A Company of Strangers

ADELAIDE FRINGE 2009
A Company of Strangers
Strut & Fret Productions
11 March 200
The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Spiegeltent

It didn’t take long among the company of strangers (and an old friend) to be reminded of the things that Adelaide does well.

Adelaide’s not just 1950s attitudes with great beer; this city knows how to create mouth-watering salt and pepper eggplant, affogatos and Fringe festivals. The Adelaide Fringe is the biggest on this side the world, because it’s the best. Audiences flock to shows; they see anything and everything – not because they’re among the arty farty “in” crowd, but because they know that taking a punt on a Fringe show is likely to be a lot of fun. And if the show sucks, they will enjoy it anyway, because they’ve paid and there’s still beer drinking and hanging around with the cool folk to be done.

Strut & Fret productions have captured the essence of the Adelaide Fringe in the Garden of Unearthly delights. Teenagers, dressed for nightclubs, line up alongside their grandparents, dressed for a possibly chilly evening, to get into the Garden. The food is delicious, the coffee is great, the bar has plenty of overpriced beer, the craft stalls are worth a look and there are more theatre spaces than you can count on both hands. I love the Spiegeltent when it sits by the Melbourne Arts Centre, but the tent feels at home in the Adelaide parklands.

Melbourne-based and world-travelling Martin Martini MC’s the Garden’s showpiece: A Company of Strangers. He declares Adelaide his favourite place to play – and it doesn’t take long to figure out why. This crowd doesn’t care about deconstructing the artistic merit of the piece– they want to enjoy the wackiness. So this show of strange people performing amongst the company of strangers is the perfect show for this perfect festival.

The company is a collection of wonderfully-odd musical cabaret performers. There’s no theme and no cohesion -it’s just meant to be fun.

The most-loved of the permanent strangers is the UK’s Le Gateau Chocolat. He knows that larger folk can appear svelte in flowing layers of black – so he has a collection of glossy, coloured lyrca body suits. With an opera-trained voice he belts out soprano-favourites as a bass and even has a play with Rhianna’s about an umbrella – whilst looking like a cockless telly tubby on acid. Drag is no longer a drag.

Lady Carol strums a ukulele and professes to be a “’lady” from Ireland. Her husky voice encourages the crowd to sing along, but she needs to decide if she is herself or her character on the stage.

Our own Paul Capsis should never be off a cabaret stage. Resplendent in red velvet he channels Janis Joplin and even sobers the mood with a composition co-written with Tim Freedman about his Nanna’s migration to Australia.

For all of the Strangers’ wonderfulness, none shone quite as blindingly as their special guest: Meow Meow. Lost in her own glamorous time-warp, Meow wraps herself around the audience and demands their support – literally. After forcing the audience to undress her she is carried to the stage with her thighs wrapped around the neck of the best looking man she could find. (I wonder if Mr Gateau is thinking of doing the same one night…)

With a temper rivalled only by her ego, Meow answer a less than modest “I know” to her rapturous applause. She thinks it’s for her, but we know it’s for someone else. Creator and character are so distanced that it’s hard to imagine them as one. Meow is too selfish to ever let us glimpse the woman behind her. She also knows that an illusion fails if we see the sleight of hand, and Meow’s magic would fade if we could see the work, the skill and the understanding of form that creates this exquisite parody.

A Company of Strangers is ideal Fringe fare. There are different special guests throughout the season, but be assured the Strangers will make you feel like you’re one of them in no time.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Barb Dwyer

ADELAIDE FRINGE 2009
Barb Dwyer
Mickey D
Velocity Boy Productions
13 March 2009
Rhino Room

Adelaide creates many exceptionally funny, but ironically complex things: Don Dunstan’s pink shorts, the Mall’s Balls, Pie Floaters and Mickey D.

Mickey is welcomed in the UK, New Zealand, South Africa and anywhere he goes, but there’s nothing quite like watching a comedian in their home town – especially when their mum and dad have popped in to see why their pride and joy left home – and two very gorgeous year 10 girls are in the front row wearing the “Mickey D no #1 Fan” shirts” they made with a tube of glitter glue.

It was an honour to witness young Michael’s proudest moment ever. He saw the shirts, saw the girls, looked up and said, “Dad – I’ve made it!”

Barb Dwyer is Mickey‘s latest show. It‘s not about his mum - say it out loud if you didn‘t have a chuckle. Of course, it’s more than a nice bit of word play - but be warned that Mr Dwyer does play with some sharp and dangerous boundaries.

There are enough risk managed jokes out there; Mickey wants his audience to panic and continues to believe that you should be able to make fun of everything – even Victorian bushfires. Ok, still a bit too soon – so, it was onto the safer territory, like mindas, spastics, the time he broke his mum’s vagina...and Adelaide.

Over the next month, funny folk converge on Melbourne for the International Comedy Festival. Many are also at the Adelaide Fringe now and will open their Victorian shows convinced that Melbourne audiences love an Adelaide bagging. As many Comedy Fest punters have only been to Adelaide once – on a visit to an aunt, who lives in Paradise, when they were 12 – any joke that involves the words church, bogan or Rundle Mall tends to get a superior giggle. Mickey knows the secret though – you can only successfully make fun of Adelaide if you’ve lived there – and then you can gouge at the painfully truthful core. (And anyway, what would Victorians know – they killed Hooksie.)

Minda jokes may be central to Adelaide’s sense of humour. Just call someone a minda and you’ll know immediately if they are from the southern capital, due to their sniggering or embarrassed cringing.

Minda Incorporated provides care and support to intellectually disabled clients. Oh yes, callings someone a minda is making fun of the intellectually disabled. And if that’s where your jokes and insults end – well you’re just a bogan spaz. This is the core of Mickey D’s comedy – he viciously reveals the hypocrisy and bullshit surrounding this kind of insult. Sure, we can call someone a minda, but in doing so, we are really insulting the mindlessness of anyone who thinks that kind of insult is funny.

The minda jokes might not travel out of town, but Barb Dwyer is also about New Zealand, Thailand and Africa - and his Adelaide show really had to be about Adelaide.

Mickey knows he's home because he can’t have a meal in Rundle Street without seeing someone he went to school with, fought with or fucked. I knew I was back in Adelaide when I asked his mum if she was proud of her lad. She is – but worries that she “wasted all those (name of private boys school) school fees.” Trust me, Adelaide people are cacking themselves. (And don’t worry Mrs D – I’m sure my mum has said the same at some point.)

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Dark Party

ADELAIDE FRINGE 2009
The Dark Party
The Dirty Brothers Sideshow
11 March 2009
The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Le Cascadeur

The Dark Party is what Waiting for Godot might have been if Beckett had been brought up in a travelling circus.

Sometimes sideshow tricks do belong on the side and on the street, but the Dirty Brothers have brought their sword swallowing and nipple stretching into the theatre. The tricks are just as cringe-worthy and “ewww”able as ever, but they leap high above the tattooed throng with their old-fashioned use of character and story.

In flasher trench coats and faded clown faces, their sense of almost surreal pathos sets the mood, and each trick is placed within a character sketch, bringing a level of tension and comedy often missed in trick-based shows. Staple-gunning of the chest is tired, but when it’s a sad, fat bloke being forced to dance a hoola and make his plastic flower lei with a staple gun, its bitterness is endearing.

If sideshow is your thing, don’t miss The Dark Party, but you’re not into watching the eating of maggots, you might still love this for its irony, comedy and darkness.


This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Mad & Ugly Show

ADELAIDE FRINGE 2009
The Mad & Ugly Show
Cocoloco
12 March 2009
The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Bosco Theatre

Best known for their eccentric and sometimes shocking street theatre, London’s Cocoloco warn that The Mad & Ugly Show is not for the faint hearted or children – a sure way to entice an Adelaide Fringe crowd into the theatre.

The ripping opening is on a screen, with a series of women of all shapes and ages (top half only) enduring a wax. By their pained, shocked and horrified reactions, there’s never any doubt about what hair is being removed, and I was expecting a show that explores the absurdity of the “mad” things people do to fix their “ugly” bits.

The first tantalising glimpse of the creators, Helen Statman and Trevor Stuart, is as mirror image Alices – now old, faded, and reciting the naughty nursery rhymes and poems that our grandparents might have avoided at story time. Supported by firm, but gentle audience interaction, the sinister Alices were a taste of Cocoloco’s ability to grab a stereotype and twist it into something far more interesting. Maybe it is about aging and holding onto beauty?

The use of the screen let the company play with ideas that are not an option on the street, such as a close up of a masturbating monkey – complete with the dodgy video commentary of “What does a monkey do with a handful of cum?” Thirteen-year-old boys on their first trip to Bali have more interesting and context-based clips on YouTube. So perhaps The Mad & Ugly Show is just a handful of wank

The theme continued with close ups of vaginas (one with ironic itchy, red lumps of post-wax re-growth) violently masturbating to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”, sucking on a giant baby’s dummy or popping out a rubber dildo. Confronting taboos and pushing boundaries is going to grab my attention – but I couldn’t grasp the point of this. It wasn’t erotica, porn or art – and I wouldn’t call it theatre. There were laughs, but there’s a noticeable difference between an audience laugh of release and recognition and a laugh of discomfort.

Stuart and Statman’s sketches included the obligatory pulling a skateboard with cock, and more confronting characters like a pregnant woman’s musing about sucking a baby’s penis. Some of this struck an amazing balance between shock and content – but too much felt like it was there just for a reaction. Shock for the sake of shock – really isn’t shocking. I don’t think people left because they were shocked – they left because they were bored.

The most flabbergasting (and ironically, most interesting) part of The Mad & Ugly Show was the company’s show reel! What first seemed like a collection of wacky email pictures was photos of their street theatre. I’ve since looked at the same pics on their web page. Cocoloco’s street theatre looks incredible. It’s challenging, confronting and immediately funny. But why were these images included into their theatre show? They didn’t support anything on the stage - and they created disappointment because we saw hints of what they do well.

If Cocoloco are out on the streets – I’ll follow them throwing money, but The Mad & Ugly Show… well I guess it lived up to its name.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Potted Potter

ADELAIDE FRINGE 2009
Potted Potter
14 March 2009
The Garden of Unearthly Delights, The Pod

Two nerds have 70 minutes to tell the stories of all seven Harry Potter books to a sold-out audience of obsessive Harry Potter fans (myself included)...

Potter Potter was created by UK TV presenters Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner. Dan and Jeff haven’t come down under, but secreted their sold-out-show spell to John Helier and David Ahmad for its journey to Oz.

And all should be keeping the list of ingredients and the magic word under Gringott’s protection, because Potted Potter is non-stop hilarity that young and old Potter fans lap up and non-potheads can still enjoy.

From a warthog (Hogwarts) gag, through to the perfect rendition of the Snape/Potter relationship, a Daniel Radcliffe/Equus reference, an audience participation game of Quiddich, and the final “Death and Camping” joke, Potted Potter never fails in its knowledge of the books (or the films), while ensuring that it can be enjoyed by everyone.

Helier and Ahmad’s are as irresistible as an all-you-can-eat afternoon in Honeydukes, while the script’s secret is its determination to be unexpected and fun. Harry’s story is really just the subplot, as the straight and nerdy book-guy is continually frustrated by his impulsive, inventive (and nerdy) mate, who thinks they might be performing Lord of the Rings (set in Narnia) and has spent all the money for hiring a cast on a dragon for book four.

The Adelaide shows are selling out (with about a 50:50 kid: adult ratio), but it’s on its way to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Don’t worry if your kids (or you) are still working their way through the series, as its fast and enough to miss any significant spoilers – except that it does end happily. If you’ve read them all three or four times, there is enough content to keep you enthralled and if you’ve thought of renting the DVD, come along and see what the fuss is about – and expect to stop at the library or the bookstore on your way home.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.