Category: 2012 – Adelaide Fringe Festival

[2012101] Back of the Bus

Java Dance Company @ a bus on the streets of Adelaide

6:00pm, Thu 8 Mar 2012

Believe it or not, I feel pretty guilty about not pushing myself to write about a show I’ve seen in a timely manner, or “in season”… not so with Back of the Bus. Because there’s so much I wanted to record that could be considered spoilers, and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone else who happened to see the show.

Good thing I’m writing this ten months after it’s finished, then. Timely in its own way!

Drawn to the premise of a dance piece taking place on a bus, I headed to the Town Hall meeting point, but found the bus waiting in front of the entrance of the Medina on Flinders. After verifying with the driver that this was the correct bus, I pressed him for details of the performance; he just laughed and broke eye contact. “I’m sworn to secrecy,” he said.

First on the bus, I took what I hoped would be an optimal seat. Soon the bus starts packing out with other passengers – it looked like a sell-out, and I started talking with the young woman next to me (as I am wont to do). We start comparing Fringe shows – I’ve not seen much, she says, just stuff at the ‘Caravan. Conversation shifts to the Festival – my Raoul rant sparked lively debate – but when I start my ADT rant a girl in front of me turns around and joins the discussion. We chat, we laugh… I ask what they’ve heard about Back of the Bus – they independently shrug.

With the bus loaded, we take off and are given brief instructions – basically, don’t do anything stupid, and enjoy yourselves. A portable stereo pumps out classical strains as the bus slips into traffic and heads down Flinders St; there’s lively conversations all around, and everyone seems chirpily happy, but there’s no dancing to be seen. The bus gets caught at the lights on Pultney and Flinders… and I see her: a woman carrying a plethora of shopping bags, running for the intersection, frantically hailing the bus to stop. The lights change, the bus crosses the road and pulls over to let her on.

She clambers on awkwardly with her shopping, sighs heavily, and slumps in an empty seat, her bags flopping over her neighbour; she offers them a lolly for the inconvenience, then begins flumping down the aisle, smacking grinning passengers with her bags as she goes. She squeezes into another seat, and starts unloading the contents of her bags – it’s a comic physical performance, and she over-acts every lurch of the bus as it continues down Flinders and right onto Hutt.

After jumping on her bags and flinging herself up and down the aisle as the bus accelerates and brakes, she eventually settles in a seat and begins dozing. Everyone on the bus is laughing – it was a gloriously silly performance. The bus turns right onto Halifax, and I turn to the girl next to me – “I feel like I have to watch the corners for more runners…” – but as soon as the words start coming from my mouth, she smiles at me knowingly and stands up. She’s the next dancer, and I blush with the shame at having missed the setup – but grin at having been fooled.

Where the first dancer was frantic and messy, the second is balance and poise and… oh god, that heart-warming smile. Remaining mute, she elegantly swans the length of the bus, sliding along other passengers and melting them with her gorgeous smile as she just radiated happiness. The bus stops at Hurtle Square and we pile off; the dancers encourage us to form a circle, holding hands. They get everyone engaged – even the smaller children – as they dance among us, trying to get us dancing too. Back onto the bus, and the second dancer returns to her original seat alongside me and rests her head on my shoulder; I’m sure I managed to get a tiny droplet of sweat from her brow on my shirt. I’ve not washed it since.

Another dancer appears from the passengers – it’s the girl who’d sat in front of me, who’d laughed at the ADT conversation. I blush again; I grin again. Her pervasive mood feels almost romantically melancholic, but the aisles become a blur of activity with all three girls using the space, the lack of space, the poles of the bus to move: three different styles, three different moods. A stop on Grenfell, a short walk down to the Reading Room on Hindley where the girls have somehow arrived first: there’s a short performance that’s all about smooth movements within the tight space.

Back onto the bus again and we continue, and the girls start waving to other traffic between their dance pieces. I wonder about the busses we passed on King William Street – they were full of frowns, and ours was full of smiles, with passengers literally dancing down the aisles. Eventually we return to the Medina, and congregate in the Treasury where everyone – the passengers, the dancers – are all smiles. Back of the Bus felt like one of those experiences where you feel an intense kinship with the people who sat alongside you, and as we mingled there were the knowing nods of the shared experience. A wonderful, enchanting, and – above all – joyous experience.

(I talked to the girls afterwards; “you had me completely fooled!” I laughed, stating the obvious, before the two I’d chatted with at the beginning of the ride start jokily arguing over who nearly broke the other’s cover… “you stole my line!”)

[2012100] Shakespeare’s Queens: She-wolves and Serpents

Straylight Australia @ Bakehouse Theatre – Main Stage

1:00pm, Thu 8 Mar 2012

Every Fringe I trot out some variant of “I love me some Shakespeare,” and use that to justify another peek into The Bard’s world. This production, though, purported to be meta-Shakespeare, so I was doubly intrigued.

The premise has Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I, and Mary, Queen of Scots meeting up in the afterlife to contemplate The Bard’s use of women in his plays. They do so by stepping into the roles of the characters – meta-acting, if you will – and analysing their roles in each play in turn.

The programme – or, more accurately, the running sheet – lists thirty-eight additional characters from over a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays, which has the three principal characters meta-acting at a pretty rapid pace. And, generally, they bring the appropriate mood to each piece – the comedies are played for laughs, the weightier pieces given the appropriate gravitas. In adopting another character, the principals will often indicate the role via a simple piece of costumery… and as the sole male onstage, Patrick Trumper gets off lightly, as his costume changes are limited to various hats. The two women – Rachel Ferris and Kath Perry (who plays a great Queen Liz) – tend to have more elaborate shifts.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Shakespeare’s Queens was coming across as edutainment. The characters frequently drop into modern language, with modern narrative about the snippets being performed, which had the effect of taking me back to my Year 11 English teacher (who attempted to make pertinent points about Macbeth through over-the-top blustered acting – and sparked my interest in Shakespeare). Indeed, in this 1pm matinee there was a school group of about ten (who, after being sternly warned about the non-use of mobile phones in the theatre, were far better behaved than the group of silver-tops behind me, who insisted on chatting during some of the narrative links).

And there’s nothing wrong with edutainment… until it gets preachy or lecture-y. And, unfortunately, Shakespeare’s Queens does the latter, with motives being coldly analysed in-between fragments of performance. Sure, the performances are pretty good overall (save the occasional broken French), but I was constantly being pushed away by the fourth-wall-breaking commentary. That, and I couldn’t help but think that there was something sickly sado-masochistic about Mary and Elizabeth sharing such a casual conversation – I tend to think there would have been a bit more tension there, what with the whole “execution” thing.

[2012099] Ellipsis

Garath Hart @ Queen’s Theatre 2

11:00am, Thu 8 Mar 2012

You can tell right away that you’re in for a quirky experience with Ellipsis – upon entry into Queen’s Theatre 2, you’re handed a pair of wireless headphones and a cup of hot, green tea. We choose our seats, don our headphones, and sit there waiting – sipping tea in silence – taking in the details of the cubic frame onstage, three sides of which have bars of red twine.

When Garath Hart places himself within the cube, he appears murky in the half-light of the theatre; the sound that comes through the headphones starts quietly, and is sparse and organic… it’s like eastern-flavoured meditation guide music. Subtle lighting highlights the sides of the cage; a small fan starts up, catching the red twine, and the way it drifts in and out of the light is mesmerising. Hart’s arms flow, there’s precision in his hands, and his legs make short, sharp movements: he’s like a bird within the cage. He’s perfectly synchronised with the burbles of the audio; curious, I remove my headphones… and discover it’s deathly quiet in the theatre.

Curious. My mind starts whirring, trying to figure out where he was getting his cues from, whilst also clinging to the idea that his performance is so tightly practiced that he can maintain that level of precision sans cues.

There’s a side-trip to a microphone for a short spoken word piece, then he returns to the cube. The music changes: it’s now much more percussive, mechanical, and Hart’s movements lose their flowing nature and become sharper, more precise. Again, his movements are perfectly synchronised with the audio, and again I check to see if there’s any audible cues in the theatre… no. Then I notice that there’s thuds and clicks and cracks that appear in the audio that coincide with his some of his footfalls on the stage; is the floor miked?

His dance remains hypnotic, engaging… and then the sound cuts out of my headphones. I take them off, checking the power LED that I noticed when I took possession of them; it was still on, but I noticed others in the audience checking their headsets too. Hart continues dancing, and I put the headphones back on; the sound comes back. Some minutes later it disappears again, then returns.

Curiouser.

Hart completes his piece, and I applaud with vigour. I’ve somehow been incredibly engaged by this; the contrasting styles of dance and music, the unique staging, the enforced isolation of the headphones, the challenging audio presentation, and even the tea. It feels like a really thoughtful, intelligent piece of work, and I decide to wait behind to see if I can chat with him.

Others, of course, have the same idea, and I notice the artist lanyard around one young woman’s neck. We start chatting whilst waiting for Hart, and I discover that she’s one of the dancers from Carnally. I gush at her about her show – her older companions (parents? hosts?) grin with pride – and then Garath appears, obviously happy. I let the other dancer chat first, but then Garath turns to me and offers his hand in greeting: “we’ve met before,” he smiles, “at a piece called Pickled.”

I’m caught off-guard… and then the memories come flooding back. Not only did we see Pickled together, but I’d recommended that he also see Death in Bowengabbie, which Garath had subsequently graded with a so-so hand-wave… I’d always felt bad about that! We laugh at the recollection, and then I start grilling him about his wonderful performance: was the floor miked? Yep. How was it cued? There were some light cues, and there were some periods where the sound tech could pause to sync up. What about the drop-outs of audio in the headphones – were they deliberate?

He smiles mischievously. “I’m not saying,” he grins, with a twinkle in his eye.

I loved Ellipsis. It provided stimulation of just about every sense, and mentally engaged – and, paradoxically, soothed at the same time. A brilliant performance.

[2012098] Andrew O’Neill – Alternative

Andrew O’Neill @ Rhino Room – Downstairs

10:15pm, Wed 7 Mar 2012

I’ve loved Andrew O’Neill’s work in the past, both in his own shows and on the many occasions I’ve seen him do guest spots in ensemble gigs. He’s got a friendly, approachable style, he owns his unique presentation traits, and hey – he’s a metalhead. And it’s pretty clear from the very beginning of this packed show this evening that he’s not changed any of the mechanics of his performance one bit – it still feels gloriously scatterbrained, he still leaps between completely disconnected stories via snippets of overheard conversations, and you’ve no idea what’s going to come next.

But something didn’t quite click for me tonight… and unfortunately, I think it was the more substantial chunks of his material. There were some longer gags that relied on a lot of repetition to justify their limp payoff, and one piece in particular – where he took the phrase “like pushing a sausage through a polo mint” and evolved it, eventually reaching a “like stretching an idea” conclusion – felt like a bridge too far for the audience. And some bits seemed to be exercises in performance, rather than humorous content for the punters – the writing-a-letter-to-a-coffee-company bit saw O’Neill miming the writing, folding, and enveloping of a letter of complaint in excruciating detail, before the delivery of said letter to the postbox… where was the payoff in that?

Look, don’t get me wrong – I’d still love to see another Andrew O’Neill gig; his hit-rate entirely justifies that. But tonight, the material he chose to present really didn’t work for me at all… but there was yet another great thing that happened as a result of this show. Post-gig, O’Neill was selling his t-shirts and CDs outside the Rhino Room, and I wound up at the end of a queue behind a bunch of young Adelaide comics. They all purchased their merchandise, leaving the brilliant Demi Lardner struggling to decide what to buy – she only had enough for one item. She looked at me momentarily, conscious that her lack of decision-making was delaying the rest of the line (i.e. me); I chuckled, said “that’s okay, take your time,” and immediately thought better of it.

I tapped Demi on the shoulder, and told her “look – I’ve seen you several times in shows around town, and have never had to pay anything for the privilege. I think you’re the best young comic in Adelaide. You buy whichever item you can afford; I’ll buy the other one.” She looked at me wide-eyed, thanked me, and suddenly I realised what a potentially creepy situation I’d put her in; I waved off her further uncomfortable thanks, shook O’Neill’s hand, paid for my CD and her t-shirt, then walked off into the night… a strange benefactor.

Still… it felt good to give someone some gratitude so directly.

[2012097] We Love You! (as much as everybody else does)

GhostBoy @ La Bohème

9:00pm, Wed 7 Mar 2012

A good Fringe Buddy (and La Bohème regular) had raved to me about GhostBoy, describing a packed room that had convulsed with laughter from the antics of GhostBoy’s absurd poetry and vocal meanderings. I had bought a ticket soon thereafter; that sounded right up my alley.

But when I arrived at La Bohème this Wednesday evening, the room was far from packed. I was only the fourth punter in the room; as usual, I checked at the door: four pre-sales.

Shit.

The couple sitting at one table looked uncomfortable with the small crowd, but were content chatting amongst themselves whilst warily eyeing the empty room; I recognised the other person and chatted, only to discover that she was reviewing for GlamAdelaide. And that causes me to mentally knock another ticket off GhostBoy’s door sales, making me a little bit sadder.

GhostBoy takes to the stage, replete with sunglasses and fedora and scruffy black clothes, and starts growling through his dark, intense poetry. His delivery has a hint of menace, and I was finding it difficult to see whether he was aiming for black humour, or whether these were the musings of an unhinged mind. But then he’s joined onstage by the bearded Sir Lady Grantham (resplendent in his/her brightly coloured sneakers) who provided mute accompaniment on piano, accordion, and bone-shaped flute, and they break the poetry and ad libbery up with a few grubby cabaret covers.

The friction between the two characters is palpable: GhostBoy explains that they have just broken up, and much of his interstitial banter is occupied by increasingly detailed threats on how he plans to kill Grantham at the end of the show… but these words only evoke disdainful indifference from the mute instrumentalist.

And then came the audience participation part of the show… and they required a male, of which there were two of us in the tiny crowd. GhostBoy first tries to drag the chap from the other table up on stage, but he shakes off the request – at first with a gentle grimace, but then with a grumpy snarl – so it’s left to me to keep the show rolling. I’m dressed in a nappy (comfy!), then perched on a tiny wooden stool whilst GhostBoy dances around, serenading me with a raucous version of Gay Bar (while Sir Lady Grantham gave me a supportive smile and a wink).

We Love You! was an… interesting experience. I really wish I’d seen it with a crowd that was both bigger and more inclined to get involved; I think that would’ve added mightily to the experience. But I’m always interested in seeing the darkness that can exist in some people’s minds, and GhostBoy most certainly does have a knack for arranging words in a comically brooding manner… I reckon I’ll be pencilling in another visit to his realm when he returns, but on a night that is more likely to be heavily populated.

[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.