Category: ff2012

[2012096] Mike Wilmot

Mike Wilmot @ The Hunting Lodge

7:30pm, Wed 7 Mar 2012

I’ve got a feeling that I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to Filthy Comedy; I really enjoy a ribald laugh, but once a certain line has been crossed – and it’s usually one where I feel that overt sexism is being used for extremely cheap laughs – I switch right off.

So when I hear that Mike Wilmot – widely regarded as a Quality Filth Merchant – is in town, he was pencilled in nice and early… I was keen to see how an expert straddled that line.

In retrospect, a 7:30 timeslot might have been a bit early for Wilmot – he spends a good twenty minutes wandering back-and-forth moaning about the daylight and the the ferris wheel in his eye-line, and the open bar within The Hunting Lodge meant that front-row patrons were wandering in front of him during this relatively placid period. And I could almost sense that Wilmot himself detected that he was out-of-sorts, and he was desperately trying to drag himself into a more comfortable vein of material.

I don’t know whether it was the receding daylight, or a more settled audience, but suddenly Wilmot lurched into his perception of The Garden – or “Rapey Park”, as he called it – and he was away.

And when he got going… boy, did he bring the filth.

It’s all based around sex, of course, contrasting his near-non-existant spousal interactions with the desperate lunges of youth: “when you’re young, you don’t know what you’re doing, so she’s moist everywhere from the waist down,” he explains, before leaping into a series of arse-licking jokes. And it seems so appropriate that this material is being delivered with minimal eye contact, measured pacing, and a voice like a frog croaking through a sandpaper throat.

It’s not all rude, though – some of Wilmot’s more acerbic material is based around his love/hate relationship with his wife, and – being Canadian (“beavers and freezing”) – his sufferance of the weather comes into it. Punchlines can occasionally come from nowhere, yet always feel right for the joke, and that gravelly voice just works perfectly with the material. Whilst Wilmot’s set this evening felt a little uneven, it’s clear that he’s got the confidence to ease into material too dirty for other comedians to touch… and then wallow in it for our amusement.

[2012095] Chris Knight’s Odd Fusion Wolf Beard Give Them Snacks

Chris Knight @ The Crown and Anchor Hotel

6:00pm, Wed 7 Mar 2012

“Snacks!” opens the bearded Chris Knight. “Do you like snacks?” the smallish audience is queried. The results are inconclusive; “Beards! Do you like beards?”

Less than two minutes in, and we’ve successfully covered about half of the content promised by the title.

Knight is a bit of a surrealist – maybe not as hardcore on the lunatic fringe as Sam Simmons, but he feels much more approachable – which is kinda handy, given the small room out the back of the Cranka. And Knight’s gentle nature allows him to meander with his jokes, often taking the audience on a long journey to a soft punchline – the “don’t bring a gun to a bomb fight” joke stands out here – but it’s the odd turns that are taken on that journey that make it worthwhile.

Knight also throws in a bit of satire (“Fringe reviews reviewed”) and occasionally makes deep cuts seem ridiculously easy (the clown that keeps killing people), with his pop culture hooks (specifically his movie references) always appearing to be orthogonal to audience expectations… and that’s a good thing.

Having seen Chris Knight a few times previously at Adelaide comedy gigs, I pretty much knew what to expect – indeed, a lot of his material was familiar from those spots. Having said that, the McCafe exponential coffee bit never gets old – the theatrical nature of his presentation is an absolute joy to behold. And, whilst his fascination with water in the middle of his set seemed… well, odd, it seemed in keeping with the rest of his show: gigglingly good soft-surrealism, wonderfully presented by a genuinely likeable guy. All that, and a cute little bearded biscuit at the end of the show, too.

[2012094] The Ballad of the Unbeatable Hearts

Richard Fry @ Higher Ground – Art Base

9:45pm, Tue 6 Mar 2012

On the raw strength of his previous performances, there was no doubt that I’d be seeing Richard Fry’s latest piece: Bully was a brutal emotional assault that left me wrecked; Smiler, whilst more upbeat, still packed a punch and gave the tear ducts a workout.

So imagine my surprise when The Ballad of the Unbeatable Hearts opens with a hint of adversity, and then becomes overwhelmingly positive; after failing his suicide attempt, a young gay man sets about making the world a better place. Stepping out from the darkness, his initial acts of support and kindness to other human beings are small, seemingly insignificant; but their effects are profound, encouraging a snowball effect that results in the formation of the Unbeatable Hearts – an ultra-inclusive, world-wide group of people being nice to everyone. Kindness begets kindness, and the whole world becomes better as a result.

It all seems to plausible, so tangible, so close – so it’s a double-whammy of despair when The Truth is revealed. But, in convincing you that the Unbeatable Hearts are just a few tiny acts of compassion away from reality, Fry manages to take a depressing premise – the high suicide rate of young men ostracised by their sexuality – and turns it into something uplifting.

The Ballad of the Unbeatable Hearts is, hands-down, Fry’s strongest performance yet. It’s a wonderfully-paced piece of writing, full of his usual rhymes and occasionally bumpy rhythms, and the emotional content of the piece is masterfully handled… it almost feels like he’s happy toying with the fans he’s garnered over the years, confounding their expectations somewhat with the twists in tone of the work. The optimism is unbridled and surprising, and the reality is dark and depressing… but together they form a wonderfully engaging piece of theatre.

And the little note that he hands out at the end of the show, providing suggestions about some of the small things you can do to become an Unbeatable Heart? So sweet. And so doable.

[2012093] Gravity Boots and Friends

Gravity Boots @ The Light Hotel – High Rollers Room

8:30pm, Tue 6 Mar 2012

Ohboyohboyohboy. I’d been looking forward to this show for ages, and had used this as a starting-point for the entire day’s activities; it was only later that I realised that it was Cheap Tuesday, and that I hadn’t given the ‘Boots as much money as I could have.

Running a little late, I dash upstairs at the Light and am gently guided towards the High Rollers Room. It’s already pretty full, and there’s some rockin’ armchairs in the second row; they’re mostly occupied by a clutch of older women, cackling gleefully within their group. They spot lonely old me, and happily shuffle up to offer me the end armchair. Once I’m seated, my neighbour turned to me: “how do you know The Boys?” she asks, with a zeal that makes me think that there’s familial pride involved.

The Gravity Boots set is a collection of self-contained absurdist sketches, all of which feature writers Michael Cleggett and James Lloyd-Smith, and some of which are familiar – there’s the clown-and-button piece, and the seminal goat/leopard routine is still gloriously entertaining. Each piece is connected by equally absurd segments featuring Nathan Cox and Austin Harrison-Bray (who also provide keys and guitar, respectively) playing two cats who sing whilst operating a light-bulb driven time machine… yes, you read that right.

But there’s some new pieces, too – the closing song (which I think described a gecko opening a Mexican roach nightclub) is eyebrow-raisingly silly, and the Kings of Spain bit is bloody good fun too. The Boys are ably joined onstage by Matthew Barker and Alyssa Mason, as scenes require… and the sketches that feature the extended ‘Boots family are wonderfully well written, with sparkling rapid-fire banter bouncing between the performers.

After seeing The Ridiculous Files last year, I mentioned that sketch comedy seems to get overlooked – sneered at, even – by the comedy-going public. And whilst the aforementioned Files did deliver quality sketches, I must admit to having never really taken a shine to the darlings of the Adelaide sketch scene, The Golden Phung. But none of that really matters, because Gravity Boots are the Kings of Adelaide Sketch Comedy – and it could easily be argued that the word “sketch” be struck from that description.

I love Gravity Boots, I really do. Their writing confidently straddles the line that separates the bizarre and the absurd, but it’s always in the region of gut-bustingly funny. And their relatively simple presentation – seemingly reliant on Cleggett & Lloyd-Smith’s persistent white long-johns being accented by only the smallest costumery – ensures that the focus is on the writing and the performances… and the quality of both is impeccable.

In fact, the only thing I love more than what Gravity Boots brings to the stage is the fanaticism, the belief, that seems to surround them. After I first saw their work in last last year’s Gluttony Showcase, I was contacted by (the lovely) Leonie, who informed me of an off-programme show at the Carry On within Gluttony; I scrambled along to this show and was overjoyed to be reluctantly granted entry into a packed tent full of family, friends, and bubbling optimism. The entire crowd felt incredibly supportive, and even belted out a raucous Happy Birthday when it was revealed that it was one of The Boys’ birthday; that level of support was also evident when I attended one of their (again, near-capacity) fundraising shows prior to their Edinburgh jaunt this year.

And that sort of visible belief – in a bunch of youngsters doing utterly bizarre sketch comedy, of all things – is a joy to behold.

[2012092] Mark Watson – The Information

Mark Watson @ Cinema Nova

7:00pm, Tue 6 Mar 2012

Ever since I first encountered Mark Watson back in 2007, I’ve been a big fan; his quirky humour is brilliantly accentuated by his bumbling presentation, which makes every show a feel uniquely exciting… he has the wonderful ability to make you feel that his performances are barely under control – that anything could happen.

And he’s always felt like a secret little discovery, too – previous shows have had small audiences, despite my inclination to recommend him to pretty much anyone.

Not this year, though. After a quick dash from the late-finishing Dining Uns-table, I was happy to find an aisle seat in a nearly-packed Nova… but it wasn’t until I’d flumped down (and proceeded to start sweating from the dash) that I realised that I was sitting next to a couple wearing the daggiest trackie dacks I’d ever seen. I looked at the surrounding audience – there’s a lot of sullen faces, some of which seemed to have a hint of mean expectation to them – “this better be good,” I could almost hear them saying, and I wondered how they came to be here.

Watson’s bumbling arrival onstage without fanfare perks me up a bit – a warm welcoming applause comes from maybe a third of the crowd. He introduces himself, then apologises for the start; he leaves the stage, does a bit of deep-voiced backstage spruiking, and returns to the spotlight authoritatively to much more applause.

The central premise of the show, he tells us, is about the vast amount of information that is available online, and it’s impact on people’s lives; to demonstrate the impact of The Information, he relays two core threads. The first of which is a wonderfully silly tale in which Watson describes a conversation he had with a taxi driver, during which he insisted that he ran a zoo; it’s a ludicrous foundation for a joke, but it has a glorious callback with a big payoff.

The other main tale is that of Paul Goddard, a mortgage broker that had previously stuffed Watson around. Watson, in a move that surely must be dancing a fine line with Britain’s notorious libel laws, has taken to describing Goddard’s impact on his life in great detail, publicising his deeds (or lack thereof) on every available channel of The Information… and even throwing out a couple of t-shirts with a not-exactly-flattering-to-Mr-Goddard message emblazoned across them.

Of course, if you’ve been lucky enough to hear any of Watson’s BBC radio shows (especially Season 2? of Mark Watson Makes the World Substantially Better) then a lot of the material in The Information will be familiar to you; but there’s always the little happenstances that can de-rail the show (and even Watson himself). In bragging about his uncanny ability to remember the times tables, Watson was incredulous when someone asked for the value of “two to the power of sixteen”; he then doubled over in laughter when someone in the audience yelled out (correctly) “65,536”, and then proceeded to list all of the first sixteen powers of two. It’s a geek thing, of course, but Watson made it feel like black magic.

Mark Watson is still a wonderful comedian; he hasn’t changed a bit over the years, which I reckon is a good thing. And I was stoked to see that he’s now well-known enough that he had a full house tonight – curiously, though, those trackie dacked people to my left (and the people directly in front of me) didn’t audibly laugh once throughout the whole performance. It was like I was in the middle of a laugh-free zone. Luckily, the rest of the crowd were able to give Watson the feedback he so richly deserves.

[2012091] Dining Uns-table

Cloé Fournier @ Bakehouse Theatre – Studio

6:00pm, Tue 6 Mar 2012

As I check-in at the Studio’s box office, I ask for the pre-sale numbers: “you’re it,” I’m told, “but there’s a reviewer in, too.”

Saddened, I sit in the “other” room, accidentally eavesdropping on stage instructions being delivered to “volunteers”. I check back in at the box office; apparently the volunteers are acquired from the Fringe’s pool of volunteer staff. I spy on them receiving more instructions; they’re a motley bunch of all shapes and sizes, and I can’t help but imagine there’s a hint of sadness in some of the younger volunteers: they probably nominated themselves with dreams of meeting Wil Anderson, but instead find themselves in a strange performance art piece.

I say “performance art” instead of dance, because – though there is undoubtedly a well-defined choreography to the piece – the term just feels more appropriate.

By the time myself and the reviewer – no walk-up patrons, sadly – enter the Studio, seven volunteers are sitting around a table onstage, their chests emblazoned with their familial roles. Passive expressions, they’ve obviously been told to look straight ahead with no emotion. Cloé Fournier joins them onstage, and stiffly circumnavigates the table and its guests; there’s an oddness to her movements, with little physical ticks that somehow create the sense of a fastidiously obsessed individual. The ticks grow larger, and she starts whispering – to herself? – “shut up”. Quietly at first, before an edge, and then a snarl, creeps in – shut up, tick. Shut up, tick.

Suddenly she’s smacking herself around, her body kicking with the impact – there’s an ominous sense of violence in the air. Despite the fact that it’s just Fournier contorting her body, there’s a tangible physicality to the beating… and then it stops. She picks her crumpled self up from the stage floor and starts rearranging the furniture, fussing with the positioning of the volunteers who sometimes misunderstand their French-accented instructions. After several minutes, the volunteers line the edges of the stage, and two chairs are front-and-centre.

Again, Fournier starts admonishing herself – initially in stuttery English, but then resorting to French. She balances on top of the two chairs, and… well, there’s a deeply disturbing scene that really, really feels like she was re-enacting a rape. It’s brutal and it’s terrifying and it’s awful, with her straining form supported only by the chair backs, and her anguished cries and yelps and tears ripping through the Studio, leaving the volunteers’ eyes agog and the reviewer frantically scratching away in his notepad behind me. I couldn’t breath; I didn’t want to see her suffer; I couldn’t look away.

But, after showing us that, Fournier hides underneath the table. And has a cup of tea. And ends the show.

And I’m left… well, confused. The précis for Dining Uns-table suggests an exploration of “failed familial relationships and the psychological effects they have on individuals long after” – but, if that’s the case, Fournier is talking about one seriously fucked-up family. The raw brutality of violence shown to the audience is far beyond what I’d consider a “failed relationship” to be… and though the benign ending would suggest that she (or her character) is at peace with these “failures”, I still can’t help thinking that I must be missing something really obvious.

In terms of performance, Fournier is uncompromising and absolutely compelling; in terms of narrative, however, Dining Uns-table somehow feels incoherent, despite its moments of brutal connection.

[2012090] Tough!

Kirsten Rasmussen @ Gluttony – LoFi

10:45pm, Mon 5 Mar 2012

Anxious to rid myself of the stench of The Worst Show Ever, I checked the Fringe app on my phone – a quick walk and I was scraping in to see the opening night of Canadian Kirsten Rasmussen’s solo show, Tough!. And this proved to be one of the best decisions I made all Fringe – because not only was Tough! much much infinitely much better than the show I’d just left, but it was a standout performance in it’s own right.

Tough! chronicles the rise of Lucy Diamond (daughter of the famous crooner Dicky Diamond) as she turns to boxing in an effort to find meaning in her life, after her boyfriend Dave leaves her languishing as a wannabe singer of her father’s hits in a two-bit backwater bar. She meets a boxing coach, James, who christens her “Amanda Pain” and convinces her to start training – first out of desperation and self-pity, but then out of the realisation that the goals that boxing provides are tangible… and doable.

Amanda’s development from uncoordinated, limp-wristed doormat to a prize fighter is an absolutely glorious ascent – and Rasmussen’s solo performance is something to behold. As she switches between characters, her realisations are nothing short of fantastic – the bartender, Esther the barfly, James, Lucy herself, and chief antagonist Susie(?) Fingers are all brought to life using nothing more than Rasmussen’s body: mannerisms and accents and physical traits are all utterly convincing, and completely self-contained. She actually mis-speaks for one character early on – “boodshit” comes out instead of “bullshit” – and, after acknowledging the mistake to the audience, she rides the joke for the rest of the show, giving that character the appropriate speech impediment.

Yes, it is a very self-aware piece, with constant fourth-wall-breaking asides to the audience – but they’re all wonderfully done. And the writing is really sharp – she manages to cram in oodles of character development & backstory and still leave time for periods of purely physical performance. And – despite it being opening night, with Kirsten still figuring out how to best tackle the narrow and uneven nature of the LoFi’s stage – the physicality of her fight scenes is flat-out amazing; despite being the only performer onstage, she conjures up a magical feeling of two boxers, a referee, ringside attendants, and an enthusiastic crowd. The final fight, in particular, was a brilliantly performed – and, with the constant knockdowns, perfectly paced – bit of theatre.

Tough! was a simply wonderful piece of Fringe theatre. Funny, clever, physical, and stuffed full of heart, Kirsten Rasmussen brought an absolute blinder of a show to our shows. I can’t rave about it enough.

[2012089] Hudsie Herman – I don’t give a @#$%!

Hudsie Herman @ Adelaide Town Hall – Meeting Hall

9:30pm, Mon 5 Mar 2012

“Four people!” Hudsie Herman exclaims as he takes to the stage on the final night of his season, “that’s the biggest crowd so far!”

And at that moment I feel sorry for him.

That feeling doesn’t last long, though, because this performance was, without a doubt, one of the most uncomfortably horrid experiences I’ve ever sat through.

But let’s take a step back, because the horror starts early in this tale.

There’s already a bit of angst between my Event Buddy and I – Gardenia didn’t sit well with either of us, and I’m not sure her inclination to see Hudsie Herman was exactly an invitation. Still, the two of us sat alone in the Meeting Hall, which was quite capable of seating another eighty pairs of us. The sound tech at the back of the room had a pained expression on his face; the ticketeers in the Town Hall had sounded genuinely surprised when we’d asked for the tickets. Nothing bode well.

The growing uncomfortable silence is broken when Matt taps me on the shoulder: “Hey, glad to see it’s not just me here! This guy’s great!” His chatty enthusiasm knows no bounds; he just wants to talk and talk and name-drop local comedians and talk. I notice the Artist badge around his neck – I ask what his show is. “Taking the Piss,” he proudly replied. Then, more sheepishly, “it’s a compilation show. I’ve had two spots so far.”

A younger woman comes in and sits by herself a few rows behind us, and starts checking her phone. Matt’s attention turns to her, and he trots out the same introduction… “This guy’s great!” he enthuses again. She looked at him, silently, without blinking. “Hmmmmm,” she downward inflected, and I really started getting worried.

And then Hudsie took to the stage to perform his “damn funny” “melancholy songs” – they’re his words, not mine, and proof that the précis cannot be trusted. And, as I’ve mentioned before, I like to give performers the impression that they’ve got a friend in me – no matter how badly they’re doing, I’ll try to stay with them. I’ll give them positive body language, I’ll smile, I’ll do anything to get them to perform their best.

But after Hudsie states “You can put any words to a Beatles tune and it’s great!” and then attempts to demonstrate his premise with the repeated lyrical refrain of “My [ cat | vet | Mum | girlfriend | best friend ] is dead – I shot them in the head”… well, after the third verse of that, my smile was through gritted teeth. And after some utterly puerile references to cyclones that didn’t even manage any shock value, the smile was gone completely.

To be quite fair, his Chat Roulette song was interesting… for a verse. His Broadband song was inoffensive… for a verse. But the Shopping List song (as requested by Matt – when he wasn’t checking Facebook on his phone, he was yelling out suggestions) was just complete rubbish, and still managed to be in the better half of Hudsie’s material.

Look, Hudsie Herman may be able to play the piano pretty well (or at least perfunctorily). But I found his “songs” to be pointless, painful, and even insulting. “You should go to a nudist beach once,” he sings, before half-rhyming about masturbation and arse-fucking in a completely embarrassing manner. This performance couldn’t have ended soon enough; we left as quick as it was possible to manage.

But the terror wasn’t over yet: Matt bounded after us like a needy puppy. “Yeah it’s a real shame that more people didn’t come and see him because I think he’s got real potential and his songs are really great and more people should come out during the Fringe and…”

My Event Buddy looked at me, pointing through to Pirie St. “Is this the way out?”

My (loud; desperate) reply of “Yes” is drowned out by Matt’s enthusiastic “That depends where you want to go! What street are you after?”

“The closest one,” she said firmly, with a chill so intense that Matt the Puppy’s tail dropped between his legs.

We escaped.

[2012087] The

Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall @ The Tuxedo Cat – Alley Cat

6:00pm, Mon 5 Mar 2012

It turned out that it didn’t matter that The is a title that’s just about impossible to search for on the FringeTIX site; last-minute kerfuffles meant that I was buying a ticket at the TuxCat front-of-house. “Many pre-sales?” I’d asked, as I am inclined to do; “nope, just you,” I’d been told, “though there should be some artists coming along, too.”

So I’m a little sad – I know it’s tough work for comedians with small crowds. But when I wander down to the Alley Cat, I see a bunch of people hanging around outside. I proffer my ticket at the door – “oh, you’re the one! Come in, sit anywhere!” – and, after thirty seconds or so, the nod is given: the lingerers rush in and occupy the right-hand seats of the front two rows. Suddenly, it feels like a decent crowd.

When Alasdair takes to the stage – with no real build-up – and announces that the show may suffer due to his hungover tiredness, he’s visually buoyed by the laughter and verbal jostling from the freeloading ring-in artists. And some of them were clearly familiar with his work, occasionally shouting out suggestions for his next joke; but they were all good value, giving the show some impetus.

Alasdair’s style is friendly in nature, but there’s nothing really exceptional in his delivery – though he fails (quite spectacularly) in his attempt to not be self-deprecating. He opens with a long joke exploring the likelihood of us all being gathered in the same place at the same time… but then three (paying!) customers turn up late, causing the entire joke to be restarted from the beginning (causing much recognition-mirth from the non-late amongst us). There’s a really entertaining piece on his favourite parts of the Kama Sutra (like the bits that tell you when it’s okay to sleep with another man’s wife if you kill him first), and his self-induced laughter when referencing his Possum Portrait Painter was infectious… though I suspect that was partly due to tiredness (both his and mine).

On the basis of this performance, Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall showed himself to be a quality comedian with enough tricks up his sleeves (like the musical bumpers for each section of the show – he’d do the noise himself, then append a punctuating “the” at the end) to be genuinely enjoyable. He’s not super-absurd or anything, nor is he a particularly unique comic genius… just solidly entertaining.

[2012086] A Handful of Walnuts

Justine Sless @ Burnside Library

10:30am, Mon 5 Mar 2012

I must admit to feeling a little… dubious about comedy shows that have a matinée, especially when that show is before noon; they always feel like a bit of a risk. Still, Justine Sless’ précis was enough to get her show Shortlisted, and the timing certainly is convenient… so why would I look a gift horse in the mouth?

But the day hasn’t started well – 10:30am really was too early for me to be dragging my old bones out to Burnside, especially when my intended breakfast parlour was neither as conveniently on-the-way as I’d thought, nor open. So I rock up to the Burnside Library tired, hungry, and slightly grumpy; I search for the location of the show and discover that it’s apparently in the toddler play area at the back of the library; there’s a concerted amount of rearrangement going on to facilitate the seating for the show as I arrive, and there seems to be scant regard for ticketing.

Of course, I had completely glossed over the précis’ warning “parents and babies welcome to the AM ‘crybaby’ shows”, so I was ill-prepared mentally for the oddly-mixed crowd that consisted of the elderly, and mums with mewling toddlers. And, as Sless presented herself to this motley audience, I realised that I was totally not in a receptive mood for comedy… luckily, she had a (gorgeous) guitar accompaniment (with enticing, gritty vocals) begin proceedings, providing an opportunity for me to shut my eyes and try to scare off the grumpy gremlins.

When Sless begins her set, two things become very clear very quickly: her field of comedy is driven by observing the minutiae of suburban housewifery, and her delivery is dry. I initially thought that she was just struggling with an unreceptive audience – her soft voice caused some of the silvertops to amp up their hearing aids – but it turns out that Sless has an almost distant style: there’s no real physical projection, not a whole lot of pitch variation, and her permanent half-smile gives you no clues as to where she thinks the punchlines are.

Her material is drawn from suburban mundanity (of which I have little experience), and there’s a lot of jokes about child-rearing. Birthing stories, the unexpected mental pressure with being alone with her newborn for the first time, playgroup conflicts (the “sanctimonious bitch” episode was really entertaining, as was the tale of pissing in the ukelele), with kindy- and school-related stories following somewhat chronologically. There’s some uneven material regarding her husband, too (although the joke about meeting her husband falls flat), and other jokes rooted in domesticity seem either underdone (the writing on the baking paper bit springs to mind) or just bizarre (the sponge puppetry closer). As for the “homebaked haikus” – I’m pretty sure they didn’t follow standard haiku rules. After all, it’s hard to have only 17 syllables when you’ve got more than 17 words.

…But maybe that was the joke.

And that highlights (part of) the problem I had with A Handful of Walnuts: as I’ve (proudly) stated many times before, I’m thankfully bereft of children, so I have no practical relationship to much of what Justine Sless was talking about here… but that should be fine. It’s occasionally nice to vicariously deal with the amusing grief associated with the raising of children, and the odd touchstone (like the recognition that houses become just a collection of surfaces) should be enough to connect me to the performance. But those points of connection, of commonality, between Sless and myself were few and fleeting, and I’ll freely admit to coming into the show in an off-kilter mood which almost undoubtedly affected my perception of it; certainly enough so that I was slightly embarrassed and unprepared to give a reasonable response when Sless spotted me après-Back of the Bus and asked me what I’d thought of her show.

[2012085] The Jane Austen Argument present: Somewhere Under The Rainbow

The Jane Austen Argument @ The Big Slapple – Apollo Theatre

10:30pm, Sun 4 Mar 2012

I’d heard the “Jane Austen Argument” name bandied around a bit previously – perhaps previous cabaret festivals? – but had never actually investigated their music; after reading their précis and seeing mention of their 2010 Fringe Award win, I thought it high time that I gave them a try… and besides, I love a good argument.

As I eyeball the small crowd I see the slightly glazed eyes and hazy grins of the converted; I get the feeling that everyone except me is already a devoted fan. There’s a bit of seat jostling once we’re let into the cavernous Apollo, but the forty or fifty rabid followers that turned up were all afforded prime positions.

And when The Jane Austen Argument – Tom Dickins and Jen Kingwell – enter the room from opposite sides of the stage, each strumming a ukelele, the crowd go wild. Their appearance is two-thirds goth, one third cabaret: dark colours and eyeliner offset by flourishes of flamboyance. A gentle song to open with – half-happy, half-mournful, with the jaunty ukeleles supporting their harmonies – and I’m definitely curious.

And then comes the rest of the band – bass, drums, and… cello. Yes, the cello makes an appearance and I internally swoon with delight; nothing can go wrong now, I figured. They’ve won me over, purely by leveraging the greatest instrument ever created.

But the nice thing is that I would’ve been perfectly happy with the performance sans cello. The Jane Austen Argument’s songs are really lovely, their lyrics (defying their appearance) are not overly riddled with angst, and their stage manner is really quite approachable – there’s many a story told of Tom & Jen’s experiences taking their music on the road, of the people they’ve met, the places they’ve seen.

There is the odd slip into goth bombast – one or two songs are steeped in melancholy, underpinned by mournful piano lines – but then there’s the audience-shoutalong of When the End of the World Came, and a cover of One Line (normally I’m quite precious about people covering PJ Harvey, but that particular track is one of my least favourite of her songs… and the ‘Argument did quite a good job of it). But the most impressive song of the night was the finale, Under the Rainbow – theatrical in their presentation, a massive wall of noise builds up for a crescendo… before simmering back down in a well-controlled exercise of leaving the audience wanting more.

I really quite enjoyed The Jane Austen Argument, though I suspect that my head was not in the most receptive of moods after The Boy James. Still, I rushed to buy a CD, but didn’t join the mailing list; read into that what you will.

[2012084] The Boy James

Belt Up Theatre @ Adelaide College of the Arts – Tiny Lounge

9:00pm, Sun 4 Mar 2012

An usher coagulates the early-arriving audience members into small groups and guides us up the elevator to ACArts’ third floor; three corners, a winding corridor, and we’re standing by the door outside the Tiny Lounge (which seems to be a small re-purposed studio). Cast members in various states of undress push past us into the Lounge; attempts to sneak a peek at the room are met with much tutting.

Eventually, the door opens and a head peeks out – a young, boyish face, black tousled hair. After eyeing the waiting crowd, the pyjama-clad Boy opens the door and ushers us into the Lounge, which – with its armchairs around the four drape-covered walls, antique-ish furnishings, and collection of homely rugs and mirrors – feels more like a drawing room or study. The Boy seats us, then crouches on the desk in the centre of the room; his every physical movement convinces me that we’re watching an over-excited nine-year-old boy, rather than twenty-three-year-old Jethro Compton.

The Boy encourages us to introduce ourselves to each other, to tell each other our adventures; we’re a shy audience, and there’s not much action as a result of his instructions. He then announces that we’re going to play Wink Murder – the first guy nominated actually announced himself as the murderer, which kinda missed the point! A few more rounds, and then The Boy asks us to close our eyes: “keep them tightly shut so James will come.”

With nothing but blackness, my hearing is acute; I hear someone – presumably James – come into the room and sit at the table. There’s a grunt, the folding of paper. Then a gruff voice announces “this isn’t going to work,” and footsteps leave the room; we open our eyes and The Boy James is pointing at someone in the audience. “You peeked,” he accuses, and I wonder if the performance has been fucked up for the rest of us.

With my attention on The Boy, I failed to notice the entrance of The Girl. Slight and demure, and wearing a white nightgown, she stands mute at the other side of the room; once noticed, her coy stillness is utterly transfixing… for both the audience and The Boy.

But once The Boy recognises her presence, he scurries about, attempting to get her to play with him; she’s not really interested, though, and focusses on the whiskey decanter perched down one end of the room. When she first lunges for it, The Boy calls out in anguish: “Don’t,” he pleads, “it’s poison.”

James – whose bearded and formal appearance seemed to marry up with his gruff voice perfectly – returns, and again The Boy tries to play with him; “no,” says James, “I’m not going on any more adventures with you.” The Boy pleads with him, anxious for the chance to play; they struggle and, amidst their tussling – The Boy being playful, James being tired and reluctant – The Girl grabs James’ hair and slams his head onto the desk. James is out cold; The Boy is terrified.

The Girl sneaks a drink from the decanter, and soon thereafter she starts coming onto The Boy, physically pressing up against him. He squirms uncomfortably and pushes her away when she tries to kiss him; she stumbles into the centre of the room where she stands shyly, looking ever-so-alone, and utters her first words: “fuck me,” she says, in the smallest, most delicate voice.

You could’ve heard a pin drop; it felt like the air had left the room. The audience held its breath in stunned anticipation of The Boy’s reaction.

The scene that follows is uncomfortable as she accosts him: not only does it feel very rape-like, but my head was telling me I was watching two children. Once that painfully concludes, The Girl leaves; James, who had been laying on the floor motionless the whole time, wakes and leaves also. The Boy finds a letter from James, and gives it to an audience member to read – it’s nonsense, full of run-on sentences that seemingly have no structure, and no comprehensible meaning.

And then the door to the Tiny Lounge flings open and we’re asked to leave.

As I wandered into the night, I felt floored by what I had just experienced, but I was struggling to make sense of it in my own head. It felt like The Boy and James were one and the same person, that The Girl somehow represented the changes that The Boy goes through to become James; that seemed to agree with other summaries of the show, but then why did the programme refer to The Boy as Lewis/Charles?

In the end, I conceded defeat in attempting to understand what was going on… but nothing can reduce the impact of the experience of The Boy James. Compton is utterly convincing as The Boy, and Serena Manteghi’s Girl – pure innocence one moment and a maelstrom of destruction the next – is so good that my words cannot hope to impart her quality. Dominic Allen does double-duty, both directing and bringing the weary but strong-willed James to life, and…

Look, The Boy James was just brilliant. Not only is it a truly unique experience wonderfully told, but it’s not afraid to let the audience wallow… to give the audience something to go home with. But if I had to pick a fault, it would be my new pet peeve: the audience was not given the opportunity to thank the actors for their sterling efforts; we were just shunted out into ACArts. And that just felt… well, almost disrespectful.

[2012083] Legacy of the Tiger Mother

An Angela Chan Production @ Adelaide Town Hall – David Spence Room

7:30pm, Sun 4 Mar 2012

I admit it: Legacy of the Tiger Mother was on the outermost limits of The Shortlist: a show that I would only schedule if it really made the day work. And lo, this Sunday conspired to suggest a run of shows so smooth, so enticing, that I couldn’t help but – somewhat reluctantly, it must be said – slot this one in.

And boy am I glad that things worked out this way, because Legacy of the Tiger Mother was a lot of fun.

From the first time I met Lily, a first-generation Chinese immigrant living in America, and her daughter Mei, I was sucked into their almost abusive relationship: Mei, a girl caught up in the pop culture of her country, is being… well, “coerced” into pursuing her piano lessons by her ultra-dedicated mother. It’s a somewhat familiar tale, with “tough love” being the order of the day, but Lily’s strictness is never seen as anything but well-intentioned.

After a fantastic strong opening, the show settles into a Suzuki-nightmare flashback that dominates two-thirds of the performance, showing the conflicts between mother and daughter in their home as Mei reluctantly practices at her piano whilst Lily works to support them both. The strive for perfection is evident in Lily’s mindset, and Mei is played wonderfully young and naïve; but this flashback is bookended by the two women sitting side-by-side in the present day, watching Mei’s daughter at her piano recital – and there lies the heart of Legacy, as Mei tries to balance Lily’s “traditional” parenting style with her own, more modern, interpretation.

I was taken aback with how genuinely funny Legacy of the Tiger Mother was; some of Lily’s proud (spilling over into goading) comments at the recital were hilarious, and there’s a great river of giggles throughout. But what surprised me the most is that Legacy is, by and large, a musical, with plenty of humour to be found in the songs – the reverse racism of Lazy White Children is a particular standout, though it also manages to display some of the most blatant racial stereotyping of the production. Then there’s the somewhat bittersweet Something Better, the playful Little Miss 1986, and their reprises; throughout, the vocal performances are really wonderful, with the piano accompaniment pretty well done (and there’s some great laughs to be had when Mei is sight-reading the fluffed notes in Fur Elise).

An American production with a local cast (both Chiew-Jin Khut and Yen Yen Stender (as Lily and Mei, respectively) perform respectably enough, but excel with their singing voices), Legacy of the Tiger Mother was a very pleasant surprise: despite all the near-groanworthy racial stereotypes on display, Angela Chan and Michael Manley have constructed a really enjoyable script. This proved to be one of those “maybe” shows that, in retrospect, I feel utterly chuffed to have squeezed in.

[2012082] Dance Interrogations

hipsync @ Medina Treasury Tunnels

6:30pm, Sun 4 Mar 2012

It took a little exploring to locate the entrance to the Tunnels – despite walking past the Treasury every day on my workplace commute, I’ve only ever entered the building whilst inebriated. Eventually I found some stairs and was directed to a little waiting room… I was the first to arrive, so – as is my wont – I pulled out my laptop and start making incomprehensible notes.

What I should have done is pressed staff for more details (a programme, maybe?) of this performance… because it turned out to be a genuinely engaging – and genuinely curious – affair.

The numbers in the little waiting room swelled; I offered my seat (and my ability to potentially write) to someone who looked in need of a sit-down. A couple of curt attempts at friendly Fringe-chatting, and then we’re led deeper into the tunnels underneath the Treasury, walls of rough sandstone and floors suffering with grit. The group reached a small square room – we couldn’t all fit inside, so a number of us were left peeking through a doorway from the slightly larger rectangular room we were in, standing on tippy-toes or peeking between bodies to see what was going on.

In the small room stood Dianne Reid, dressed in a thin white hazmat suit (sans helmet). She starts pushing herself around – into walls, off of walls, up to the very edges of the audience. Her movements look chaotic, yet controlled, and she’s quietly – but clearly – babbling to herself.

She’s not happy about growing old, by the sounds of it… she’s constantly sneering at her own age. But there’s more in her actions than her language – a whimpering desperation, a tempered anxiety seems to guide her movements. And as she moves between the smaller and the larger rooms (causing the audience to rearrange themselves – who was once struggling to see became the centre of attention), she also shifts the medium somewhat – in one location, the white hazmat suit becomes a projection screen, and Reid trembles beneath the image of someone crawling over her.

As she runs up against more walls, scrapes along more floors, the suit becomes worn and ripped. Eventually its use has been served and it is removed, revealing the floral dress underneath… and the tone of the piece changes a little. With skin shed, everything seems a little bit more accessible now; there’s not as much need in the movements. Reid still performs in the audience’s face, but rather than feeling confronting, it almost feels a little… well, joyous.

And then it’s over. At thirty minutes, Dance Interrogations feels perfectly timed: I left feeling satisfied and a little confused, but that’s pretty much the way I like it. I’m not really sure what I expected going into the performance, but I’m certain that I liked the rumination that it conjured in me.