★★
Adelaide Fringe. Derek Tickner. Curiositeas. 5 Mar 2023
Curiositeas, up a narrow staircase aloft of Rundle Street, is an enchanting and tiny temporary Fringe venue that can make the smallest of audiences seem a full house. Proprietor Shannaka has decorated the arches and shelves and nooks and crannies of the archaic building with tea paraphernalia that the roving eye catches.
The Doomer and Boomer are an odd couple in presence but a sensible match in the planning stage. The pair tag-team their schticks with more entanglement than entertainment. In fact, they seem to occasionally loathe each other as part of the act.
Mark Allen as the doomer kind of gives a TED Talk of opinion and Wiki-facts of what’s gone wrong with the world. Initially full of complaints, his patter grows more practical, even infused with solutions. Unfortunately, Allen totally lacks any sense of stagecraft. He’s constantly in motion like a drunken sailor on a pitching ship. He looks down to the floor a lot, so I look down to the floor. And A4 notes, really? However, with each turn, Allen’s ideas grow better, and one realises he actually has serious commitment to greening and better wealth-sharing from business. As his confidence grew, his eyes lifted off the floor into the soul of the audience for some genuine connection. An ironic and humorous examination of the full cycle resource utility of cow’s milk vs oat milk, and a pretty good Brian Cox (TV physicist) impersonation are made.
Eric Tinker (Derek Tickner) reprises his successful MC Boomer rap but was unable to fill even the tiny tea house with volume. The Boomer is a marvelous invention of a crude and smug old man in mirrors and black beanie laughing out loud at his good luck to mature in the age of resource rape – exactly the doomer’s complaint. Being of similar age, I am guilty as charged and feel sorry for the three young women in the front row whose future is diminished by the generation currently frame-walking their way to nursing homes. In his next appearance, Tinker reprises his whimsical song of the good old days when “IT meant it,” and phones had cords. The mind-reading skit worked a treat and Cow Meditation has been bolstered to be even funnier - oat milk gets a second mention.
While there is a hint of a good duel between the two, the show is poorly written, casually delivered, under rehearsed and un-directed, and the performers disheveled. Not Tinker’s best work and hopefully not Allen’s either.
David Grybowski
When: 1 to 5 Mar
Where: Curiositeas
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
