Adelaide Fringe. Adelaide Youth Theatre. Star Theatre. 17 Mar 2017
13 The Musical was the first, and maybe only, Broadway musical with a cast and band entirely comprised of teenagers. Jason Robert Brown was commissioned to write the music and lyrics for a theatre group in Los Angeles in 2007. You may recall JRB from his concert of original tunes, Songs For A New World, in the 2003 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, or the musical itself when Adelaide Youth Theatre produced the South Australian premiere in the Adelaide Fringe of 2012.
Director Lindsay Prodea had the Herculean task of guiding two completely different casts - one of older and the other of younger teenagers for two shows each. I saw the younger cast put on a hearty and very professional show bursting with talent.
Librettists Dan Elish and Robert Horn rocket Grease into the 21st Century. While the gangs are gone, the moiety is still there, and issues of exclusion are more sensitively portrayed. Also the characters are younger and thus the piece probably more suited to the younger cast.
Evan, a Jewish kid from New York City, is plunked into a small town high school and is desperate to prove his popularity with a big Bar Mitzvah. Although initially befriending his neighbour, Patrice, he finds out she's an outcast in class and shuns her for the cool kids led by Brett. The schmuck spends the rest of the play scheming to set things right, and works with Patrice's friend, Archie, who is also on the out due to his muscular dystrophy or somewhat similar disease. Things go from bad to worse before they get better.
The score in the hands of musical director Ben Francis and his band is lively and energetic. Indeed, all things are good - Luke Bartholomew's lighting is flashy but sometimes leaves some in the shade. No costuming task was too daunting for Lisa Dandie, even when a dozen orthodox Jews or cheerleaders are called for. Joshua Maxwell managed a bunch of projections that set the scenes. All very incredibly good production values given the shoestring budget.
And into this staging vessel are poured some of Adelaide's brightest young talents under the swift and deft direction of Prodea and the relaxed and cheeky choreography of Nina Richi.
Undersized Ethan Schembri's Evan is effervescent and perky and a trier, but a schmuck nonetheless. Alana Iannace lends Patrice a nuanced voice and acting skills and I can't understand why nobody liked her. Jayden Prelc gives Archie a humorous sensibility. Kristian Latella made Evan's antagonist Brett an outwardly very lovely guy, but really, he's a bully. Lucy as played by Taylor Tran was a sly villainous skank and very watchable. Poor Kendra was not much more than an object of desire for Brett and Archie in the script but Georgia Firth lent her some dignity. Just to show that there was talent to spare, chorus girl Izzy Oppedisano was outstanding in the encore.
How all these kids and chorus channeled their hormonic energy into song and dance and nuanced performance was a real joy to watch.
Bravo to AYT!
David Grybowski
When: 16 to 18 Mar
Where: Star Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Fringe. Grapa. The Bakehouse Theatre. 16 Mar 2017
Where do you go when you're unconscious and maybe dying? Well, here's your answer. The Prime Minister flies himself into a mountain between meetings and is awaiting rescue, or not, in life and death's halfway house. There's not much there - nothing really - except two annoying men in white coats who are as helpful as Kafka's authorities and engaged with repeated Pinter-like dialogue. But then again, maybe they would be more helpful if the PM calmed down and pondered his mortality.
But he doesn't, and that's the situation playwright John Bolger wished to convey in this world premiere production - some people are so bound up with their busy lives and hubris that they don't change, even faced with their own demise. While an attempt was made to ratchet up the tension with the threesome moving to different rooms indicative of the rescue mission moving toward a conclusion, indeed nothing really changes, and the PM's unrelenting lack of self-reflection is tedious.
If Bolger wanted me to feel that I was in some weird place - that like the PM I would dearly wish to leave - he succeeded.
David Grybowski
When: 14 to 18 Mar
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Fringe. Second Breakfast. Tandanya Arts Cafe. 16 Mar 2017
Playwright and performer Mark Salvestro lived with a portrait of his great great uncle in military uniform on the wall of his parent’s house, and nobody really knew much about him. His extraordinary research - movingly documented on his website - takes us on the journey of George Edward Bradford, from adolescent athletics in the Central West New South Wales town of Forbes to the tragedy of Gallipoli.
It's obvious the love and reverence that Salvestro puts into his story. And poignant that he is about the same early 20s age as Bradford was when he was shot with thousands of other dead and wounded in the failed battles of August 1915 that effectively ended the campaign on the peninsula. They even look much alike - you cannot but secretly weep at the thought of such sensitivity, vigour and beauty wasted by bullets.
Salvestro sweetly counterpoints himself with Bradford most effectively in short alternating scenes comparing his alienation in a nightclub with Bradford courting his future wife in the calmer circumstances of a century ago. In exchanges of letters, Bradford finds out that his child dies in infancy. Evacuated from the beach, we learn in a most pitiful narrative deftly delivered by Salvestro that Bradford succumbed to his wounds and was buried at sea.
Director Phoebe Anne Taylor and Salvestro keep interest alive through the use of copious props, the switching between Salvestro and Bradford, and having Salvestro singing period ditties to his own accompaniment on the keyboard, and later to an uncredited pianist, who also underscored key narration.
A few details need to be attended to. Salvestro as Edwards wore his slouch hat backwards, and he says that he participated in a Camp Gallipoli event, probably the 2015 Anzac Centenary sleep-out. As a footnote, Camp Gallipoli - after taking millions of dollars in grants from government and business - was stripped of its charity status by the regulator, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission, as it was unable to demonstrate that it was indeed a not-for-profit organisation.
There's not much of an epilogue - there is no eulogy, and all the characters disappear including Salvestro who quickly evacuates the stage.
This is a warm and moving production straight from the heart and delivered with skill that resurrects one of our heroes and brings the past to the present with thoughtful reflection.
David Grybowski
When: 16 to 19 Mar
Where: Tandanya Arts Cafe
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Lama Theatre Company & The Garage International. 15 Mar 2017
Going a place too far theatrically in creating other realities is bound to end in disaster. Lama Theatre’s The Places You’ll Go doesn't fall into that trap.
Hila Ben Gera’s whimsical fairytale like script in Director Cassandra Fumi’s hands, is transformed into an extremely effective, deeply engaging road story for the inner soul, seeking something beyond here and now.
A restrained but highly effective lighting design centres on bright spots and shades with fluorescent touches brilliantly cutting the space, shaping and framing character and action, and the tone of the seven characters and six performers who inhabit the black stage.
A Work Weary Man/Man Suit (Alex Roe), Work Weary Woman/Cloud ( Grace Lowry), alongside Postman 1 (Tom Halls), Postman 2 (Sean Rees) and Woman in a Hurry (Hila Ben Gera) magically seem to span their real world and a fantastical one simultaneously.
Fumi’s direction is focused on flowing, highly disciplined choreographed physicality powering the work. It rewards production and audience with an absolutely essential, deliciously balanced tension alike to tightrope walking between the inner world and ordinary, physical reality.
These characters are seeking hope, respite, resolution to their deepest questions, and the discovery of something new beyond them. The journey is a surrealist battle with conflicting identities, desires and so much stuff.
So much joy and fun is expressed in Ben Gera’s script. The wordplay alone is a sheer delight, multiplied by a sharp, brilliantly on-point ensemble, who gives everything to encompass all that is known about seeking out answers and giving them.
David O’Brien
When: 1 to 17 March
Where: 128 King William St (off Pirie St)
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Festival. Gravity & Other Myths (GOM). Dunstan Playhouse. 15 Mar 2017
As the curtain lifts on the Dunstan Playhouse an odd, almost rehearsal-like, space is revealed with a hodgepodge of random items orderly arranged around the stage, the performers themselves lying amongst the organised chaos.
The random items – wooden poles, metal buckets, large rocks, a suit of armour, and items of costuming – are moved, removed, and switched and the players begin their acrobatic dance routine. Ascending to spectacular heights on each other’s shoulders they scale one another with absolute confidence - first two high, then three and finally four… the highest acrobat’s head almost touching the lights atop the proscenium arch. It is an impressive feat. It is a feat of great strength; the first in an 80 minute long barrage of exceptional circus skill, flexibility, strength, trust, and confidence.
The show continues with tribal-like rituals where sandy rubble is scattered in patterns on the floor. Circles, lines, mounds and geometric patterns are formed and the performers are almost instructed and controlled by the angle and direction of the patterns. They flip over it, wrestle in it, and throw themselves around with explosive energy.
There are representations of machines. Cause and effect. Perpetual motion and Newtons 3rd law. The human structures, tower over one another. The strength and agility one associates with the backbone is evident in panoply of images, movements, and forms.
The performer’s agility and stamina is beyond impressive. The trust they must have in each other and their absolute focus and understanding of limits is nothing short of spectacular.
This is a new kind of circus. It is understated. Humble. Introspective.
The work has been commissioned for the Adelaide Festival. The director, Darcy Grant, has envisioned a piece which he says “…examines strength. Honestly, ironically, and personally.” The production is raw, and it is evident in the staging, composition, and performance.
Elliot Zoerner and Shenton Gregory have composed a musical accompaniment which links the imagery taking place on stage, heightens the tension, lengthens the moments of awe-inspiring skill, and punctuates the drama. Their onstage performance of the music is equally dextrous, the two playing multiple instruments to create all manner of digital and musical effects.
Geoff Cobham’s design utilises laser technology in the lighting effects which is reminiscent of a bygone era dragged into the 21st century. Mirrors are used to spectacular effect and directional and shaped lighting draws focus to important imagery as it is played out by the performers.
The result is a spectacular 1 hour 20 minute production that whizzes by and leaves one feeling agog for the next GOM creation. It is easy to see why this is a multi-award winning company.
The performances continue for another 3 days. Miss it at your own peril.
Paul Rodda
When: 15 to 19 Mar
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au