MELBOURNE FRINGE: 6 Degrees of Ned Kelly

6 Degrees of Ned Kelly
1 October 2015
The 86
to 4 October
melbournefringe.com.au/

Melita Rowston's paternal grandfather told the story of how he nicked Ned Kelly's bones from the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1929. Her maternal great great great grandmother ran a pub in Wangaratta and refused entry to Ned and co. Melita wanted to find out the truth of her family stories. The result is part mystery, part travelogue and a fascinating and funny exploration of Australia's fascination with Kelly.

She uncovers facts like Kelly’s bones were nicked in 1929 and, even though the coffins had been filled with lime and should have been squish, Kelly’s skeleton missed out. And she finds records in Wangaratta hotels from the time. You have to go along to find out more. And that’s before she explores stories like Steve Hart and Dan Kelly surviving the Glenrowan fire that declared them dead.

As she visits historical Kelly gang towns, she shares the wonderfully bizarre memorials – log art and robots – and meets equally wonderful people who are certain that they have less than 6 degrees of separation to Ned Kelly.

If any of these stories are correct, then Melita’s degrees of separation could be as close as two. If you want to get your degrees of separation closer to Kelly, you know you have to see her show.

This was on AussieTheatre.com .

Mini review: Travelling Worm Show!

Hey! Yeah! It's Molly's Travelling Worm Show!
HELIUM
17 August 2013
The Tower, Malthouse Theatre
to 24 August
malthousetheatre.com.au

The undoubtable appeal of Hey! Yeah! It's Molly's Travelling Worm Show! is its embracing of all things crap.

It's based on the true-enough story of Melita Rowston's search for the “best damn crap tourism destination" that she discovered in her adventures around the world. But it's not about her adventures, it's about her crappest of the crap: the worm festival held in the 1970s and 80s in the tiny Gippsland town of Korumburra. Here the area's unique three-metre worms were celebrated, celebrities like Daryl Somers were crowned Worm King and local kids came to Melbourne for the Moomba parade with a giant worm puppet called Karmai. You don't get much crapper than than.

So this show, where Melita's now Molly, starts with a love of crap as its artistic guide. Molly arrives in a dodgy motel, having kidnapped a famous ostrich and crow puppet. She goes a bit meta with explaining that they're in a motel in a theatre and that their quest is to find Karmai's puppet master.

With help from performer Narda Shanley and puppeter Benito Di Fonzo, there are some very funny moments and the nostalgia oozes, but there's a fine line between celebrating crap and falling into it.

If this were a half-hour, late-night Fringe show, the worm could be a squirmy hit, but this version is too long, gets lost in its own story, isn't sure who its audience is and doesn't feel sure about what it's trying to share. There's something very lovely about Molly's worm adventure, so it's hard to totally dismiss it, but its genuine delight is still buried in the compost and needs some extra time with the worm bin.