FRINGE part 5

Nick: An Accidental Hero
24 September 2014
Fringe Hub, Meeting Room
to 26 September
melbournefringe.com.au

Renee Lyons is another wonderful creator from New Zealand. She tells the story of Nick Chisholm who survived a serious head injury but has locked-in syndrome, where his brain is active but the only thing he can control are his eyes.

Playing all the characters – two unsuspecting-hero mates, Nick's mum, a Korean orderly who got to know Nick in the hospital, and a woman he met online – Lyons shares a bunch of not-perfect people who never give up on Nick and unexpectedly catch you by the heart.

The unseen character is Nick, but she shows twisted and clenched hands and a body that can't move, which contradicts and questions the Nick we've come to know through the eyes of the people who love him.

This is strong, intelligent and beautiful story telling that leads with hope and leaves you knowing these people like you know your own family and friends.


All Out Of Pride

24 September 2014

Fringe Hub, Meeting Room

to 26 September

melbournefringe.com.au

Kill me.

I sang along to Barry Manilow's "Mandy". I sang along because I knew the words. I can barely remember the name of the shows I saw yesterday, but "Mandy, you came and you gave without taking" lodged itself in my brain in the 1980s and refuses to leave.

All Out Of Pride is about shame songs. The songs we are ashamed to sing. Songs that come out at late-night karaoke bars and even the hideously drunk know that there's something deeply wrong about them.

Geraldine Quinn and Michael de Grussa dress in Bee-Gees-video white with visible chest hair. Well Michael has the chest hair, but Geraldine wears culottes. Oh yes, she has a pair of off-white, mid-shin, linen culottes with gold buttons.

I have some pride in not knowing the words to some of the 90s horrors, but then there was an Air Supply and  – fuck you, Quinn and De Grussa – "I'm all out love, I'm so lost without you..."

The shame.


Rod Quantock: Invitation to a Revolution

24 September 2014

Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club, Main Theatre

to 4 October

melbournefringe.com.au

I went to see Rod Quantock last night because I wanted to be in a room with people who also needed to share rage and tears about how our government is doing everything it can to undermine us, punish anyone who isn't in their gang, and create communities that are led by fear and hate.

I wasn't alone, and it was nice to see the entire Fringe demographic of 40-to-60-somethings in one room. We're ready to join Rod's revoltion. We have our orders and don't be surprised if we follow through, but we need some young blood. I know you're as angry as we are, so get off Twitter and get to Rod's show. 

He still greets everyone at the door (and checks in case there is anyone middle eastern looking and we need to dob on them for attending political theatre) and with his trademark blackboard, he talks about the IPA, Tony A... blugh (he can't say the name) and other lucky pricks. It's very like his comedy festival show from earlier in the year, but this time it's different.

This time it's harder to laugh. Not because Rod's not one of the funniest and smartest human beings ever, but because all those things we joked about earlier in the year have become reality. And it's worse than we imagined.

I still can't get it into my head that Victorian police shot a teenager this week. And I got home to read that Australia is signing an agreement to send refugees to Cambodia. I've been to Cambodia. I love Cambodia, but it's poor as hell, the government are openly corrupt and not dealing with issues like child sex tourism and the spread of AIDS, and it's country that's only just beginning to come to terms with its own living hell of the 1970s and 80s. Australia is rich, safe and huge, but we're going to send refugees – people who have lived a hell that Australians rarely have to face – to a place that can't offer them safety.

It's just not funny anymore.

#HeyASIO,  here's our plan for revolution

Some of these are on AussieTheatre.com.

MICF: Rod Quantock

MICF
Peak-A-Boo
Rod Quantock
1 April 2014
Melbourne Town Hall, Powder Room
to 20 April 2014
comedyfestival.com.au

Rod Quantock did his first official show in the year that I was born (not counting his first unofficial show, which he told us about last night). In Peak-A-Boo, Rod is as bloody wonderful as ever. He's often described as intelligent and subversive, but what's subversive about stating the obvious?

Not too long ago, Rod's shows had become more positive. It's harder to joke about your government when they are undoing some damage. That didn't last. It didn't even last as long as one term. And now, well, now it's just too easy and too depressing to even joke about.

But Rod still makes us laugh. Hell, if we can't laugh at the regressive hell that we're in...

Still greeting everyone at the door, he's gone back to basics with a blackboard to help explain things like the blatant fiction in a piece shared by Andrew Bolt EP* (it's here) and to attempt to do the maths that could possibly make the East-West tunnel make any sense. Billions of dollars for something that makes no sense. Billions; he ran out of blackboard with the number of zeros.

Rod doesn't deserve anything as archaic and boring as a knighthood, so what can we award him? I'm going with an old suggestion of naming a Melbourne lane after him. Who wouldn't want a latte and a rant in Quantock Place?

And for those who read EP and scoff at the left, come along and see the left in Rod's audience: middle aged, middle class and educated.

*Evil Prick

I also wrote about this show on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Court in the Act

Court in the Act

(The Case of the Crown v Someone in the Audience)

Rod Quantock, National Trust of Australia (Vic), the Old Melbourne Goal, Justice Experience

19 January 2011

The Old City Watch House

until 11 February

Melbourne's theaterati know that this week a Melbourne-born, 60-something famous boomer writer has been criticised by dumb arse reviewers for creating jaded and dull theatre. It isn't Rod Quantock. If David Williamson made me snooze, Captain Snooze himself woke me up and reminded me that writers do love and trust the intelligence of their audience, that satire should always make me cringe at my own prejudices and that polite twitters can never compare to uncontrollable belly laughs. 

If Rod's doing a show, I want to see it.  And I'm in a very long queue of people wanting to do the same.   

Court in the Act isn't written and as an audience you will be more than a passive bum on a seat. Your bum will start on a wooden bench in a prison cell with some strangers' bums. It could be a cell where Chopper sat or where Ronald Ryan wondered if anyone will even remember his name. If you were arrested in Melbourne before 1994, it may feel too familiar.

The City Watch House closed in 1994 and his been kept the same so that the public can explore. Quantock has done shows, including Coming Clean, in the Watch House and if you've been to one, no one's going to stop you trying to get locked in with him again.

Back in the cell, your cell mates choose a crime and a criminal. When you're let out, it's off to the exercise yard to vote for the best and the winning cases are tried in the Old Magistrates Court – the court where Ned Kelly was sentenced to death. On our night, there was at least one lawyer who had worked professionally in this room and he continued his work nobly defending Colin who stole a famous banana bread recipe. The next case involved insurance fraud, murder and removing sandbags from a flood levee. 

As Rod is only one person, the roles of defendant, defence lawyer, court artist, judge, clerk, jury and witnesses are all chosen from the audience. Eager ones can jump in early, others will be chosen by the eager ones and you don't dare throw away your entry raffle ticket.

If audience participation scares the bejesus out of you so much that you'd rather risk Don Parties On and On and On, know that Rod doesn't pick on anyone who can't cope and never leaves anyone stuck for words or embarrassed – unless they bring it on themselves.

I've never been to a Rod Quantock show and seen anyone look grumpy. I can't guarantee you'll love Court in the Act, but I'll think you're a bit odd if you don't. Book for yourself and all your friends. If it were my birthday, I'd make it my party outing and it could be the best date show ever, because you'll know if you share the same sense of humour and discover if they've ever been arrested or like wearing handcuffs.

This review appears on AussieThearte.com

Photos courtesy of court artist A Alexander's new iPhone.

Rod Quantock Eats Himself

Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2009
Rod Quantock Eats Himself
April 2009
Swiss House

While Rod Quantock made plans to eat in, I spent a typical Melbourne Good Friday devouring sparkling wine, hot cross buns, chocolate bunny and China town dumplings - and saw Rod Quantock (the only person in town who knows the correct usage of a rubber chook for comic effect).

The Melbourne City Council have renamed laneways after Dame Edna and AC/DC. As Rod is as Melbourne as trams, unpredictable weather and Collingwood jokes, he must be next on the list. Or if there isn’t a spare laneway, I’m sure we’d all support the renaming of Swanston Street as Quantock Boulevard.

Shame on any Melbourneite who hasn’t seen Quantock live (Captain Snooze adds don’t count). His stand-up is created from a passionate sense of right and an intelligence that could make him rich - if his sense of right wasn’t stronger. For all its spontaneity and improvisation, there is never a word out of place, a misguided thought or hint of self-indulgent gag in a night with Rod. And he remains the most consistently hilarious comedian on our stages.

Rod Quantock Eats Himself sees a return to the classic Rod blackboard and chalk. The recent laptop shows were great, but this is a carbon neutral show, so there’s no mic, minimal lights and a determination to leave his audience “rigid with fear” and filled with “a sense of existential dread”.

Sometimes the only way to make folk listen is to make them laugh. As a species, we humans are utterly stupid and selfish. Even after a 13-year drought, horrendous life destroying bushfires and the heart-breaking destruction of the Murray-Darling system, the Andrew Bolts of this world (and others with “the environmental credentials of a Cane Toad”) continue to deny climate change. If you too still doubt the proof – please see Mr Q to get some sense laughed into you.

Even with the glorious passing of Little Johnny’s political gang and the knowledge that many Comedy Festival tickets are being bought with Uncle Kevin’s stimulation money, Quantock knows that we cannot depend on politicians to create the change we really want. Even our once-lauded environment minister continues to approve bay dredging and de-salination plants – we shouldn’t be that surprised, because his band “was called Midnight Oil, not Midnight Sustainable Energy”.

So we’re going to have to create some change ourselves. Rod has some ideas and shares his secret to surviving in Rod Quantock Eats Himself. You’ll have to go along to find out what they are.

You can also listen to Rod chatting about this show with the Boxcutter's team.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

First Man Standing

First Man Standing
Rod Quantock
7 August 2008
Trades Hall

1968 was a year of change, protest and assassination. Nixon was elected, Hussein came into power and someone left the cake out in the rain in ‘McArthur Park’. Back in Melbourne, a young architecture student took some jokes to the review stage, and he hasn’t left yet.

Rod Quantock has been nudging our sensibilities for 40 years. As I was born in 1968, I am rather fond of that year. We’re the love children of the 60s, we managed a year or two of free tertiary education (which I spent in the uni bar), and we still can’t believe that anyone seriously supported little Johnny Howard.  We’re not Baby Boomers, but we’re too old to identify with Generation X, so I’m declaring us Generation Rod.

He’s been there all our life. We probably first saw him on the 80s sketch comedy Australia: you’re standing in it, or it might have been a Captain Snooze ad. As we started hanging out at Fringes, there was Rod, fuelling our leftie anger as we enjoyed our middle class arts festivals. The luckiest ones have been on a Bus trip and met Trevor the rubber chicken. (I would have been there, if I hadn’t been living in Adelaide at the time.)

In First Man Standing, Rod celebrates the last 40 years. There’s a lot of reminiscing to be had. Victorians revelled in the Jeff era, but Rod’s most heartfelt thanks was to Little Johnny – the man who wrote every one of his jokes for 11 years. Then he gives us another chance to cheer because the little critter was voted out of his own seat. Kevin07 isn’t funny enough yet to take Johhny’s place, but Rod knows the tide will turn. In the meantime, Peter Garrett is doing a fine job of becoming our most embarrassing politician. (Us Generation Rodders are burning our Midnight Oil vinyls in disgust.)

Rod’s style doesn’t change much, but he has moved from blackboard and chalk to laptop and mouse. (However, he uses technology like someone who still can’t believe that computers really exist.) If you saw his recent Melbourne Comedy Festival show will be thrilled to see the late comers and audience statistic graphs have developed. And latecomers – well you have been warned.

The best comedy comes from truth. Sure, we laugh at Jeff’s phallic sculptures, and Bracks and Brumby’s round tunnels, but we’re only laughing because the other option is crying. Rod’s comedy is as sharp, intelligent and bitingly hilarious as ever.

One of the great things about his shows is the audiences. It’s rare to see people in their teens and in their 60s cacking themselves at the same material. Young ones in the audience (anyone under 45) can look forward to a very special moment. If you screamed at your parents, marched in protest, or re-used plastic bags before it became cool: Rod leads the Baby Boomers present in an apology to the generations Rod, X and Y. But do we feel any better knowing that our projections of environmental disaster have come to fruition…Sometimes it might be nicer to be proven wrong.

If you’ve enjoyed Mr Q at anytime over the last 40 years (even if it was just as Captain Snooze), get down to Trades Hall for First Man Standing – you won’t be disappointed. If you’ve somehow managed to miss him in the last 40 years, it’s time you found out what all the fuss is about.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Coming Clean

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2006
Coming Clean
Rod Quantock, Fiona Scott-Norman & The Melbourne Justice Museum
2 October 2006
Old Melbourne Gaol

A tour with Rod Quantock is always worth your time. This time the destination is the Old Melbourne Gaol (when is hanging NOT funny…). Rod leads us to join four local comedians who tackle the theme of Coming Clean.

After a quick trial in the Magistrates Court we end up in the exercise yard of the City Watchhouse. I suspect this was the first time in a watchhouse for most of the gathered audience. It’s also the first time that the space has been used as a theatre and Rod Quantock’s first public use of toilet humour.

Here we were in the same room that Chopper Reid, Squizzy Taylor, Ned Kelly and many other less famous criminals have been. It’s actually quite nice when there’s a bar, friends to chat with and an illuminated EXIT sign on the open caged doors.

Judith Lucy opened by admitting that she is such a “goody good suck” that she didn’t have any great police or arrest stories to tell – apart from being stripped searched in New Zealand after a trace of marijuana was found in her tobacco. So she came clean with the most embarrassing of stories – she got detention in school for rehearsing liturgical dance at lunchtime. To recover from the shame, she told us about the night she paid for sex. I didn’t used to like Judith– but she’s winning me over.

Fiona Scott-Noman shared her wicked life as a schoolgirl shoplifter, with some neat tips about how to hide a single down your pants. I guess it’s the 70/80s equivalent of illegally downloading an mp3. She also found herself in a police station after heading to a shop roof to snog with her boyfriend. Apparently the constabulary don’t share our sophisticated sense of humour. What do you call the device that police travel between floors on? A copulator. Boom boom. The pun led to Fiona being stripped searched and arrested for trespass.

Lawrence Leung taught us about the art of grifting, swindling and lying. After seeing his confident, comfortable and very funny performance, I want to see his full Fringe show (The Marvellous Misadventures of Puzzle Boy).

It’s all well and good to laugh along with the jolly naughtiness of the urban, middle class comedians, with their witty, political left-wing humour. We don’t usually go to see comedians like Dave Grant (he’s a bogan…..).

Dave Grant was the highlight of the evening. This was a brilliant set about his experiences with violence and arrest. He has been in rooms like this before, but with far less empathetic company. Petty law breaking really doesn’t compare to blood pissing out the face of the man you’ve hit or waking up in a cell after being beaten unconscious by the police. He is also a bloody good left wing political comedian.

Next Monday there is a different line up of comedians joining Rod and Coming Clean. I’m tempted to go back.


This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.