ONEOFUS/Improbable. Dunstan Playhouse. 
0 Mar 2015
Aside from the set which is a cartoon of the faded elegance of mansion rooms, Beauty and The Beast didn't promise much in the first ten minutes. Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz made some introductory remarks about themselves, take seats, and recite the opening of the fairy tale with the aid of another couple who manipulate overheads on one of those old projectors; you know, the kind used in the offices of the world before PowerPoint. But it gets better and better as Mat and Julie alternate revelations of their lives as carnies and their improbable courtship beginning in the sideshows of Julie's beloved Coney Island with the tale of Beauty and The Beast which stands as a metaphoric narrative arc for their love story.
With the aid of puppeteers Jess Mabel Jones and Johnny Dixon, this humorous, heart-warming and magical tale is told with every trick known between pantomime and pornography (in fact the show is rated 18+). Goblets fly through the air, arms and body dismember and re-attach, clothes go on and off, and then stay off. In a frantic and racy banquet of fruit, lascivious tongue lashings of bananas and melon foreshadow the finale.
Beast even takes a sponge bath and washes his ass with his heel. Try that as your next party trick! But it's no parlour game for Fraser; that's how he does it even when no-one's looking. You see, Fraser's physique is a fall-out of his mother's prescribed use of Thalidomide.
Beauty is won over by the lonely but enigmatic Beast and their marriage is consummated in ecstatic variation. Not for the shy or faint-hearted. I have to admit, I experienced a hint of envy as I watched this couple - so in love, and creative, and free - have this opportunity to reaffirm their vows with such gusto. Bravo!
While former Miss Coney Island, Julie Atlas Muz, is very comfortable in her career performance genre of burlesque, and at being her lovely self, one does have to know something about acting to perform even melodrama. On the other hand, Fraser would be absolutely convincing in anything from Shakespeare's Henry V to Hemingway's Henry in 'Farewell To Arms.' He has a glorious vocal presence and steady command of the stage. Disabled my arse.
A must see for the Festival.
David Grybowski
When: 10 to 15 Mar
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
