Bittersweet

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Bittersweet
8 October 2009
Meat Market

Bittersweet enjoyed a short season of sold out shows at the Fringe’s wonderful circus ‘tent’ at the Meat Market. Created by Last Tuesday Society regulars, the eager crowds were ready for something very different.

Set in a strip club in the “seedy side of town where it’s always 4.30 in the morning”, Richard Higgins is the DJ who narrates the tale that ends with the destruction of the club. With a singer who only sings when the club is shut, the sweet country girl who just wants to hoop dance, a band who never leave and a drunk whose stuck to his chair, Bittersweet is on it’s way to being a late-night cult favourite.

But it feels like a Last Tuesday night in a bigger venue. Story and characters are what hold this kind of show together, with the skill of the performers used to tell the story. For all their skill, each piece took us away from the characters and made us focus on the performers, which was emphasised by Higgins dropping his dark, seedy (and fascinating) DJ character, slipping into his MC character (or even himself) and asking us to cheer – and the performers dropping out of character to bow! If you want us to care about the people in this sad, lonely place, don’t remind us that it’s all just pretendies and we are really there to see you look hot and show off a bit.

The characters felt tacked on to the performer’s existing acts, rather than integral to them. Simoncee Page-Jones’, Dragon Lilly hides behind enough glitter make up and feathers to dress a Les Girls troupe, but we don’t get a glimpse of why. She sings ‘Send in the Clowns’, but misses the emotion of the song to be a vocal gymnast. This one would have hit us in the heart if she had let Lilly drop her mask and sing from her heart. Stephen Williams was hands down the performer of the night, but his effortless skill needed a character who belonged in that club. Anna Lumb is adorable on stage, but I wasn’t sure if she was playing one or two characters.

Bittersweet is a nice cabaret show, but it’s not a theatre show yet. The story needs work and the group ‘happy ending’ isn’t earned - and I have no idea what the tacked on dance was. Was it meant to show us that two people survived and found love or something that didn’t fit in anywhere else?

The spine and structure are there, but Bittersweet needs (and deserves) the help of a writer and a director to balance out the flavours and remove the saccharine aftertaste.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

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Occupied

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Occupied
RAG Theatre
(supported by the City of Port Phillip)
10 October 2009
Theatre Works

It's a strange feeling to see a stage that looks too much like how my brain feels, and love a show that made me laugh so honestly at my own life.

RAG Theatre’s Occupied is for everyone who has ever endured a day in an office.

Cheap desks, IKEA bins, old computers (with holographic smiley face stickers), coffee cups, attempts at recycling, folders, and chairs that spin create a design that makes the clutter look almost beautiful; if it wasn’t for the clutter.

Starting slowly and ritualistically, five ‘workers’ (Carla Mitterlehner, Marjetka McMahon, Jo Sloggett, Melissa Tauber and Fur Wale) remind us that our worship of money is what makes us enter offices – places that thrive on unnecessary chaos, but ultimately chip away at our souls though boredom.

Under the steady direction of Scott Gooding, Occupied was devised by the current RAG Theatre ensemble (RAG was formed in 1993) though workshops. The resulting series of vignettes about the ‘madness’ of offices, strip away the pretence of these environments and let us laugh at their absurdity.

“You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.” There isn’t a workplace where this sign doesn’t appear – and everyone hates it because it’s true. The repetition of this cliché and the examples of the madness that the office life leads to were so familiar and so ridiculous at the same time. Who hasn’t moved the stuff on someone’s desk to bug them or tried to do yoga in their chair?

There’s little dialogue, because work conversations are all the same and don’t say much anyway. The official ones are filled with ‘buts’ that blame other people (with some of the best outrageous excuses ever), while the casual chats are filled with untruths and a touch of crudity.

Occupied’s honest and hilariously accurate depiction of boredom sent me back to every job where I stamped my fingernails, wore an envelope as a hat, looked around the room through a postal tube telescope, built a folder house for my desk toy (that was there to cheer me up), wondered what those bitches were talking about behind my back or just wanted to climb under my desk and cry.

RAG Theatre, you are my type of people – thank you for reminding me why I never want to work in an office again.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.
 
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

DOS or DUO

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
DOS or DUO
Stuart Christie and Kane Petersen
10 October 2009
Meat Market

As there is a transport god whom I have somehow displeased (this god really had it in for me today), I missed DOS or DUO.

However I snuck in near the end and saw a bright pink papier mache pig, a mighty impressive double rope routine and an audience who were laughing, cheering and wanting to see more. I think I missed something pretty terrific and hope that Stuart and Kane do it all again sometime.

MelBorn09

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
MelBorn09
Melbourne Writers' Thearte
BOObook Theatre
7 October 2009
Carlton Courthouse

The Melbourne Writers’ Theatre have presented eight short play festivals. MelBorn was established as their Fringe showcase in 2007 and two years later...well, unless something changes, I'm not going to MelBorn2010.

Four short plays were chosen for MelBorn09, but the night still went for over two hours and I contemplated doing a runner in the interval. In over 25 years of choosing what I see in theatres, I've completed such an act once. (It was in 1999 and I left a show to see Robert Forster and Grant McLennan performing together as The Go Betweens for the first time since 1988.) I don't leave during intervals because you never know what piece of magic you might miss and the artists who created it don’t deserve such disrespect

So, I returned to my seat and wondered if perhaps I was expecting too much, if I was becoming one of those reviewers who only sees bad, who criticises for the sake of criticism and loathes all artists. My own notebook assured me that I’m still fond of theatre. Back home, I re-read my reviews of MelBorn 07 and 08. I can vividly remember the atmosphere, the evocative design, the theming, the terrific writing, the engaging performances and intelligent direction of 07. I also remember why I only mentioned one writer in 08. I don't understand how a season can slide from something that showed such an understanding and love of theatre to something that I wanted to run from.

Writers know that the first draft of anything is shit. It's full of clichés, the plot clunks along like a bike with a flat tire and a broken chain (and uses hideous metaphors), you repeat yourself, the dialogue sounds like aliens trying to learn your language and there's no hint of subtext. You just vomit out ideas and then start the drafting and feedback process. And you make sure you delete that first draft in case anyone ever reads it.

Or submit it for MelBorn.

There were great characters, beautiful ideas and highly creative and original stories hidden on that stage, but none of these scripts were ready. And the writing was more solid than the design, the direction or the performances.

However, there was something after interval that I won't forget; something that held most of the audience's attention. The noxious smell of a burning gel is hard to miss, especially when the floor light responsible is smoking and most of the room is keeping an eye on it in case an emergency exit is required. Any professional stage manager and lighting operator would have dimmed that light, and any professional actor wouldn't have given a toss that the lighting state wasn't what they rehearsed. Putting that room in a situation that has the slightest potential to turn bad is unacceptable - but at least it created some tension.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.
 
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Daniel Kitson and Colleauges

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Daniel Kitson and Colleagues
8 October 2009, and into 9 October
Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club

As this isn't an offical media review, I can be concise and say:

Daniel Kitson and Colleagues was fucking awesome. Laughed in ways I'd forgotten I could laugh in. How and why it wasn't sold out is beyond me. Sucked in to everyone who missed out.

Longer Fringe 2009 reviews.

And The Little One Said

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
And The Little One Said
Jess Love
The Candy Butchers
3 October 2009
Fringe Hub, North Melbourne Town Hall

Although we may be used to seeing Jess Love flying above our heads, it's lovely to see her playing on the ground in her first solo show: And The Little One Said.

Ready for a night of rhymes and tales, Jess is clad in pink and tulle, but, like finding a bloody tooth in your fairy floss, her 'toys' don't want to play nice and her playground hides some nasty secrets.

Delightfully quirky and gorgeously gruesome, Jess's collection of fractured fairy tales and games-gone-wrong pervert her sweetness until she accepts the madness and dares the blood to flow.

If you loved Jess in The Candy Butchers and her guest appearances in The Burlesque Hour, you'll be just as thrilled with the hoop, skating and tumbling of And The Little One Said. And she obeys one of my favourite rules of circus: if you see a roofing nail, you know where it has to go.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

Songs From The 86 Tram

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
The Bedroom Philosopher: Songs From The 86 Tram
Justin Heazlewood/ Nan & Pop Records
3 October 2009
Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club

Songs from the 86 Tram’s capture of Melbourne is so perfect that it should be seen by everyone who has ever caught the 86 tram, everyone who has ever caught any tram in Melbourne and everyone who lives in Melbourne, has visited Melbourne or knows that a tram is neither bus nor train.

From Bundoora to the Docklands, the 86 is a bizarre route that passes through oh-my-god-we-are-nearly-inner-city Preston, the pram belt of Northcote, yay-it’s-still-grungy Smith St, the ‘Paris’ end of Collin’s St (does anyone get that?), the one-day-I-WILL-watch–it DVD store, the CBD and onto the ‘Canberra of the South’, Docklands. There is no better way to understand the diversity and extremes of this wonderful city than a trip on the 86 – and it will only cost $5.80. (As it goes to the mysterious and creepy Zone 2 world, you need the extra expensive ticket or, as I read in The Age, some people have found ways to 'fare evade'.)

Justin Heazlewood’s astute observation delivers a quintessential character from each section of the route, who he can’t have invented, because we’ve all sat too close to them all on a tram. From Gwen, whose sadness made me want to cry, to the new media artist, whose hopeful enthusiasm also made me want to cry, each song or sketch is filled with glorious gags and jokes about our city that hurt because we know they are true.

It’s also the best thing that I’ve seen Heazlewood/The Bedroom Philosopher perform. As a performer he is so much more comfortable and a much stronger performer from behind the mask of a character.

The writer of this show has ‘leapt and bound’ over other musicians to pen what may be the best songs ever written about Melbourne and the performer captures his characters with a delicate accuracy – but they need to team up and fire their director.

This show is bloody good, but it isn’t great. It isn’t what it should be and it won’t be what it deserves to be until Heazlewood trusts that he needs the tough love of an outside eye to get the crap bits off the stage. This show needs a director* who the performer is going to despise so much that during rehearsal he spends his nights blogging at Ihatemyfuckingdirector.com, while the writer is secretly sending flowers and hoping to snog the director at the after party.

I sat in that audience frustrated because – for all the cack-yourself moments – there was too much that took us away from the show and brought us back to Justin. As a performer, the show you want is running in your head, so you can’t see what we see from the audience. Heazelwood is too good a performer and too intelligent a writer to put that much trust in his own directorial instinct.

* Things an insensitive director might say:

• “I laughed so much at the Potter/Malfoy joke that I think I have a small hernia and will not be able to read JK’s novels without thinking of you – but the joke has no place in this show. It’s a joke about you, it’s not about the 86 tram, Melbourne or even about TBP.”
• “If you don’t rehearse in your space and you fuck up on stage, don’t blame the space or draw attention to your lack of rehearsal. It makes you (not TBP) look like a lazy dick.”
• “If I ever see you laughing, or even smirking, at your own jokes before, or after, the audience get them, I will kick you in the nuts.”

More Fringe 2009 reviews.
A version of this review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Pure Kunst

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Pure Kunst
The Caravan of Love
3 October 2009
Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club

If you’re unsure of the meaning of ‘bootylicious’, grab your ‘front bottom’ and make a late night visit to the Caravan of Love because Destiny’s Child’s kunst doesn’t compare to the gorgeous Caravan kunst – and this time they're searching for purity

For five years this luscious and hard working ménage a quatre have shimmied and writhed their way around festivals, (making regular stops at The Last Tuesday society), defiling all in their path and leaving all in their wake with very big smiles. They also know that, even though we take our sex lives very seriously, sex is really the strangest and funniest thing that we get up to, so there’s always room for a bit of perfect imperfection.

Nothing is sacred to the Caravan. Little Red Riding Hood, top 40 obsession and fan dancing are all lampooned, and the luckiest audience members even get a juicy bite of the action.

With Madame Eva’s heart-stopping voice, Vruska toe-bleeding avante guarde pointe, Elsie’s now-I-get-why-blokes-are-fond-of-this-art-form pole dancing and Kartie’s too-wrong Barbie obsession, their skill and love of kunst (it’s a German word – look it up if you’re horrified at my poor spelling) is enough to satisfy anyone in a kunst drought.

I did, however, miss a visit to their homeland of Snowmanlandia and would have liked to see more interaction between the characters. It felt like their was an assumption that we already know their stories, but I’d hear them again and Caravan virgins could feel left out, because seduction is always better if we know a bit about the people leaving us moist.

More Fringe 2009 reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Terrific interview with the COL.

Chatting on The Outland Institute

Last week I had a lovely chat on Joy 94.9 with Daniel, who was pretending to be John, from The Outland Institute (every Friday from 12.00 to 2.00). Here's the podcast (episode 12).

John Richards also had a lovely chat with some terrific Fringe artists on episode 13. But have a listen to them all if you like literature, film, tv, theatre, crimes against pop or Almost Fabulous people who should have been gay icons, but somehow stayed in the shadows.

Or have a read of The Outland Institute blog. As radio hadn't been invented last year, I had to write about the 2008 Fringe.

Dead River

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Dead River
Pregnant Goldfish Productions
30 September 2009
The Store Room

It’s been three years since Kate McLennan’s The Debutante Diaries won Fringe awards, headed off to Edinburgh and left us holding our breath for more. In Dead River, McLennan teams up again with director Fiona Harris and fellow Debutante devotees will be thrilled.

Dead River is also set in rural Victoria, but it’s a more complex story told by six-year-old Janie (the delightful Emma Leonard), who is joined by her family and Dead River residents, played by McLennan, Brett Swain and Helen McFarlane. Janie and her sister Rachel love their adventurous life in Dead River and can’t see the poverty and gambling that are causing problems at home and with the neighbours, even when they find the murdered body of an RSPCA inspector in their forest.

A more complex story than Debutante, Dead River deftly juxtaposes childhood innocence with the jaded acceptance and anger of the adult world. There are a few moments of confusion and some obvious plotting choices, but they will smooth out as audiences react and the script develops.

Ultimately, McLennan creates characters who are hard to forget and refuse to let anyone not love them. Even when we’re wiping away tears of laughter, we see the truth in the worst of them, recognise a bit of ourselves and understand them far better than they understand themselves.

If you’ve had enough Fringe cynicism, blackness and nude fire twirling, the hope and warmth of Dead River will set you back on track. (And see it with Donna and Damo to multiply the feelgoodness of the evening.)

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Lorraine’s Hair and Face

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Lorraine’s Hair and Face
Bella Union
29 September 2009
Trades Hall, Old Council Chambers

How we love laughing at bogans, bad coifs and atrocious coffee, so what better place to set an Aussie musical than an outer-suburb hair salon? Being a bit ‘obsessed by hairs’ myself, I booked in for a cut-price special and cup of International Roast* at Lorraine’s Hair and Face.

Andrea Powell, Scott Brennan and Geraldine Hickey are co-owners and creators of Lorraine’s. Powell’s Lorraine runs the salon with an ironing tong fist and her long-time assistant Jade hasn’t been paid in years. When local beauty guru, Pam Panache, books in for a treatment, the tide seems to be turning and Lorraine may even outshine her rival, Joyce from Price Cuts.

From Major Jizz to a courtesy finger, the word play has the subtlety of a diamante g-string pulled over the fold of a bulging muffin top, but as Lorraine buys her biscuits at Aldi**, any class would just seem out of place.

Powell and Brennan are always funny, but Hickey stands back and steals the show. With immaculate timing and a deep understanding of joke, she makes the audience love her downtrodden Jade, so we’re with her on every laugh. We’re laughing at the other characters, who, as hilariously grotesque as they are, could be approached with a touch more love to create the recognition and empathy that leads to belly laughs.

Being preview night, there was room for a bit of tidying up at the salon, but the improvised interaction between the performers (rather than the characters) added to the fun. The songs are a hoot, but it’s not really a musical, as the singing could easily disappear without distracting from the story. However, I’d love to see the musical side of Lorraine’s develop and leave us singing our way out into Lygon Street, grateful that espresso and biscotti are within reach.

*I didn’t really drink any International Roast, or any instant ‘coffee’ for that matter.
** I don’t like food from Aldi either.

And here's what John Richards wrote about the next season.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Home Economics

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Home Economics
Little Ones Theatre
30 September 2009
The Storeroom

I’m consulting my gay-o-meter to confirm, but I think that Home Economics, Declan Greene's second Fringe work, may be gayer than his wrong and black wonder A Black Joy. Dec is taking a very big bite of the Fringe this year and making us open up wide to fit all of his writerly goodness in.

Home Economics is as gross as theatre can get. And, even though I did watch quite a bit of it through squinted eyes (I have a strange phobia regarding runny food), I loved its spluttered chocolate, meat smeared, onion biting, cock-sucking indulgence.

Inspired by a series of photographs, Home Economics is a series of explorations that presents all carnal desires as food. Real food. There’s metaphor in the writing, but a full Coles trolley is dripped, spat, thrown and squirted over the actors (who are all pretty amazing) and the stage.

From a gay private school teacher who knows he has to hate boys to keep his job, to the fellatio-giving lesbian novelist who finds intimacy with a telemarketer, or the girl not sure if she’s enjoying the group sex or being pack raped, Greene refuse to shy away from the baser, confronting elements of our society and our psyches. And it poses the age-old question of whether sperm is indeed vegan friendly.

Home Economics isn’t as finely crafted as A Black Joy, and I can hear Greene’s own voice coming through some of his characters, but if you’ve seen one you have to see the other. Together they show the depth, the development and the depravity of this remarkably sick young writer.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com.

Donna and Damo

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Donna and Damo
Sarah Collins and Justin Kennedy
30 September 2009
Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club

Can true love flourish without a pash? Or even a bit of under-the-jumper action? Neither Donna nor Damo care for that stuff and, even though I’m now hopelessly in love with both of them, I can’t imagine more than perhaps going on a nice picnic together or sharing a pizza as we watch the Logis.

My favourite show from the 2008 Fringe was Sarah Collins’s extraordinarily beautiful Nothing Extraordinary Ever Happens in Toowoomba. (Ever). This year she has teamed up with Justin Kennedy to write and perform Donna and Damo, and it is just as gorgeous.

Donna is a telemarketer for a glamour photographer travelling through country Victoria, and she’s given up fudge so she can look great when she watches the 2006 Academy Award ceremony with her film blogging boyfriend, Trevor. Damo finds Donna’s work place because someone thought that ‘glamor’ is acceptable spelling, but says he’ll accept ‘photographfix’ if it’s a pun and only if photos are actually fixed. Damo understands the need to fix broken things.

Women whose downfall is chewy chocolaty goodness, blogging critics who take their own opinions too seriously and a freelance spell checker who is offended by any breach of the law of English language: I love this play.

Too close to home content aside, Donna and Damo is exquisite writing. The delightful originality of Collins’s voice (and Kennedy’s) is so lovely that there’s a small part of me seething with jealousy. This is writing that puts story first, refuses to let a bad plot moment exist and has created characters so original and complete that you’d swear you’d met them.

Swapping between direct narrative and their collection of characters, Collins and Kennedy are as irresistible as their creations. Kennedy just has to trust that they really are reaching the hearts of their audience and let his misfits dance.

Delicately directed by Jason Lehane, and with what has to be the best use of an overhead projector ever, Donna and Damo will leave your heart so warm that you won’t have to worry about another Melbourne cold snap.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The List Operators for Kids

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
The List Operators for Kids
Matt Kelly and Richard Higgins
30 September 2009
Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club

Jumper? Check. Moustache? Check. The List Operators for Kids is bum burping its way through the Fringe kids program and after this hour, your children may burn their High-4-Wiggles DVDs in protest against sanitised, nice kid’s entertainment.

TLO have given us groan ups some serious giggles with their witty discussions about semiotics and their Santa visual gag, but this is the audience they really deserve; this is the crowd that let Matt and Rich reveal their true selves.

Anyone who has spent more than three seconds with anyone who still calls animation ‘cartoons’ and prefers wascally wabbits to anime porn, knows that there are really only four very funny things: farts, poo, rude words and men pretending to be old ladies. And how could I disagree.

Luckily, this show has an abundance of all four (and I am glad that some of my favourite rude words didn’t make an appearance). TLO4K never doubts that kids are smarter than adults and, at times, play near the edge. And their audience love every second of it. And I mean the adults as well. 

Take every child you know to see The List Operators for Kids. If you don’t have access to any little tackers to take along, kidnap some. Or cut your legs off, pull out your old Scooby Doo t-shirt and find a grown up willing to take you.

Riley (5) sat with me and, although he had a bit of trouble reading the signs on the stage and he wasn’t chosen to work the computer, it didn’t really matter because his favourite bit was the Ninga Nan.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

The review originally appeared on AussieThearte.com.

Ghostboy with Golden Virtues in 'Exit'

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Exit
Ghostboy with Golden Virtues
26 September 2009
Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club

(the re-mix)

If you take a date to Ghostboy with Golden Virtues, I promise you will be naked together by the end of the evening. But there are only two chances left.

It hurts to sit and watch performers present their hearts, desires and sexual kinks to a mere handful of besotted punters. Ghostboy with Golden Virtues (GBGV) have only two more shows left in our town (Swallow and Exit) and our Fringe goers are missing them. This is not only unfair to them but also heartbreaking for everyone who doesn’t see them.

Their attitude is punk, but their musicianship supreme and their lyrics awaken deep desires that leave us blushing with recognition. GBGV are from Brisbane, so they already have to fight for respect in our southern climes, but remember that the city that produced Joh (why was I the only person who laughed at that reference?), also produced the likes of Ed Kueper and The Go-Betweens; perhaps the constant temperature lets music mature to perfection.

With a seduction technique somewhere between flirting with an angel and squeezing into latex for a swingers party in Frankston, Ghostboy and his stage lovers don’t believe that audiences are just there to watch. Breaking this barrier is confronting before it’s liberating, so it’s best to jump in and enjoy early because one day ‘Your smile will fade, your skin will wrinkle and no one will love you’.

Melbourne Fringe supporters are fickle. We know what we like and we like to see what we know. Next door to GBGV, hundreds of grinning, fizz-swilling Last Tuesday Society fans were spilling out of the Fringe Club. I only left because I trusted the recommendation I had to see GBGV. Given the chance, everyone who was at the club, or wanted to be at the club, would fall head-over-arse in longing lust with this group.

GBGV are Melbourne’s type. There’s the too beautiful goth girl violinist; the hotter-than-Marilyn (Monroe, not Manson) platinum blonde guitarist and singer; the silent masked gimp bass player; curvy dancers; oddly handsome musicians; and an unshaven, bald headed, divinely tattooed enigmatic lead singer who wears a black tulle petticoat and a fascinator far better than any Spring Cup goer. Melbourne, you know you want them.

Given the chance, this town would fancy GBGV so much that we would try to extradite them, but instead of holding them to our loving bosoms, taking them to laneway bars and hand feeding them canapés recommended by Matt Preston (and then shagging them senseless), we’re standing them up like a bad internet date.

Ghostboy with Golden Virtues reminds us what art can be and what it’s really all about. We love a serious mind seduction, but we’d give it all up for a fuck. And I don’t mean that tedious, it’s-1am-and-we’re-not-asleep-and-the-DVD-has-finished sex, but the uninhibited kind that leaves you groaning and tingling with the understanding that love and wildness and passion can exist together.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Ghost Boy with Golden Virtues

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Exit and Swallow
Ghost Boy with Golden Virtues
29 September 2009
Fringe Hub, Lithuanium Club

It’s too late and I’m too tired to write the arty farty review just now, but there are only two more chances to see Ghost Boy with Golden Virtues (and I’ll do the serious writerly bit as soon as I can).

I saw Exit tonight. Swallow is on tomorrow and Exit is on again on Thursday. 10 pm at the Lithuanian Club.

I saw it based on a review that is hopefully in today’s Inpress and I second everything it says. I doubted that I would ‘fall in dirty love’ with everyone one the stage – but I did – and I got a lap dance from an enigmatic boy in a black tulle skirt!

It hurts to sit and watch a stage full of people working their hearts and souls out for a handful of people. A few hundred metres away the Fringe Club was packed with hundreds of Last Tuesday Society fans. Every person there would fall in obsessive lust GBGV, but they don’t know about them.

Melbourne likes seeing what it knows. Lord knows I’m one of those people. So a show that this city would love so much that we would try to extradite them from their Brisbane home, are performing to empty seats. Instead of embracing them in our loving arms, taking them to a hidden bar and feeding them in a restaurant recommended by Matt Preston (and wanting to shag them senseless), we’re standing them up like a bad internet date.

Admittedly their publicity hasn’t been good, but don’t we all want to believe that good shows will find the audience they deserve. They’re not running long enough for word of mouth to get around, so juggle your shows for Wednesday and Thursday and put this one on your list.

Any comparison is lame and doesn’t do Ghost Boy himself justice, but think along the lines of a high-art Hedwig with a lot more punk and a lot sexier. (And understand that I have a deep love and unnatural passion for Hedwig and The Angry Inch).

Ghost Boy with Golden Virtues reminds us what art can be and what it’s all about. We love having our minds woken up, but we’d give it all up for sex . And not tedious, it’s-1am-and-we’re-not-asleep-and-the-DVD-has-finished sex, but the uninhibited kind that makes you understand that love and wildness and passion can exist together – and leaves you smiling for weeks.

If you take a date to this show, I can promise you that you will be naked together by the end of the evening.

The Hamlet Apocalypse

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
The Hamlet Apocalypse
The Danger Ensemble and Anniene Stockton
26 September 2009
La Mama Theatre

I don’t want to call favourites on the opening weekend of the Fringe, but The Hamlet Apocalypse proves that the experience of theatre can be something we can’t explain and something that defies mere words.

Six actors are spending the night before the end if their world rehearsing a play. There could be no other choice than that one with a play within the play, where everyone dies and that forces the cast to contemplate that they are soon not to be.

Under the taut direction of Steven Mitchell Wright, The Danger Ensemble (who have been gallivanting the globe with Amanda Palmer) have devised a telling of Hamlet that captures the soul of this greatest of great works and intertwines it with a story so personal and intense that I had to remind myself to breathe.

Developed using a disciplined mix of the Japanese Butho and Suzuki (Tadashi) techniques, this telling is about emotion and essence. Although we hear moments of Shakespeare’s perfect text (yes I love Hamlet), the words are almost meaningless, as the emotion and the heart of the story is expressed physically. I’ve seen many Hamlets, but this is the first time I’ve gasped at the finality of ‘To be or not to be’. These storytelling techniques let us feel the emotion of a story in our hearts before our brains catch up and think about the words. Shakespeare might well have abandoned words had there been a Butoh troupe in Stratford.

As the evening heads towards its climax, the line between their Denmark and their reality blurs and melds. Hamlet has to reject Ophelia, but Lloyd loves Tora; Polonius has lost a daughter, but Peta knows that she will never have children.

The six face their end together but alone and perhaps they hope that there is a Horatio in the audience to tell their tale and a Fortinbras to bear them away with honour.

The intimacy of La Mama intensifies experience of The Hamlet Apocalypse, so make the most of this season before this contemplative and shiny find is grabbed by festivals everywhere.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

While I’m Away

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
While I’m Away
Telia Nevile
25 September 2009
Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club

Telia Nevile continues to bring something unusual, intimate and unexpectedly delightful to the Fringe. This year she is working solo, with a slide show, in the While I’m Away.

As the Poet Laureate of the wonderful Last Tuesday Society, Telia has spent recent months re-introducing us to poetry. As we learn in primary school English: poems rhyme, use metaphors, create images and reveal the heart and soul of the lovelorn poet (because it’s not possible to be a poet and not be seeking, pining for, or have recently lost our favourite emotion).

With the heart and fashion sense of a Beatnik and the soul of her nanna, Telia the poet is awkward in herself, but confident of her poems. She doesn’t care when her rhymes trip over the beat or her metre runs amok, because it’s all about taking us on a tour bus that travels her life-long quest for love, be it her teenage longings in ‘Blue Light Disco/Green Light Love’ or her mild erotic fantasies involving bitterly cold ski slopes.

Telia’s world is subtle and delicate, filled with intricate details that create a complex and intelligent world that supports the naïve hope of her character and spills into the hearts of her audience creating the kind of laughter that tickles your heart and feels as good as a cup of tea and a homemade lamington.

As seems to afflict many first night performers, Telia also needs to trust that her character is adorable enough to sustain the show, because glimpses of the artist behind the character take too long to recover from

While I’m Away is only here for a week, so there’s not many tours left. As it’s less than an hour, it’s a perfect accompaniment to anything else you are seeing at the North Melbourne Fringe hub. (And stay in the same venue to see Welcome to the Jungle directly after.)

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Jon Arnold

A Black Joy

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
A Black Joy
24 September 2009
fortyfivedownstairs

A Black Joy is very funny, very dark and may be the gayest* thing Declan Greene has written. As all fellow-lovers of Greene's high-camp-punk shockers know, that's saying something!

While A Black Joy's original characters grab our addiction to pop culture by the toes and dangle it out of a hotel window over a pool of snapping crocodiles and paparazzi, it is more disturbing and much nastier than his Sisters Gimm work and reveals a maturity and understanding that is going to make an indelible mark on theatrical writing of the 2010s.

 With 200 kg, bed-ridden John Candy (Tom Considine) central on the stage, we are drawn into a world desperate for love, but replacing it with celebrity, control, fear and violence. Dakota Fanning (Miriam Glaser) cannot recover from losing her fame as a childhood leukemia suffer; Bette Davis (Carole Patullo) can't support her daughter, but fries John Candy's bread in butter; Diane Keating (Anne Browning) strengthens up to fight her lesbian cleaner; Joseph Cotton (Chris Bunworth) save the whales to hide his love of torture; Megan Twycross's character makes us feel for the Parises and Britneys we love to hate, and Corey Haim (Ash Flanders) finds real love at a Nazi rally at a supermarket. And, until now, I never knew how much I'd wanted to see Ash as a teenage virgin neo-Nazi with a Texta’d tattoo.

With such potential to tip over the edge of taste, reason and sense, the perfect cast never let their overdone, over-the-top characters be anything less than human, and director Susie Dee deftly controls the mood from outrageous hilarity to a gritty dark climax that unexpectedly grabs you so deep in your guts that the only release is uncomfortable laughter.

A Black Joy isn’t comfortable (boring) theatre. Like a brand new pair of six-inch-heel, patent leather, knee high boots, it hurts so much that your toes bleed – but looks so amazing and makes you feel so fine that nothing will make you even glance at your comfortable flat maryjanes. See this show.


*Before the hate mail begins and we drown in a discussion about semiotics, linguistics, offensive language and the true definition of g-a-y, just go and see this play and you'll understand exactly what Dec meant when he wrote it and what I mean when I quote it. Yes, it's still a controversial combination of letters; in fact, I think gay is the new cunt. As cunt is bandied about with gay abandon in our festival shows and dinner parties, the language-Nazis (I wonder if I can join) have grabbed gay by the balls because they don't like how its cultural meaning continues to change. But let's leave the worthy discussion for another day.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Welcome to the Jungle

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Welcome to the Jungle
Bron Batten and The Last Tuesday Society
25 September 2009
Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club

In Welcome to the Jungle, Bron Batten’s irresistible petting zoo of lovesick critters could convert the most devoted carnivores to veganism.

Over the last couple of years, Bron has introduced an original menagerie of stand up animals who spilt their tales of love and longing at Last Tuesday Society gatherings (of which Bron is the co-founder). Welcome to the Jungle takes her favourites and lets them free in their first full-length show.

The result is more fun than Facebook’s Farmville (I’d like some more horses if anyone out there could gift me one) and embraces anthropomorphism like a crazy cat lady. From Petra the swan who fell in love with a paddleboat to the deformed two-legged panto horse, each heartfelt story evokes our own tender, broken, fulfilled or hopeful quests for love. And you just want to take them home and give them a bowl of food and a pat on the tummy; yes – even the whale.

The stories are tied together with a voice over narrative and slide show. I’d love to see this part of the show develop a definite life of its own. It’s a bit too ‘filler while I get changed’ at the moment and could be a parallel story that is just as funny and wonderful as the animal monologues. It didn’t establish what we were watching, and seemed to change from Attenboroughy doco, to reality TV show to wildlife show, which should have been hosted by Rebecca Gibney. The potential for this part of the show is endless and deserves as much attention as the gorgeous beasties.

For Jungle’s abundance of laughs, I was unsure about who we were laughing at. With Cherry the duck, were we laughing at our ourselves and empathising over lost loves, laughing at Cherry cos she’s a sad old slapper, laughing at Bron the character who is using her animal creations to put her own lovelessness on stage, or laughing at Bron the performer who is hiding behind all those levels? The animals were all committed in their characters, but Bron moved between her stage self and her real self, which can be uncomfortable for an audience, and makes it too easy to make fun of and laugh at the animals – who are much stronger when we laugh with them.

The Melbourne Fringe carves its much-needed place among other open access festivals because it’s small enough for performers to really experiment and give shows a first run. Welcome to the Jungle is still a bit raw, but some raw is good for us – and it’s much better than over-cooked.

PS – On your way to see Welcome to the Jungle, mosey through the DJ’s perfume floor and get a splash CK’s ‘Obsession’ for Mr Splashy Pants. You can scrub it off later.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.