Fresh Track Productions @ Little Theatre
7:00pm, Fri 27 Feb 2004
Score: 6
Short Review: Globulous
Recalling Fresh Track’s previous Fringe effort (The Return, ff2002), and being intrigued by the description in the Fringe Guide, I thought I’d give Morph a bash. And I found a very uneven mish-mash of the good, the bad, and the… odd. Melanie Vallejo’s voice has certainly grown up a bit since 2002, and she roams the stage in a most assured manner as the dancer Grace. Brendan Rock’s Be begins life as a mildly intriguing character, who becomes downright annoying after “The Break”. “The Break”? Well, Morph is pretty much a tale of two halves. Grace begins as the epitome of perfection, Be the inept and indestructible; after The Break, characteristics are essentially reversed. Oooooh, clever.
The good? Some of the dialog was great – there’s not many shows that feature a line like “I want to be porked by you.” Grace’s evocative description of her dance, the culmination of her life’s work, reminded me of a few dance pieces I’ve seen. And both actors performed within the bounds of their characters well.
The bad? The short scenes in the first half designed to demonstrate the growing bond between the two; I loathed that short, flashy style. The fact that, generally, the characters weren’t convincing – harrumph. And what was up with that birth scene?
Somewhere along the line, Be said “it’s not good to go around expressing shit”. Yes, quite.
Rocket & Roxy’s Stunt Show.
This was a piece with big bangs, smoke, fire and little content. I am suprised that it got a guernsey for the festival. It was ok I suppose; a monster in a kennel, tight rope walking, straight jacket escape while on stilts that were aflame, good singing from the drunk bombshell.