Category: ff2011

Dead Cat Bounce – Caged Heat

Dead Cat Bounce @ Gluttony (Excess Theatre)

8:15pm, Sun 20 Feb 2011

After my first exposure to Dead Cat Bounce (at the Gluttony Showcase gig earlier in the week), I vowed not to miss their show this year. The stars aligned, a timeslot opened up, and there we were – sharing the Excess Theatre with maybe sixty other punters.

The rock-star sensibilities that I’d spotted earlier? They’re still there, contrasting the clever comedic interludes between songs really well; there’s some predictable theatrics (delusions of “serious” versus “comedy” band) and some expected drummer-bashing, but it’s all polished material and competently delivered.

But the real glory of Dead Cat Bounce is in their songs… and, whilst they’re a musically unsurprising guitar/bass/synth/drums outfit, lyrically they’re a hell of a lot of fun. From the boy-band-esque Overenthusiastic Contraceptive Lady (with its African choir breakdown), through the gorgeously imaginative synth-driven Christians In Love, to the wonderful storytelling rhythms of Switzerland, and the profanity-filled rap of Firemen (“we’ve got four motherfuckin’ firemen in the truck, but we ain’t got no motherfuckin’ hose”), there’s a lot of laughter to be had.

But by the time we got to their The Day We Fired The Drummer bit (complete with hang-dog over-acting), bleeding into the “buy our CD” encore, the band have lost a bit of their impact… it’s all got a little too samey. I suffered from the hot mixing, too, sparking my tinnitus and making some of the lyrics tricky to distinguish – which, as you might imagine, took the edge off the show somewhat for me.

That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the show – I love the Dead Cats’ stage manner and execution and polish (the little vocal punctuations in the middle of songs are comedic genius). It’s just that I’d have been happy with a shorter set and more sedate sound levels… christ that makes me sound old.

Cloud Girls Smudge

Jennifer Carnovale and Madeleine Culp @ Austral Hotel – The Bunka

6:30pm, Sun 20 Feb 2011

Unsure about the logistics of dragging myself in from my previous show, I had refrained from pre-purchasing a ticket for the Cloud Girls; hence, when my Fringe Buddy and I arrived with scant seconds to spare before the nominated start time, only to be greeted by a solidly closed Bunka door, I silently admonished myself: if there’s no walk-in punters, and I haven’t bought a ticket in advance, how can the performer possibly know that there’s an audience that wants to see their show?

After a minute or so of apprehensive waiting outside, another (slightly older) couple wanders towards us: “you here for the Cloud Girls?” they ask, and we get to chatting. The door opens, a man apologetically takes our money, and the four of us enter. Despite much goading, the other couple don’t join us up front, opting instead to sit one row back.

So – there’s a grand total of four people in the front two rows of The Bunka, which would comfortably hold fifty or sixty. It’s… a bit awkward, to say the least. But opener Shane Matheson gets some hearty early laughs, with a bit of gruff iPod DJing accompanying some genuinely funny material. Definitely someone to keep an eye on in the future.

And then the Sydney-based Cloud Girls amble onto the stage… and, from the get-go, they’re hilarious. Their awkward introductions reveal some perfect comedic timing, and their show is presented in a very sketch-oriented manner – they quickly flit between pieces, never allowing the laughs to subside, and there’s rarely a flat spot in the performance. The chemistry between the two Sydneysiders is intoxicating; there’s a real sense of understanding between them that manages – despite their impeccable timing – to appear haphazard, like the show is teetering on the edge of disaster… it’s very dynamic, very exciting. Mads projects a curious fragility, wide-eyed and innocent, where Jen comes across cooler, more calculating.

As for their material… the bit with Jen sitting in the audience, firing “dickhead” questions at Mads? Absolutely brilliant – and made all the more surreal by the small audience, with Mads scanning the ocean of empty seats for questions whilst Jen strained in her seat, arm waving in the air. The whale songs? Mads’ mental miming at the end of the show? Magnificent. The poetry? The unexpected puns? Perfect.

Look, I absolutely loved Cloud Girls Smudge – the Girls are sharp and funny and have a gloriously madcap delivery that manages to feel both polished and dangerous. And they’re lovely people, too – I kept bumping into them at the TuxCat (where they performed a chunk of their season after some kerfuffle with the Austral) and the Worldsend, and they were always up for a chat. But it’d be hard for me to separate the absolute joy of their performance from the slightly surreal environment in which I saw it – four people in a big room (and, as we later discovered, the other couple was Mads’ parents!) Having said that, I can’t wait to see the Cloud Girls again – and they absolutely deserve a much bigger audience.

Spectroscope

Megan Dennis & Rapid Eye Movement @ Adelaide Royal Coach

5:30pm, Sun 20 Feb 2011

It’s a glorious day to be alive (or, at least, a glorious day to be awake) and strolling across the parklands to the Adelaide Royal Coach – a little motel complex that I’ve often wandered past without ever contemplating what was contained therein. But the sun warmed my hangover-aching bones, I bump into Rod for a bit of a chat, and I’m feeling alright.

Better than alright, actually. I’m keenly anticipating Spectroscope – as even the most casual reader of this blog may have recognised, I love to see people perform Clever Things with light and shadow. The précis is delicious – described as “a ballet of light”, this solo devised piece is a study into authenticity; the technology of ‘self’: the screen that is created to both display and disguise – and I’m imagining all sorts of things, all sorts of possibilities… it’s very exciting.

But the first thing that I notice when navigating through the halls of the Royal Coach is the water damage – there’s splotches of wet carpet and matting everywhere. And, in the queue for the performance, the cross-group chatter seemed to indicate that this was very much a family-and-friends crowd, with lots of “how do you know Megan / The Girls” discussion. The doors opened, and we’re led into a darkened room, and instructed not to walk across the aisle as we made our way to our seats.

Of course, as soon as the front row on the far side filled up, the aisle was promptly walked across, evoking tuts and hisses from family members. The aisle was to be protected because of the collection of activated glow-sticks tied to a fishing line and laid along the floor; at the front of the space is a two-metre-high screen. Doors closed, there’s a moment of pitch-blackness before eyes adjust to the low light; and then, to inoffensive ambient tones (apparently the work of Sigur Rós), the performance began.

Of course, due to the fact that I was sitting in the second row, I couldn’t see anything for the first couple of minutes of the performance; awkward craning (and potentially creepy breathing into my obstructor’s ear) only allowed me glimpses of the initial action. From behind the screen, some strands of colourful light – more glow-sticks – shine through; they dance in time to the low-key backing music, all-too-slowly climbing the height of the screen. Well, “dance” may be a bit misleading; “jiggle” would be far more accurate, with the strands acting like jerky marionettes. There’s a certain beauty to the light and spasmodic movement – for a few minutes, at least – but the glow-sticks amble along their vertical ascent of the screen, and I’m almost dozing off by the time they reach the top. Luckily my eyes are open for the most visually striking part of the performance, as a bright white light blasts the scrim, and wafting leaves of red cellophane drift serenely down, dancing around Megan Dennis’ shadow (which is pretty much the only time the performer is visible throughout).

But after the autumnal beauty of the cellophane, it was back to more glow-stick action, broken up by some awkward torch-powered shadow puppetry. Colourful rings and shapes wander around behind the scrim, sometimes drifting too far from the screen, hazing their visibility; the fishing-line glow-sticks on the floor are pulled forwards, in what I can only imagine was supposed to mimic a marching stream of light. But that part of the performance was only visible to those sitting on the aisle; poor planning restricts the ability of the audience to appreciate the ideas on offer.

And that is Spectroscope‘s biggest problem: there’s obviously some interesting and creative ideas here, but they’re let down by execution. And, as an audience member, I don’t think the show looks half as good as the Rapid Eye Movement crew think it does. In that regard, Spectroscope reminded me of Fin – ideas and passion are present, but there’s no polish. And unfortunately, the part of the performance that (perversely) provided the most pleasure was the pregnant pause at the end of the show – the audience sat quietly in the pitch-black room for a good ten-to-fifteen seconds before the girl managing sound and lights started softly clapping, her small hands sounding feeble, almost pleading.

I left as efficiently as I could, eyes down; I quickly headed back into the city, wondering what the family-and-friends crowd thought of it, and giggled to myself. And, thinking back on Spectroscope after five months, that’s my fondest memory of the performance – not the “ballet of light”, not the uncomfortable silence, but the ruminations on reactions. And that, in a way, made the whole experience worthwhile.

Adventure Hour!: A 29-and-a-half minute Time Bending, Old-Fashioned Adventure With Intrepid Explorers Professor Gorski and Miss Ellaneous

Mr Gorski and Miss Ellaneous @ Gluttony (The Bally)

4:00pm, Sun 20 Feb 2011

There’s always a bit of danger when going to a show targeted at children – sometimes the writing just isn’t engaging enough for the adult mind. And when it’s a circus show, there’s the secondary danger that the spectacle being presented is also going to miss the mark.

Unfortunately, Adventure Hour! suffers from both these maladies.

There’s no doubting that the Adventure Hour!‘s cast – Mr Gorski, a colonial English explorer, and Miss Ellaneous, a… erm… wonderfully costumed lass – exude buckets of enthusiasm and character, and they certainly work the children sitting on the mats in the middle of the Bally. There’s lots of smiles and eye contact and wide expressive gestures… but when it comes to the circus content, it’s a whole other story.

Miss Ellaneous performs some hoop tricks but, perhaps impeded by the nature of her dress, there were a few slips and staggers. Likewise, some of their combined juggling antics went awry, but thankfully no children were struck as a result of the spills. There was, however, some pretty clever hat tricks, along with a bit of plate-spinning (which is certainly a unique feature in the current crop of circus acts).

But, at eighteen bucks for half-an-hour of performance, there just didn’t seem to be enough content… and a few too many spills in the content that was there. And, given that the Bally suffers mightily from the afternoon sun and the audience were left sweltering, it was almost mercifully short. As I mentioned before, the pair are blessed with a great sense of theatre and engagement with the kids… it’s just that this kid felt like he was well outside the target audience.

Low Level Panic [FringeTIX]

Half A Star Theatre @ Arcade Lane – Regent Two

2:00pm, Sun 20 Feb 2011

I read the précis in the Guide – that sounds interesting, I think. I notice it’s got a Sunday matinee early in the Fringe – easy peasy, I think. Ticket booked. Various promotional material is seen and acquired.

But it’s only as I’m walking to the venue, very tired and dreary on an otherwise sunny day, that I actually look at the posters adorning the walls as I approach Arcade Lane. And, as I read “Clare McIntyre’s Low Level Panic“, something about the playwright’s name triggers a memory… hang on, I reckon I’ve seen this before.

Out comes my phone, and off to this blog I go. A simple search reveals that yes, I have seen a production of Low Level Panic before (in 2006) and, as I read my previous musings, the memories of the show came flooding back (and that, after all, is the purpose of this blog). And they weren’t really kind.

I try to banish the recollections from my mind; I try to walk into every show hoping that it’s going to be Life-Changing. So the handful of us Sunday arvo punters enter the old Regent Two cinema and take in the set; it’s an elaborate, if messy, recreation of a spacious bathroom. Jo lolls about in the bath while Mary flicks through the pages of a porn magazine in disgust, musing awkwardly about the objectification of women; and so the feminist tone of the piece is set. The girls fuss about, preparing for a party; Kate Englefield’s Mary looks absolutely stunning in her dress (ooh look at me, focussing on the appearance – miss the point, much?), though it’s utterly understandable why her character wasn’t so into it.

But I’ve seen this play before. The rape scene that acts as the trigger for Mary’s angst somehow doesn’t seem as shocking now; Jo’s masturbation fantasies (accompanied by some video projection) don’t seem as scandalous. And the final act, the post-party reflection, sputters along to the anticlimactic conclusion.

Alicia Case’s Celia is primarily used as a comic foil to the weightier musings of the other two, and – somewhat disconcertingly, given the focus of Low Level Panic – seems to have the “ideal” life… even if she is left wanting for a bath. Case, however, felt the least assured of the three actresses, with wavering voice control and a perfunctory presence.

But the biggest problem with this production is the venue – Regent Two seems much more echoey than Regent One, and dialogue rattles around the broken walls and becomes hard to discern. Maybe a larger crowd might have deadened the space a bit more – even then, Maryann Boettcher’s lines from the bathtub would still have struggled to make it to the crowd (though her performance was, by far, the most accomplished).

So, once again, I’ve seen a production of Low Level Panic that has left me feeling unfulfilled. I’m in do doubt, now, that it’s the script that is lacking – the awkward dialogue and unfamiliar situations that the characters are faced with don’t really resonate with me at all. Yes, there’s that pivotal moment in the middle of the play, but the return to banality just makes it feel… well, less significant than it actually is.

Or maybe that’s the point – that these horrific moments are followed by an uncomfortable expectation of normality.