My birthday was lovely. Not only did I see my 135th show of the year (equaling 2014’s effort), but I managed to snag some Hot Star chicken and a pulled pork burger from Low & Slow at Blinc Bar. Also: a stunning Girls’ Generation box set thing. These things make me happy.
‘Tis a pity Becky Lou was unable to perform Shake tonight; hoping I can still squeeze that show in.
Today brought forth the only shows that really leapt out and grabbed me at the Festival launch back in October: the two Cedar Lake performances. And boy, they did not disappoint. Mixed Rep was worthy of a standing ovation on the strength of the third piece alone.
Of course, Mixed Rep ran long (or, rather, had two intervals that weren’t mentioned), so that meant I missed my planned 10pm show. But it also meant that I got to have a drink with Helen and Tina at Blinc Bar, so that was nice :)
Also: it’s currently my birthday. Yay :)
So – Cadence is a belter of a performance (despite starting late and running long, leading to the need to bum a car ride to my next show). And We Are All left a bitter taste in my mouth, like I’d just been conned.
Weird old day.
A weird bunch of shows today; a couple that I was really looking forward to didn’t quite live up to expectations… but one most certainly did meet expectations.
Far exceeded them, actually.
Vampillia were – to be quite frank – fucking amazing. Support band Fourteen Nights at Sea were brilliant – all hipster power chords and drones that carried me like a wave (their first post-introduction song saw the bass player play the same two notes for six minutes, in which I found great joy), but the Japanese “brutal orchestra” lived up to their name: superb strings, operatic vocals, and lashings of funk, punk, metal, grind, and guttural growls from a frontman who roamed through the audience regularly.
Amazing.
The really weird part, though? A guy on the fence near me tapped me on the shoulder during Vampillia’s warm-up. “Do I know you?” he asked. I struggled, but couldn’t help him. Suddenly, he remembered: “Aren’t you that guy in the The City Messenger? The one who sees all those shows?”
So, yeah. There’s that.
OK… so. Right. I have to admit to having been a little underwhelmed with my Festival viewing so far.
Not anymore.
La Merda is absolutely brutal, in the best way possible. It gently lures you in and then batters you senseless, leaving your ears ringing; the third act is positively incendiary. I’ve used that word to describe it on every medium I can, because it’s the perfect description.
In short: go see La Merda.
The other shows today were pretty good, too! But go see La Merda. Seriously.
When I got a text message within the opening minute of Bok & Fahey’s (fun) show, I immediately thought it was a cancellation… and, sure enough, I was right. But every cloud has a silver lining, yeah? And what that cancellation led to was a bunch of opportunistic plan changes, on the back of my new-found confidence in getting from venue-to-venue in record time. Bakehouse to Gluttony (via FringeTIX) in six minutes? No worries. Gluttony to Producers in one minute? Cool.
The upshot of that was that I managed to squeeze in one extra show than I’d planned for the day. Nice for me, but maybe a bit grim for the cancelled act.
[2015004] 3 Steps Ahead
Point & Flex Circus @ Producers Warehouse
6:00pm, Wed 11 Feb 2015
After a shaky start, 2014’s Temper was a thoroughly enjoyable show, and demonstrated that Point & Flex Circus really knew what they were doing; that alone had them pencilled into the Shortlist. The opportunity to go to the Producers Launch Party – and stitch together four shows in a row – sealed the deal.
But the Point & Flex numbers have halved since Temper, leaving just Marina and Taylor performing 3 Steps Ahead. And they reprise a lot of their strengths from last year’s showcase in solo pieces scattered throughout the show: Taylor displays the more traditional acrobatic skills of stretching, balance, and hoops; Marina veers towards the freakshow side of the circus, with glass walking, juggling, and a weird & wonderful segment where she inserts a paintbrush up her nose, blockhead style, and proceeds to copy a picture (itself selected through cleaver-throwing).
The spine of the performance is the random selection of timed games that the audience helps order (through the shuffling of cards); these games ranged from assembling and flicking paper frogs into a glass, to eating a cookie without using their hands, to balancing five die on a mouth-held pop-stick. Some of the games are terribly one-sided – blowing up ten balloons is much harder than picking up cotton balls using only your nose – but that just created a sense of good-natured fun between the performers and the audience.
After all the little competitions and games, Marina won this evening’s performance by the barest of margins: eleven points to ten. But (to horribly shoe-horn in a cliché) the audience were the real winners this evening: 3 Steps Ahead was a fun, personable, and entertaining display of Point & Flex’s abilities.
(Of course, the other notable memory associated with this performance was the fact that many of the Gravity & Other Myths crew (who mentor Point & Flex) were in the audience. I said hello, fawned over them & their work, and received some thankyous in return… surprising, to be sure, but super-appreciated!)
(4) 3 Steps Ahead: Much enthusiasm and creativity in freak-influenced acrobatic antics. #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 11, 2015
Quiet day, all things considered. Gentle; sedate. Ordinary, even.
…except for the two dog-centric shows that opened up today’s proceedings. They were each completely bizarre in the most awesome ways.
And so I bring up the hundredth show of FF2015 (and my hundredth Fringe show) on the same day.
There’s still thirteen days to go, folks.
After a quick run through dotMaze (don’t expect to start on-time at the beginning of the day!) and bidding my gorgeous Significant Other adieu (after an all-too-brief visit which had her taking in one Festival & eight Fringe shows), I tried to get back into the swing of things. So much to see, so little time!
Things really picked up after I chased away the dozes in the first half of Marilyn Forever. The second half was solid (with a great climax), Icarus Falling is proper Fringe awesomeness, Kirsty Mac presented some great standup, and Smile Practice was quite spectacular in the most WTF way possible. I mean, I had one of the performers sitting naked (well, with his pants around his ankles) next to me for most of the show. His genitals were covered in purple glitter. On stage, a super-drunk freeloader was kissing the other performer before stumbling down the stairs and heckling incoherently.
So, yeah – good times!
What a great day. With my Significant Other interested in experiencing a busy day at the Fringe, I arranged the following six shows, plus a run around all the Bill Viola exhibits around the city (and a quiet Festival Patron meet-and-greet with Viola… great food – and Croser! – at Jolley’s).
Great shows, one and all… though Dr. Professor Neal Portenza was a great example of shithouse over-entitled drunk-crowd antics that left my SO quite irritated.
Opening night of the Festival. Initially thought Blinc was a fizzer, until we actually saw it… pretty! Lots of people at the opening to the Festival & Blinc launch party.
My Significant Other is in town. We drank lots of champagne. May have been prudent to do that after Azimut.
Pretty good day today, show-wise.
White Rabbit Red Rabbit, with its unique-script-unique-actor-cold-reading hook, has every opportunity to become one of those shows that you want to see every night. Which is kinda what I expected Set List to be, too, but I wasn’t as grabbed by that.
Anyway: it’s time for a bit of a quieter weekend. My Significant Other is arriving for a fleeting visit tomorrow, and there’s a bit of catching up to do. And there’s also a little thing called the Adelaide Festival of the Arts that kicks off tomorrow…
What a weird old day. Had another(!) photo shoot(!) in the afternoon, and then my first two shows were bloody great. The last one, though, was one of the worst Fringe experiences I’ve ever had. Ever.
I’ve never walked out of a show before, but I seriously considered it this evening.
A bit of a weird day for me today. Housework. Oh, and a little phone call… but more on that later.
Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind is a cracking way to spend an hour, even if I did feel a bit ripped off that I didn’t see the thirtieth play in the performance. “Performed later in the double-decker bus” – really? Harrumph.