliantly conjures Dave’s misanthropic rave and his edgy boozy haze which perfectly smolders and ignites. He really could be someone you meet on a Friday night with sufficient charisma to go off the rails with. Director Jason Langley paces proceedings properly. One is reminded of The Catcher in the Rye, and of Bright Lights, Big City. Yet DC Moore has Dave spend too much time establishing his credentials at the bar and more amusing misadventure on his owl-hour sojourn would have been appreciated. Have another beer and enjoy the ride!
David Grybowski
4 Stars
When: 19 Feb to 3 Mar
Where: Treasury 1860 - Bar
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Holden Street Theatres. 23 Feb 2019
It’s amazing, year after year, Peter Goers finds more rabbits to pull out of his raconteur hat.
You’d think he’d run out of funny stories. But, no. This Fringe, he brings a fresh batch of anecdotes old and new, and despite the title of the show, none of them is about Hans.
Indeed, there is no Hans; just Goers appallingly attired in one of the spangly sparkly outfits Hans’s loving mum makes for Hans, who has his own Hans: Like a German show on at Gluttony this Fringe. If there’s a laugh in it, Goers has no shame. There’s a big laugh in it. Red spangles and tail feathers speak for themselves.
It’s one of those sights you can’t un-see.
Thereafter, clad in more elegant summery garb, Goers regales his audience with tales of adventures out on the speaker’s circuit, of Adelaide nostalgia, books, mischief, showbiz, and things that get up one’s nose. He balances the funny with the poignant making it a pleasing emotional roller-coaster of vignettes, an hour of fun and amity. He’s been doing it now for decades. He has a wealth of material. He’s good at it.
As his stage manager this year, he has the wonderful Singing Milkman, Robin “Smacka” Schmeltzkopf who not only works in the wings but gets to sing a number. It is a winning interlude and the audience adores him.
Thus arrives another very nice afternoon of hearty giggles with Goers.
Don’t dither about booking. It’s bound to be a sell-out like the others.
Samela Harris
4 ½ Stars
When: 23 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Joanne Hartstone, The Flanagan Collective & Gobbledigook Theatre, and Holden Street Theatres. Holden Street Theatres – The Sunken Garden. 22 Feb 2019
Orpheus returns to the Adelaide Fringe, having won weekly awards at both the 2018 Adelaide Fringe and at Fringe World in Perth this year. One may be forgiven for thinking that the troupe’s companion piece, Eurydice, won one or both of these awards, or even more, by reading the Eurydice poster, as that’s not the case.
In the ancient Greek myth, Eurydice is chased by Aristaeus, trods on a viper and goes straight to Hades. Her husband, Orpheus, proceeds to retrieve her; all he has to do is lead the way and not look back at her until they reach the light of day. But look back he does and she vanishes.
Both stories are updated to modern Britain and in Orpheus, Dave spies Eurydice across a crowded bar on his 30th birthday bash. Orpheus follows a similar narrative arc as Eurydice – both penned by writer Alexander Wright; there is a greater emphasis on the preamble of the biography of the eponymous character, how the couple meets and the fireworks of love at first site, than on the myth.
Orpheus is a spoken word performance, so no need for acting. The playwright narrates from an intrusive script he didn’t really need to hang on to. Imagery and metaphor rush out in torrents of energy and palpable emotional wonder. Moving randomly in the performance space, Wright tag teams with composer Phil Grainger on acoustic guitar. While, what one presumes to be, his own compositions are poetic and pertinent, we are dragged back to reality and our individualised nostalgia by rifts of Bruce Springsteen.
Yes, the tale of young love is beautiful, and lovingly told, but told for too long, and the drama that might have been accessed from the myth promised in the title is left wanting.
David Grybowski
3 Stars
When: 16 Feb to 16 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres – The Sunken Garden
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
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