★★★
Adelaide Fringe Festival. The Warehouse Theatre. 22 Feb 2025
I Can Have a Darkside Too is actor/writer/musician/ventriloquist Glenn Wallis’s first solo show as actor/writer. It comes in just under 40 minutes and it is both humorous and disturbing as it explores themes of grief, suicide, mental health, and self-efficacy.
Nate, played by Wallis, is a children’s entertainer who is commissioned by schools to deliver ‘fun’ lessons on stranger danger and the like. But he has personal demons that surface and interfere with his state of mind and how he approaches his work. In fact he’s dangerous. The text delves deeper into Nate’s thought processes and his less than pleasant memories of his childhood and his relationship with his mother who has recently passed away under tragic circumstances. The mirror into Nate’s disturbed psyche is through a sock puppet called Emmett that Nate controls.
Emmett is foul mouthed and brutal in what he says, and he upsets Nate’s equilibrium at every turn, but the audience lap it up. There are plenty of chuckles and the dialogue frequently lands its punches, but there are also many occasions where the gag lines need to be more incisive and even crueller than they are.
Wallis’s physicality is impressive. There is not much of the stage that he doesn’t use and at times the sock puppet seems larger than life and behaves like a rat cunning street fighter. It distracts us from Wallis’s emerging ventriloquist skills.
The show has an impressive soundtrack with various voice overs that Wallis uses to perfection.
This show merits further development and making a return visit to Fringe.
Kym Clayton
When: 22 Feb
Where: The Warehouse Theatre
Bookings: Closed
