Review: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model

FOLA
Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model
Bryony Kimmings and Taylor Hourchen
26 March 2014
Theatre Works
to 6 April
theatreworks.org.au

Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model had me in tears at the beginning and at the end and in the middle. All good tears; it's a work that doesn't just talk about optimism and alternatives, it creates them.

Bryony Kimmings is a performance artist from the UK. She adores her niece and when she started seeing the world through the eyes of 9-year-old Taylor, anger turned her protective switch turned on.

She talks about typing words that a 9-year-old might want to know about into Google and seeing what a child can see on even a secured family-secured and monitored iPad. She talks about the pop stars and a media whose main market is girls who are presented as sexualised and sexual before they are even teenagers. She talks about what these girls say they want to be.

Yep, it's easy to turn that switch on.

So, what Aunty Bryony did was work with Taylor on making two art projects. And, yes, there were lots of family meetings about them.

One was to create a pop star role model who really is a role model and is credible, likeable and a superstar. The result is Catherine Bennett, who is played by Bryony and based on what Taylor wanted and still wants in a credible likeable superstar role model.

Catherine is a palaeontologist and a singer. Bryony and Taylor are going to make her world famous. She already has film clips and a web site and has become friends with Yoko Ono, Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman. Taylor wants to get her on the Ellen show, so that millions can see how much songs about friendship and a future with self-painting nails, equality and polar bears rock.

The second project is the show Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, which is about creating the show Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model. It's performed by Bryony and Taylor, but it's for adults; Taylor's offstage or in sound-blocking headphones for parts.

It opens in a fairy-world landscape where Taylor dances on a lead held by her aunt (she's looking after her niece while she's away from home and the lead is handy). It's about Bryony seeing what Taylor and her friends were exposed to, how this is different from what non-internet and instant communication generations grew up with and what she can do to try and empower her niece, and all girls, to be themselves a world that doesn't seem to even want them to be kids.

With women knights ready to fight or go so far as to wear a naff princess dress, it's made from a love that has stakes so high that winning is the only option. Even if Bryony thinks Catherine is a bit weird, she's what Taylor wants, and it's this love that exposes and shares its vulnerability. A vulnerability that's always Bryony's, because this show and world is a place where Taylor is loved and safe. And my tears were from wanting my very happy and loved niece to always feel this safe and loved.

My niece is six. She lives interstate and I don't see her anywhere near as much as I'd like to, but she's still one of my absolute favourite people ever, and she draws me pictures of cats. I hope that if there's ever a time when she needs someone to be completely on her side, or she needs to feel safe, or needs someone to tell her an uncomfortable truth that she'll trust her Aunty A. And I hope that I can continue to be as cool an aunt as Aunty Bry.

Bryony is also doing a show at the Comedy Festival called Sex Idiot. She thinks Taylor doesn't know, but there's a part of Superstar when Taylor makes Bryony put on the headphones...

Sex Idiot is a fearless, hilarious and heart-touching look back at her loves, lovers and others and it started when she had a sexual health check that revealed a common STI. It's also absolutely brilliant and Byrony Kimmings may as well book her tickets back to Melbourne because we want to see everything that she makes.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

MICF: Andrew Finegan

MICF

Andrew Finegan sings Songs from the End of the World

1 April 2014

The Butterfly Club

to 16 April 2014

comedyfestival.com.au

Andrew Finegan is a librarian. A song-writing, ukulele-playing, apocalypse-obsessed, young-adult-literature-reading, cabaret-performing librarian. And that rocks!

At the ever-gorgeous Butterfly Club he sings his Songs about the End of World including a Pachelbel-inspired rap about Noah, the North Koren hit "Pyongyang style", a ukulele ditty about bacteria, a song that tells The Hunger Games from go to spoiler-filled end (which is fine because you won't know what he's on about if you don't know it anyway) and a Twilight horror moment.

As a new performer on the scene, he needs to work on his stage character and up his performance fitness, but none of it took away from the originality and authenticity of his work. With science, history and Harry Potter songs, his mix is nerd-perfect and unique and I'm looking forward to see what he does next.

I also wrote about this at AussieTheatre.com.

MICF: Kate Mclennan

MICF

The Duck's Nuts

Kate McLennan

1 April 2014

Melbourne Town Hall, Lunch Room

to 20 April 2014

comedyfestival.com.au

Kate McLennan in a fluffy yellow duck suit. What's not to love!

Kate's back doing stand up this year after selling out a hotel room with Wes Snelling last year. I like the idea of her alternating a stand up show with a scripted one – and a year of no new stories about Pockets is about as much as we can take.

Pockets is Kate's dad. Along with her mum, sister and niece, he's been a part of Kate's stand up since the beginning and her friends and fans adore him as much as they do Kate.

Kate's 34 this year and she doesn't have a Thermomix or a baby, which means awkward questions and quiet judging if she cooks for her friends. The Duck's Nuts is about her ducks not lining up in neat rows, but still getting drunk, spewing and not checking the oil in a car that's worth less than a Thermomix. 

She nails mid-30s angst with the hilarious glee it deserves and, don't worry Kate, I'm 45 and I don't have a Thermomix.

I also wrote about this on AussieTheatre.com

MICF: Hannah Gadsby

MICF 

The Exhibitionist

Hannah Gadsby

1 April 2014

Melbourne Town Hall, Supper Room

to 20 April 2014

comedyfestival.com.au

Last year Hannah Gadsby made me cry. Damn you tears of recognition.

This year I only laughed. A lot.

The Exhibitionist starts with Hannah having to choose the photo for this year's show. She had a bad start to the year, so a dud pic that she had to see everywhere wasn't an option. 

What follows is a photo album of embarrassment, a look at what rich folk did before cameras and mirrors (mirrors are a relatively new invention; imagine how happy the world would be if we didn't look in the mirror every day), how artists selfied before smart phones, and a lesson in learning to love those cameras. 

This show isn't as personal as last year's, but it's impossible not to adore Hannah; she's honest and loving and jaw-aching funny.

And, for the love of all things, when you are taking photos of your friends, take them from above. ALWAYS from above.

I also wrote about this on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Frankenstein

Frankenstein
The Rabble and Malthouse Theatre
25 March 2014
Beckett Theatre
to 5 April
malthousetheatre.com.au

My uterus is still reacting to The Rabble's Frankenstein.

I say it every time, but no one makes theatre like The Rabble does and Frankenstein is stretching their own boundaries far enough for Malthouse to include content warnings. Read them and you'll know if you should give it a miss.

Working with their actors, co-creators Kate Davis and Emma Valente devise work based on well-know texts. Hours of improvisation and development never get near the stage (and they kept cutting after the previews). What's left is distilled, clear and so potent that it's not safe to take in more than sips.

The novel Frankenstein was written by an 18-year-old woman. In 1816 Mary Shelley was on holiday in Geneva with her new husband Percy (whose first wife had recently suicided), and writers Lord Byron and John Polidori. They had a competition to write the best horror story. Mary won with the beginnings of the novel that was first published anonymously in 1818 and in her name in 1823.  It's about a doctor who creates life: a monster who doesn't want to be alone.

The Rabble tell it as a story about fertility and birth, knowing that between 1815 and 1818 Shelley lost three children at birth. Finally, one baby survived.

In this story, an infertile doctor (Mary Helen Sassman) wants to be a mummy so much that she's going to fight until she makes a baby by any means possible, helped by her assistant (Dana Miltins) and adopted blind daughter (Emily Milledge). The return of her brother (David Paterson) makes for awkwardness, but not as awkward as the fact that she creates a monster (Jane Montgomery Griffiths). 

With the horror-film monster often better known than the book, there's as much reference to horror films as to the novel – especially those made to squeal and look away from and those that treat women atrociously. 

The orange stage is alien and uncomfortably beautiful, and filled with hundreds of black water-filled balloons.

Like monster eggs, they are slippery and wobbly and range in size from a mensturating to a first-trimester uterus, which becomes squeal-and-look-away clear when the first is ripped open into a bucket.

This is reproduction that's bleeding, empty, ripped, violent, invasive, torturous, stinking, screaming, agonising, helpless, stitched, scarred, violated, stretched and exhausted.

And it's beautiful.

Blood and pain are such a part of making, or trying to make, new life and finding the exquisite love that's swaddled in a soft bunny rug.

With an infertile naked mutant-breasted monster, a womb that never forgives its emptiness and one ripped out before it had a chance, Frankenstein's honesty is confronting and Valente and Davis never hold back when a visual choice has to be made. Yes, it has to be a coat hanger and it has to be red globby jelly and it's impossible to not see the difference between the naked flesh of a woman in her 20s and one in her 50s.

It's extreme, but no more than the horror films inspired by Frankenstein. In comparison to some, it's mild. And, as we laugh as much as squeal at horror films, it's more than ok to laugh if it gets too much, too graphic or too close.

The Rabble's monster story dares us to find beauty and laughter – and perhaps even comfort – in the horror of reproduction.

I just wish I'd had some ibuprofen with me.

This was 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.

MICF: EDGE!

MICF 2014
EDGE!
Isabel and Rachel
27 March 2014
Tuxedo Cat
to 8 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Isabel and Rachel's EDGE! won Best Comedy at the 2013 Melbourne Fringe and they won Audience Favourite at Melbourne's 2013 Short and Sweet Theatre. EDGE! has since been to the Perth and Adelaide Fringes and is back home at the Tuxedo Cat so that everyone who couldn't get a ticket at the Fringe can see what the fuss was about.

Just book now, in case it sells out again.

Stella is 11. She had a viral hit on YouTube when she was 8 and her mum is trying to make her a star – even if she's in LA and talking to her daughter on the phone. It's one thing to sing about clouds and marshmallows, but it's time Stella grows up and becomes like other famous internet stars.

It was strange to see it the day after seeing a real life Stella in Bryony Kimmings's Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model performed with her real-life 11-year-old niece and addressing the reality of everything about Stella.

Isabel and Rachel are a fresh, original and adorable new voice who are sprinkling glitter and light on the frustrations and ironies of girls and young women aspiring to be famous for being famous.

I also wrote about this show on AussieTheatre.com.

MICF: Justin Hamilton

MICF 2014
Johnny Loves Mary Forever 1994
Justin Hamilton
24 March 2014
The Toff (but the show's at the Victoria Hotel)
comedyfestival.com.au
to 19 April

In 2012, Hamo waved goodbye to stand up.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

He did 155 gigs in 2013 – some in Afghanistan, instead of doing the 2013 festivals – and gig 40 for 2014 was the Melbourne's first chance to see his new show, Johnny Loves Mary Forever 1994, that he premiered at the 2014 Adelaide Fringe.

I'd still love him to lock himself away from stages and write, but this show wouldn't exist if he'd done that and, to be fair, he writes about EVERY gig he does on his blog (justinhamilton.com.au). Blog writing so counts – and he was very happy with gig 40, "... it felt just right."

And it was. I joked on Twitter that it was my favourite show of the festival. I wasn't joking; it's going to take a lot to beat this.

Johnny Loves Mary Forever 1994 starts with a smooth-concrete sidewalk in quiet suburban Adelaide and moves to a war zone in Afghanistan where the military cars can survive anything except a suicide bomber.

As always with his work, it's personal and exposing but told with enough distance to let his audience put themselves in his shoes and imagine what they would have or have done at similar times. I haven't been in a war zone, but I recognised the conflicting and confronting emotions of seeing a woman who has nothing trying to sell a necklace, and I remember my little brother walking through wet concrete walking home after I'd been picked up from kindy. The council replaced that block.

It's not traditional stand up or theatrical monologue. He's found something in between that's flexible and works so well for him that it's hard to imagine him doing anything else. (I felt something similar to, the first time I saw Daniel Kitson perform.)

It's so beautifully written that I want to read it, but it wouldn't compare to the experience of Justin telling his story.  He's gut-aching, mind-whirling, unforgettable funny and never to be missed.

I also talk about this show on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Neighbourhood Watch

Neighbourhood Watch
MTC presents the Belvoir production
20 March 2014
The Sumner
to 26 April
mtc.com.aud-watch/

Any one who saw Lally Katz's super-gorgeous Stories I Want to Tell You in Person heard about her writing of Neighbourhood Watch, and will be thrilled that the MTC have brought us that Belvoir production. Like most of Lally's work, it's personal, dreamy and so dark that that you're never sure if you're wiping away tears of heartaching recognition or life-affirming love.

Neighbourhood Watch is about neighbours, friends and death and all the things we do to avoid or confront both.

It's set in the year of Kevin 07: a far-too-quickly-lost time of hope. Howard lost his seat and his government, a woman was Deputy PM, a rock star was Minister for the Environment, Kyoto was signed, our Indigenous people were finally apologised to, and we all got $1000 to buy some treats to keep the economy going. Today, such hope feels like fiction.

It was also the year that Lally moved to Far Kew and met Anna, her 80+ Hungarian neighbour who became her best friend, and the year that Robyn Nevin asked Lally to write her a "tough and funny" character. When the Nevin asks, you write – and result is the story of grieving Catherine (Megan Holloway) meeting her neighbour Ana (Nevin), whose lifetime of grief is as guarded as her big-dog protected front gate.

The combination of Robyn and Ana is as good as it gets. Katz captures the unique second-language rhythm and Nevin perfects it in a performance that lets you love Ana in an instant. Ana's Englishisms and missing social niceties are hilarious, but Nevin assures that we are always on her side, even when she is making painful choices, and that Ana is never made fun of. It's such a remarkable performance that it might be impossible to see the play and not consider real-life Anna a friend.

Simon Stone's confident direction is an enhancing and comfortable fit with the writing; he's able to bring Katz's work to a commercial stage without losing her delightfully awkward tone or any of the love that she pours into her characters, while letting them find their place in the world beyond the text.

With Dale Ferguson's almost bare stage design, made intimate with Damien Cooper's lighting, there's enough space to feel the reach of the drama, but Kew is missing. It's easy for a Melbourne audience to understand the subtleties of the suburb – so much of Katz's work starts with and evokes a sense of place that leaves residents homesick –  but its greyness doesn't share the green of the trees, the manicured lawns, Leo's, the High Street tram or getting stuck on Princess Street trying to cut across to the Eastern Freeway. Having said that, I could see it all, so perhaps the wheelie bins were more than enough.

Lally Katz's writing grabbed me from the first time I saw a short play about the Apocalypse Bear in Kew. There have been ups and downs, but at her best her writing is felt in our hearts before our brains have time to think it all through. Neighbourhood Watch is Katz at her absolute best.

But the real world isn't at its best.  Lally wrote a piece for The Age on 1 March: Anna has cut her off and isn't speaking to her. In Stories, Lally talked about real-life Anna seeing the play in Sydney and the thought of it being in Melbourne without her being there is unthinkable – and, more importantly, it's too sad to think that she might not know how much this play has made us love her.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Judas Kiss

The Judas Kiss
Mockingbird Theatre
15 March 2014
Theatre Works
to 22 March
theatreworks.org.au

Mockingbird Theatre continue to give us memorable text-on-stage productions of the plays that we wish we'd seen the original productions of, and give performers the chance to play roles that they've dreamed of. At Theatre Works this week, they're giving us The Judas Kiss: David Hare's imagining of the behind-doors conversations in a hotel before Wilde's arrest for gross indecency and in Naples after his release from gaol and not long before his impoverised death.

The first production, 1998, Sir David (The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, The Hours) described as "deeply unsatisfactory" in a 2013 interview in The Guardian. He said it went "off kilter " as he "wanted to smash every cliche about Wilde" and by casting "Ireland's most famous heterosexual as Wilde, we were possibly trying to sail away from stereotypes a little too far". Liam Neeson was Wilde and Tom Hollander was his lover and downfall Bosie, Sir Alfred Douglas.  No matter how off kilter, I wish I'd seen it.

In 1999, Belvoir toured Neil Armfield's production in Australia (with Billie Brown as Wilde) and Armfield went to London in 2012 to direct a much more successful UK version (with Rupert Everett as Wilde).

Mockingbird's founder, Chris Baldock, is our Wilde. At first, I wanted him to stop being an idealised impression of witty Wilde – to be more off kilter – but as Wilde let his public persona drop behind the closed hotel doors, Baldock's performance developed into something far more complex and fascinating. It's clearly a role he's always wanted to play and his years of preparation are felt on the stage.

The rest of the cast (Nigel Langley, Oliver Coleman, Zak Zavod, Laurent Murtagh, Soren Jensen and Nores Cerfeda) all bring a personal understanding and empathy to their characters, which makes for heartfelt – if, at times, uneven – performances. And all occasionally stumble over the naturalism problem of how to stand and listen or disappear into the background.

Also not helping is a set that looks like a suburban amateur company's period-drama set used since the 1950s and finally left out for hard rubbish. Resources, demands of the text and the spacious Theatre Works stage are all understood, but it's a distraction and undermines the quality of the rest of the production.

Still, director Jason Cavanagh, with assistant director Celeste Cody, bring a world that's true to the (long) text while creating a curiosity about Wilde and a wish that he'd made different choices. I'd like to have seen more of the love between Wilde and Bosie as, in this play, it's this love (destructive, obsessive or unseen by anyone but the two of them) that governs all of Wilde's decisions and it would help to support his choices rather than wanting him to slap Bosie and run off with Robbie. And given the play opens with a nude and lusty boy-girl sex scene, there's an expectation that sex is going to play a much bigger part in the story.

The Judas Kiss has its off kilter moments, but they don't knock it too far off balance and, as the chances of seeing this play in the near future are slim, it's well worth seeing.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Long Pigs

The Long Pigs
14 March 2014
fortyfive downstairs
to 23 March
fortyfivedownstairs.com

Coulrophobia: fear of clowns. If you've never been scared of clowns and their silly red noses, you will be by the end of The Long Pigs.

Rejected and broken by their own kind, the three long pigs (from the Melanesian Pidgin for "human flesh") are so bitterly dark and absurdly hilarious that you'll never be able to look at a fake red nose again without breaking out in a sweat or gagging.

Clare Bartholomew (Circus Oz, Die Roten Punkte and lots more), Derek Ives (Rock 'n' Roll Circus, The Candy Butchers and lots more) and Nicci Wilks (La Fura Del Baus, CIRCA and lots more) are the three pigs: This, That and The Other Pig. They're filthy and play in a rank mire of intimidation, mistrust and can't-wash-it-off evil.

With ever-wonderful director Susie Dee, these traditionally-trained clowns put their hands down the throats of glittery-rainbow red-nosed clowns, turn them inside out and cut their guts out from the outside – with a blunt rusty knife.

And with the design team of Anna Tregloan (set and costumes), Andy Turner (lights) and Jethro Wooward (composition and sound) turning fortyfive downstairs into the cesspit factory where the clowns-gone-bad prepare and perform, the only thing more frightening than the clowns is the temptation to join them and roll around with them in the blood.

Be tempted. The macabre doesn't get more gloriously funny.

This was on AussieTheatre.

Photo by Ponch Hawkes

Review: Empire

Empire
Spiegelworld
13 March 2014
Rooftop, Crown Casino
closing TBC
empireaustralia.com

ANOTHER circus show in a Speigeltent... Surely we've seen it all? Hell, no! Empire captures everything that makes the intimacy of these mirrored tents so special and combines it with acts so originally dazzling, jaw-dropping dangerous and blush-inducing hilarious that it re-ignights the most jaded love for circus and burlesque.

Empire originated in New York and remains a love song to the city. It's been touring Australia for over a year and is back in Melbourne for a second run. It's slick and rehearsed to a milli-second, but still feels as fresh and exciting as an opening week.

How it really stands out from similar shows is that each act is choreographed and created for its three-metre diameter circular stage. The stage is teeny, but that's merely a challenge for the likes of roller skaters Denis Petaov and Mariia Beseimbetova, who are so swear-out-loud fast and dangerous that the front rows prepare to flee the impending crash – that never happens.

From host's Oscar and Fanny (Jonathan Taylor and Anne Goldmann) V I Penis to Memet Bilgin's room-silencing driftwood balance, the mix of music, spectacle, sex and how-is-that-even-possible athleticism never allows for a moment of distraction. Throw in a drink and rooftop views over the city and Empire is as shiny and brilliant as a night out can be.

My only disappointment is the forced extended exit through the casino (complete with 'free' $10 to bet with). The only way to avoid it is to be under 18. Choice is a fine thing and there's no secret that the Crown is a casino, but to go from genuine joy and sparkle to false hope and glaring fluorescence isn't a choice I'd make.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Government Inspector

The Government Inspector
Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir
5 March 2014
Merlyn Theatre
to 23 March
malthousetheatre.com.au

Robert Menzies nervously faces the audience dressed as a priest. He explains how the night's performance of The Government Inspector was meant to be The Philadelphia Story but it's not and it's also not The Government Inspector. Confusing? Nah.

When Malthouse and Belvoir announced their 2014 seasons, Simon Stone was going to direct The Philadelphia Story. Woo hoo! Wonderful play re-created by the guy who made Chekov and Ibsen rock and who can do no wrong (and was even forgiven the hiccough with the rights over Death of a Salesman).

Then just as everything was ready to roll, the Philly rights were refused. What! It's out of copyright; it's way more than 70 years since writer Philip Barry wrote it. But it turns out that Ellen Barry was the co-author and retains the copyright. But how the heck can anyone know that if she's not credited as a co-author on the scripts or any writing about the play? This debarcle is all made very clear over the night.

Google, can I see a pdf of The Philadelphia Story play script, please? Ellen Barry is not credited as the author – anywhere!  But it's clear on the imprint page that Ellen S. Barry owns the copyright until 2039 and there's the the usual licensing fees blah blah blah.

Oh copyright blah blah blah is just rich people getting richer off poor artists. Until someone uses your work and doesn't pay you.

If it was a publicity stunt, it's brave and brilliant. If it's a stuff up, the result is insane and brilliant.

So back to Rob trying to explain what happened, but it's easier to just go back three weeks and see what happened when the Philly cast (Rob, Fayssal Bazzi, Mitchell Butel, Gareth Davies, Zarah Newman, Eryn-Jean Norvill and Greg Stone) were backstage and heard the news. Zarah didn't want to take the dress off, Mitchell was on the phone to Play School, Gareth wanted a snack and Simon buggered off.

But of course he didn't, and with Emily Barclay at the ready to write and Ralph Myers ready to create a set to reveal laughs, Simon and his cast went mighty meta and created a play that plays with the absurdity and reality about faking it in the theatre – while riffing off The Government Inspector by Gogol (totally public domain), which is about a stranger being mistaken for someone important and the stranger making the most of his impostering.

The actors are all exaggerated versions of the worst bits of themselves – which shows how wonderful each one of them is – and as genres are thrown into the farce, it gets more farcical and more hilarious by the minute.

Unless you think too hard. It's best not to and to enjoy every in-joke and laugh at ourselves as theatre goers, rather than wondering if the indulgence on the stage is laughing at us.

There's nothing at all wrong with self indulgence. Who doesn't love getting expensive ice cream rather than home brand. But here Simon's bought every flavour of the best stuff, added freshly whipped cream, chocolate sauce, salted caramel praline, edible gold leaf and hand-crafted sugar sprinkles carved in his likeness.

It's so outrageously full on and delicious that it can't be resisted.

But you know that you can only get away with such a creation once.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Pia Johnson