Category: ff2010

1 Camera [FringeTIX]

No Exit Productions @ Holden Street Theatres – The Studio

4:00pm, Fri 19 Feb 2010

So here’s Holden Street for the first time this year – and not much has changed. Except pretty much all the staff. Kym and all the other regulars have gone, but the Girl With The Gorgeous Eyes is back – though her voice has changed somewhat. No matter!

I find it pretty ironic that I’m writing this the day after the Fringe bit in the ‘Tiser stated “there is nothing more annoying than latecomers at the theatre” – since a couple of peeps wearing the Orange Sash of the Media Baron (no names ;) sat down several minutes into the play, missing the announcement that, due to last-minute cast changes, there would be a prompter in use. And, in the middle third, the prompter was heavily used, the progress of the play becoming almost treacle-like. And one of the media people present spent a good amount of the play dozing – it’s not like I obsess about them or anything, they were just in my eye-line, nodding gently.

The name of production company gives it away – 1 Camera is an adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre‘s No Exit (the name comes from a typo in the production’s original name, 1n Camera – the “1” intended to put the show at the top of the list of Theatre productions in the Guide). Thus, we meet Garcin as The Valet introduces him to a room; they constantly refer to it as one would a hotel room, except for Garcin’s queries as to the location of the torture devices that he assumes should be there. Inez is led in next, and treats Garcin with utter disdain; then comes Estelle, the sashaying socialite, who immediately takes a liking to Garcin – and Inez a liking to her.

The room is actually purgatory: these three characters are stuck in hell together. They all expect to be tortured, but it’s only with the advancement of the play that they realise that they are each other’s torturers, leading to continual odd-man-out situations where one character is being picked apart for their sins by the other two.

And therein lies the problem with 1 Camera; after a while, it becomes very episodic, with a predictable rhythm of characters being verbally reamed in turn, followed by a changeup… and then it all begins again. Yes, it’s a great concept, and for the first third it’s really enjoyable – sure it’s bleak, but I love a bit of Grim in my theatre. But the seemingly interminable repetition of the piece just wore me down to the point where I was clock-watching, waiting for it to end.

And that’s never a good thing.

I know that, if you’re going to produce one of the classic plays, you’re going to get reamed if you stray too far, or not offer it the reverence that some think it deserves; but for my tastes, this ménage à trois of psychological entanglement could be culled mightily without losing any impact. And, despite Inez stumbling over her lines, it was a pretty polished production – just way too long for my liking.

So You Think You Can Get F#%ked Up [FringeTIX]

Seb Carboncini @ The Tuxedo Cat – Rooftop

10:45pm, Thu 18 Feb 2010

It’s with great joy that I ascended to the Tuxedo Cat’s Rooftop Bar for the first time this year; it’s a great venue, most of the staff recognise me from last year and, as I have a seat whilst jotting down some notes and sipping on a mystery red that’s really quite delicious, I think – and these words really did form in my brain – “it doesn’t get much better than this.” I’m utterly content and happy.

Irene appears, having just seen Marcel Lucont – we grab some more drinks, sit and chat, wait for them to set up for So You Think You Can Get F#%ked Up. It’s taking awhile, and I’m thinking that my cunning plan – to make the 11:30pm show of Circus vs Sideshow, with just five minutes between the two shows – is going to unravel.

The thing is, the weather is too balmy, the wine is too warming, and the company too lovely for me to care anymore. So, even before we enter the TuxCat’s Rooftop venue, I’ve given up all hope of the last show. And that leaves my mind clear – but slightly hazy – for Seb Carboncini’s reality TV pisstake.

Irene, disconcertingly, is one of those front-row type of people, so it’s there we perch. Things don’t start well – the video projection that the show heavily relies upon (for intro titles and “ad breaks”) was displaying just fine, but there was no audio. There’s a bit of abuse from the dressing room behind the stage, in itself a source of much hilarity, and an audience member helps sort the problems out. And then, with flashy graphics and a lush aural introduction, we’re introduced to Robbie Butternob, the host for this finale of So You Think You Can Get F#%ked Up. Robbie tells us that the contestants are battling it out for the “ultimate rehab holiday” and, with an absurdly toothy grin, leaps offstage to prepare the first contestant.

Inbetween meeting the four contestants, we’re treated to a collection of pre-recorded ads; and they’re pretty fucked up, especially the series of yoghurt ads which devolved into head-drenching ridiculousness. But they’re nowhere near as fucked up as the contestants: Carlo Cabana hit me square in the head with his shoe as he stripped down to his banana-and-gladwrap undergarments, Wayne Gravel’s bath-bong entry tape was amazing, and by the time Rhonda Hangover vomited Up’n’Go onstage (thrice) I was madly cackling at pretty much anything.

Seb Carboncini was fantastic throughout, inhabiting these characters with ease, abusing the tech in their native tongue (except Rhonda, of course – she was in no shape to be berating anyone). But there’s a couple of moments from this show which will live with me forever: the first was watching Carlo’s shoe fly through the air in slow-motion, arcing towards my head… I was sitting cross-armed with a beer in one hand, and I’ll be arsed if I’m spilling any beer. Or uncrossing my arms. Therefore, shoe hit head.

The second memorable moment was just after Rhonda vomited for the first time. Sure, we were laughing at the coarse crudity of the action, but then the smell wafted out to greet me, and a little voice in my head said “mmmmm… chocolatey.”

At that point, I just completely lost my shit.

This was a great bit of absurdist character comedy; I had a bloody brilliant laugh during the show and then proceeded to piss off the TuxCat crew until they insisted we leave at stupid o’clock in the morning. Seb had a chat after the show, sprinkling all manner of gossip, and… y’know… what a fucking great night :)

Jane was 16 yesterday! [FringeTIX]

Spotlight Theatre Company @ Jah’z Lounge

9:15pm, Thu 18 Feb 2010

Oooooh, a bit of an odd one, this. As soon as the lights come up, we meet Jane – about to turn forty, she’s just emerged from a coma after nearly 24 years. There’s an understandable look of shock and disbelief as she looks into a small mirror – this is the first time she’s seen herself since awakening, and her own face is as unrecognisable to her as the “old woman” who says she’s her mother.

Exposition occurs via the sessions Jane has with Susan, who is trying to ascertain whether there’s been any lasting damage to Jane’s brain as a result of the accident and coma. It soon becomes evident that Jane is just the same articulate, intelligent teenager she always was; Susan’s focus then shifts to re-integrating her into society, free of the needy clutches of Jane’s mother. Along the way, there’s a couple of key revelations that impact upon Jane: the over-sexualisation of the media, the rise of terrorism, and – most importantly – the fact that her father had petitioned to turn off her life support.

This last fact, of course, triggers off a maelstrom of emotions – loathing is to be expected, of course, but as the play progresses Susan paints Jane’s father as the saint, rather than the sinner; the breakup of her parent’s marriage an inevitable outcome as her mother shifts in Jane’s mind from constant supporter to meddling oppressor, anxious not to let her daughter grow up.

The main problem with Jane was 16 yesterday! is that there are still a bunch of inconsistencies; after all, I’m the around same age as Jane and Susan (who’s a year younger than her patient), and so I find it very easy to identify with Jane’s most “recent” recollections. But there’s no way we used the term “lame” back in the mid-eighties, and (as Tony acknowledged when I chatted with him post-show) the Pet Shop Boys references are also a year or two out (simple solution: re-stage the play in a couple of years! ;)

Factual errors aside, there’s also a few bits that didn’t feel right; I cannot possibly imagine what it would be like to hear of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York now, but I can’t imagine anyone having the same response that Jane did. Likewise, I wasn’t convinced by Jane’s penchant for flip-flopping moods rapidly – and deeply; little scenes like that killed the suspension of disbelief.

And yet, despite my grumpalump comments above, I really quite enjoyed this piece – even if I did expect a bit of a light-hearted comedy (in the vein of Freaky Friday or Big) when going in. It’s a good, solid Fringe production that manages to toy with a bunch of ideas in a short amount of time, and turn into something you weren’t expecting. Which, in this case, is nice :)

Stevl Shefn and his Translator Fatima [FringeTIX]

Steve Sheehan @ SA Writer’s Centre

8:15pm, Thu 18 Feb 2010

Up the twelvety flights of stairs to the SA Writer’s Centre I go again, keen to see how Stevl Shefn is getting on. I’m greeted with chocolate frogs and the option of wine (which, for some reason, I fail to take advantage of). Melanie’s there – I say hello – and there’s some other familiar-but-not-quite-sure-where–from faces. I take a quick-getaway seat and jot a few memories down.

A tap on my shoulder – it’s the Great Hair from last night, all smiles and accompanied by a glass of riesling. We sit, we chat, and then Stevl Shefn & Fatima appear… and we laugh.

We laugh a lot.

Now, it would be remiss of me not to mention that this performance is largely a superset of Stevl Shefn’s appearance last year; the premise of the show is the same (Sheehan plays the eponymous Stevl, a wide-eyed gibberish-emitting character being translated by the burqa-clad Fatima). Large chunks of the material are the same – his aunt’s adult movie shop. The whale tourism. Even the grin-tacular rabies bit makes another visit.

And, even if it was just a repeat of that old material, I would’ve been happy… because it is staggeringly surreal, gut-bustingly funny, and just brilliant. The interaction of the characters onstage (mainly through their eyes), Fatima’s measured translations, Sheehan’s soaring physical mannerisms… it’s just a delight to watch.

But there’s more. The addition of the Stevl’s vacuum cleaner – one of his many “girlfriends” – adds a sublime element of tension to the interactions between Stevl and Fatima… the eyes, the silence, it’s just divine. I don’t recall the song from last year, either – the pair taking ages kitting Fatima up for her bass drum, chatting quietly amongst themselves, before Stevl strangles a trumpet and Fatima… well, it’s best just to go the show and find out what happens next ;)

It’s fair to say that this show gave me my first massive grin of the Fringe: when I was compiling The Shortlist, I spied it and noticed that there was a quote from me in the précis! But the fact that the show itself delivers bigger laughs than a grin-full of ego stroking should speak volumes; this was a must-see last year, and remains so now.

Final Round [FringeTIX]

SA Writer’s Theatre / Spotlight Theatre Company @ Jah’z Lounge

7:00pm, Thu 18 Feb 2010

As the lights come up, we’re looking inside a hospital; old Dave lays on one bed, reading the paper. Nurse Sarah wheels young wheelchair-bound Sol in – he’s received some serious knee damage as a result of an accident in his truck, and howls in pain as he tries to make it into his bed. In Sarah’s absence, the two men bond – before Dave’s needling enrages Sol to physical rage, and the inevitable crumpling on the floor.

This opening scene sets the pattern for Final Round; the three players rarely work as a trio, but the two pairings involving Dave provide the meat of the play. His constant antagonism of the flammable Sol; his unreciprocated flirtation with Sarah. It’s odd that, of all the characters, Dave is the character most guarded in his background: Sol is an open book, Sarah freely provides her background as texture and contrast, but Dave is pointedly evasive when it comes to his past.

As the play progresses, more and more of Dave’s life – and affliction – is revealed; sometimes through the interplay of the principals, and sometimes using the invisible Algie as a plot-advancing foil. But that’s where some of the problems with Final Round lie: Algie is undeveloped and underused and, ultimately, pointless; some of the dialogue also fails to ring true. The bit of babble about sex at the end of the first scene felt horribly out of place, and there seems to be an inclination for the two men to attribute their failings to their tumultuous childhoods – a blunt and contrived cop-out.

Cassandra Kane was brilliant as the Nurse – she’s got the gift of sublime comedic timing (there’s a perfectly weighted pause when she judges Sol’s pain “…a six”) and some of the best lines: “you’re just… coping”. The casting of Michael Baldwin as Dave was nigh-on perfect; he lends an acerbic dignity to the role. Nathan Porteus’ Sol, on the other hand, doesn’t work quite so well; sure, he’s got the teetering-on-the-brink-of-rage thing down pat, but I’m not convinced of the rest of his range.

The premise of the hospital as a microcosm of society was interesting, if under-explored, and the inevitable Happy Ending wasn’t as cringeworthy as it could have been. The drama was broken up with dollops of humour (Dave’s bottomless bedside locker providing much of the humour), helping make Final Round a competent bit of Fringe Theatre.

The List Operators [FringeTIX]

The List Operators @ The Hive

10:45pm, Wed 17 Feb 2010

Groo, I didn’t like this much.

Rich and Matt – The List Operators – purport to present a sketch comedy show with lists in it. And that’s mostly true; there’s certainly a bunch of lists hanging around at the back of The Hive’s stage, and during the show they’re happy to compile lists of Countries It’s OK To Be Racist About, as well as audience racists and nobs (for the hecklers). The “Pros and Cons of Matt” sketch worked alright, too, with the broad and far-sweeping list of Cons far outweighing the specifics of the Pros.

The problem is that so much of the show seemed utterly juvenile to me; devoid of the aforementioned “comedy”. Matt’s list of favourite fruit, complete with googly eyes (and the death of Jennifer Cante-lopez later in the show). The “Hello” sketch. Even the crowd-singing closer felt pretty low-brow.

But the large crowd, who appeared to be intimately familiar with The List Operators, lapped it up. Sure, the opener “10 Ways To Start The Show” was pretty amusing, but not enough to compensate for the bits that really annoyed me. If this is the worst show I see this year, then I’d be reasonably happy – there were some decent bits – but it’s far from the best.

(Oh – and everyone in the queue was asked to write down the name of someone they wanted to apologise to, and why. Mine read…

Who: my girlfriend from 1991.
Why: for not talking to her for two weeks after she fucked up the taping of Twin Peaks.

That actually wound up being the final one they read out :)

The Needle And The Damage Done [FringeTIX]

Fiona Scott-Norman @ The Hive

9:30pm, Wed 17 Feb 2010

I’m in The Garden on a Wednesday night, having drunkenly trotted from dinner & drinks at the Exeter; there’s plenty of people milling around, watching the buskers, but there’s a mighty crowd of four outside The Hive at the prescribed start time.

And that depresses me.

The start gets bumped out a few minutes, and a few more people turn up. The initial group of four – myself included – take the front row of The Hive once the doors open, and late-comers gradually fill the seats – in the end, the crowd wasn’t too bad. But as for the show…

I fucking loved it.

Fiona Scott-Norman has got a lot of things going for her, in my eyes; she looks like a long-haired (and happy) Tilda Swinton (and I love Tilda Swinton) in a wonderful late-seventies dress, she exudes confidence, and her style is immediately charming. And so, before a single note is played, I’m already hooked.

The show is, of course, Scott-Norman’s celebration of bad music. Bad songs, bad album covers, bad artists. There’s a fair few appearances by John Laws – who knew the man was so into trucking and poetry? – and other “celebrities”… The Hoff was a shoe-in, sure, but Bruce Willis and William Shatner also get a berth.

But there’s also albums of truly awful cover tunes sung by footballers. The white supremacy hate-mongering of the teenage Gaede twins in Prussian Blue. The soundtrack to the blaxploitation porn of Tongue. The inevitable list of music suggested “evil” by the impetus of the PMRC – including Abba (“Remember their massive hit, Ring Ring C@#t?”). And a frankly horn-inducing segment where Scott-Norman daintily sipped a cup of tea and gobbled an éclair whilst we listened to the glorious strains of Come In My Mouth (from the bizarre Let My People Come soundtrack).

Fiona’s grooving and singing during the songs is fantastic – it had every opportunity to be cringingly embarrassing, but she manages to pull it off. Her iPod and turntable skills are sublime. But in the end, it comes down to her final selection, Fiona’s pick as the Worst Record of All-Time. And, even with my knowledge of Free Jazz and bizarre experimental bands, I’ve never, ever, heard anything quite as mis-timed, syncopated, and downright bad as her choice. I’ll not mention it by name here – you really should go the the show to have Fiona unveil it for you! – but, if you’re brave, YouTube has the goodies.

As I said before, I loved this show. It’s everything I want from a Fringe comedy performance – a luscious hostess, a quirky premise, lots of laughs, and a teensy bit of awkwardness. Brilliant :D

Red Bastard [FringeTIX]

Red Bastard @ Umbrella Revolution

10:10pm, Tue 16 Feb 2010

It’s not until I’ve been spruiked with TalkFringe flyers whilst in the queue for Red Bastard that I realised that this is a buoffon act… that little line in the précis – “His target: …you” – is easy to skip over.

Alrighty then, I ponder – massive audience participation is expected. What to do – front of house, or back? I’m early in the queue, so the house is mine for the choosing… I opt for front, second row table, and wind up sharing it with the friendly & gorgeous Amanda and her beau.

But not for long.

Red Bastard takes to the stage, strutting like a bulbous chicken. His absurd appearance should be familiar enough – he’s almost as much a poster-child for the Fringe as the astronauts – and he roams the stage, eyeing up the audience, whilst uttering nonsense. Suddenly he strikes a pose, arms outstretched – “Space!” he yells, and there’s one or two in the audience that recognise the call and pose likewise. He grins at them, licking his lips, before turning to the rest of us with derision and explaining how to “make space”. The next lesson is “Displace!”, sending the audience scurrying from to another nearby chair, frantic bumps causing many embarrassed giggles. And then we start warming our voices up. Gently, then louder, then screaming. And if there’s one thing I can do on cue, it’s Be Loud – as the Red Bastard found out when he singled me out. The audience’s laughter and applause felt good :)

He’s warming us up, of course, because we are the real stars of the show; Red Bastard is merely a facilitator, a mirror. He poses awkward questions of the audience, then dances around them, opening them up. Whether it be purely conversational (quizzing people on their dreams and ambitions, and what impedes their progress in achieving those goals) or physical (goading members of the audience into feeling around his bulbous butt for money hidden therein), he’s always challenging the audience, making them think.

There’s the occasional rant to himself – an inexplicable treatise on shaving, and a massive missive on Strut & Fret’s immensely profitable hegemony over The Garden’s acts (the Circus Trick Tease folks cheer him on). But this isn’t a comedy show, nor is it theatre… it’s almost meta-theatre, a deconstruction of the performer / audience relationship.

Having said that, I also found it deeply thoughtful and oddly inspirational. It’s more like a self-help seminar wrapped in abuse. And some of his queries stick with me still – What is the dirtiest thing I’ve ever said? How do I displace my instincts and intentions? And I can’t exactly say it’s a “good show” – as the complicit agreement between the crowd and Red Bastard infers, this show is what the audience makes of it. And as he leads us outside at the end of the show, he’s introducing us to the rest of our lives; the show lives on outside the Revolution.

I believe him. What a bastard.

Philip Escoffey: Six Impossible Things Before Dinner [FringeTIX]

Philip Escoffey @ Umbrella Revolution

8:45pm, Tue 16 Feb 2010

A late scheduling, prematurely plucked off The Shortlist by the cancellation of Beat Munky, I couldn’t even remember what the précis of Philip Escoffey was as I scooted straight onto the end of the line into the Umbrella Revolution. When I get in, the place is packed; it’s hard to see where they could squeeze any latecomers.

Philip introduces himself: he’s a softly spoken, but earnest, Englishman. His show is based around the myths of mind-reading, with a little bit of other spiritualism and “mysticism” roped in for comic relief; he polls the audience for believers and sceptics, finds a majority of the latter, then sets about changing their minds – all the while preaching a message of rationality.

Philip proclaims that he’s going to perform six impossible things (as per the show’s title), and things start off slowly; randomly selecting audience members by tossing a (foam) brick over his shoulder and into their midst, he opens with a simple demonstration based on the classic Zener cards. Things progress into a comparison of his mind-reading “abilities” versus the predictions of horoscopes, a discussion of the spiritualism industry, and he plucks one “unlucky” person out of the audience (Emma) and proceeds to turn her into the luckiest girl alive (well… in comparison to two other audience members, anyway).

His penultimate act, though, is a doozy. Three random audience members, undertaking three different selection tests (Zener cards, normal cards, dictionary word selection), and he verbalises all their choices correctly. He explains the myriad of ways in which he could have acquired the correct answers – marking cards, memorising pages of the dictionary – to create the illusion that it’s all just a clever trick. But then, as the audience departs, he reveals the same answers written behind signs that were on the stage all along – which is pretty bloody impressive (though it does call into question the theatrical nature of his verbal analysis of the people).

There’s a mild sense of disappointment associated with the last Impossible Thing (after a final cash-grab for charity); the trick doesn’t turn out the way we expected, and I almost felt cheated by a bit of wordplay. It’s only after we leave the Revolution that the denouement is finally revealed… and it’s then that you’re left completely and utterly flabbergasted.

The thing is, with the benefit of a couple of days of hindsight, it’s also the most rationally explainable of his tricks: it’s the ultimate celebration of sleight-of-hand. But in no way does that detract from the impact of this performance; there’s plenty there for everyone to enjoy, with the only possible flaws being the flat spots where he lingers too long on the history of cold-war mentalism research. Still, Escoffey’s dry wit and English charm make this a thoroughly entertaining show – not one to see when you’re pissed, though.

Sarkadi’s Budapest Marionettes [FringeTIX]

Bence Sarkadi @ Puppet Palace

8:00pm, Tue 16 Feb 2010

So – I’m arriving very early to the Puppet Palace for this performance, and more than a little pissed off that Beat Munky has been cancelled. To fill in that gap, I’d bought a ticket to Philip Escoffey which, if everything ran on time, would leave me five minutes to hop from the Puppet Palace into the Umbrella Revolution, right next door.

If everything ran on time.

Which it didn’t, really.

Tuesday nights appear to be the new Monday nights – the Dead Night. There’s bugger all people milling around, and those that are coming into The Garden are scurrying on to the Bosco – they’re running late for The Boy With Tape On His Face. I’m chatting to the bored attendant at the Puppet Palace, empathising with her frustration at not being able to play her MMORPGs whilst “working” on dead nights such as these, and the decision is made to wait a few more minutes, try to drum up more interest in this show. But when the show eventually starts fifteen minutes late, there’s still less than a dozen people there, including the Garden ring-ins.

Bence Sarkadi is a likeable enough chap, with the stereotypically stiff and proper politeness of an ESL eastern european. He opens his show with a small, hand-sized marionette of a man, lifting and carrying objects; it’s very twee, but very expressive. This little man was alive.

His larger marionettes, however, didn’t have as positive an impact on me. There’s an uncomfortable lull as his musical backing CD goes missing, leaving the reluctant audience to try and figure out when to insert the appropriate “ooohs” and “aaahs” into the acrobat performance. I can see how this acrobatic marionette would be impressive on the right day, but Sarkadi was having a bit of a ‘mare – tangled strings and a less-than-bouyant crowd cuts that piece short.

Luckily, though, his act seems to alternate between the large and small puppets, so the charming little man reappears for more cheery goodness between the larger pieces. But the ice-skater was reasonable, and the bongo-player was the highlight of the larger forms – though the manipulation of the manipulator (puppeting a puppeteer, so to speak) was pretty decent, too.

For all the nice bits of this performance, I can’t help but think it was unpolished; Sarkadi’s vest still had advertising for his show pinned to the back of it, creating an annoying distraction every time he turned around. And when I saw the train-riding sequence, complete with moving scenery, I was instantly reminded of Sticks, Stones, Broken Bones – an immeasurably more polished performance, and one that’s also playing this year. And that’s a bit of a shame, because Sarkadi seems like he’s got a real passion for puppetry – it just wasn’t able to express itself properly this performance.