Sunday, January 22, 2023

Fringe World 2023

The temperature rose as if on cue on the boulevard of dreams stretching from the Cultural Centre to Russel Square on Friday, and all the auguries were good for a Fringe World that, if not quite back to its raggedy pomp of the Naughties (500 acts this year vs 700+ before the plague), was at least a passable imitation of its glory.
But how would the ancient Turnstiles, a tattered coat upon a stick in no country for old men, take to the bright lights and painted faces of this brave new world?

Sit by me, mes enfants, and let us see what wonders are passing by…  


Sensemaker★★★★

Like all of us, the Swiss performer Elsa Couvreur knows what its like to wait in a queue for someone real to answer your call. She’s turned that Herculean task into an hour of gripping, very often riotous, theatre where she doesn’t speak at all (a recorded voice does all the talking, but every movement and gesture of hers says volumes).

Sensemaker isn’t dance, although she moves brilliantly, or mime, although she creates spaces and surfaces superbly; she uses all her physical gifts to tell a story and send an unmistakable message without words.

And that message, which, ultimately, she communicates in the most graphic way a body can, is that “they” want to know everything about you, but want you to know nothing about “them”.

And the next time you find yourself dangling on the phone waiting for the right to be interrogated by a digital voice, it’s a message worth having.

Colossal ★★★★½ and Vehicle ★★★★
The rejuvenated Fringe World begins with a bang with two gigantic shows:
Patrick McPherson’s ‘Colossal’ came garlanded with plaudits and prizes, including Theatre Weekly’s “Best Show of the Edinburgh Fringe 2022”, and is the epitome of the best fringe; hilariously, crafty, shocking and far, far more than meets the eye. 
With “Vehicle”, Sam Longley and Shane Adamczak, two of our very best improv performers show, like modern-day Laurel and Hardys, what mischief can be made if, instead of having to craft a story on the spot, you gave them three months to work on it.

(Read my complete review of both Colossal and Vehicle in Seesaw Magazine link here)

Elise Wilson (pic: Sophie Minissale)
 All the Fraudulent Horse Girls ★★★½
Horses spook me. I’ve seen two plays about them, and one – Peter Shaffer’s Equus – was the worst. Ever. With or without horses in it.

Plus, I’ve only “ridden” a horse once, and my arse, when it landed on the hard dirt of the Darling Downs during the ensuing stampede, still hurts whenever I think of that ride.
Now that that elephant has left the room, I’m happy to report that All the Fraudulent Horse Girls is the very best play about horses I’ve ever seen by the length of the straight (okay, I haven’t seen Warhorse). And it doesn’t hurt a bit.

The story of 11-year-old Audrey, and the ecstatic obsession with horses that gets her through the perils and agonies of looming adolescence, is crazy and – just – believable enough, to float, and the performances by a quartet of talented young actors (Hannah Davidson, Courtney Henri, Elise Wilson and Lucy Wong) are wacky and energetic enough to make you blink and miss some of the playwright Michael Louis Kennedy’s text’s more fragile moments.

A kick in the head by a pissed-off police horse on a wet Stirling Highway (don’t ask) sends Audrey spiraling into the world of the American author Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and her affinity with its hero, John Grady Cole.

The picaresque cowboy novel is a cipher for Audrey’s brave outsider personality and the obstacles she faces, and its helter-skelter story, while only roughly sketched, comes across well.

I’d have liked a little more reflection in the characterization and text, more opportunity to sit a while with Audrey and share her thoughts, but the director Mitchell Whelan and his cast had a long way to ride, and not much time to do it, so it’s a missing piece rather than a flaw.

The cast plays a parade of characters, and all but Henri (who does a great horse) take a turn as Audrey, passing the baton every time a horse whacks her in the head.

All of them have great moments, and Elise Wilson’s turn as the “first” Audrey is worth the price of the ticket alone.

Wilson has shown a phenomenal range and presence in her nascent career since graduating from WAAPA’s remarkable Performance Making course in 2018 (the rest of the cast are also alumni).

One moment, when a thought seemed to make her her lose it completely, she had us in the saddle and galloping along beside her.

 

A little editorial: I should point out that All the Fraudulent Horse Girls is not part of the Fringe World Festival. It’s one of the shows in the Summer Nights season curated by the Blue Room theatre that runs concurrently with the fringe.
It’s most unfortunate that the shorter Summer Nights, and the State Theatre Centre’s curated State of Play season (which is part of Fringe World), both kicked off, along with the rest of the Fringe on January 20th, meaning that there is an unmanageable (for audiences) glut of interesting theatre/performance shows in the first two weeks of the festival season and a dearth of them thereafter.
I hope the organisations behind all these programmes (don’t get me wrong, they do a wonderful job) will bang their diaries together and rationalize these delights in future.

 

 

Otto and Astrid Play The Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Concert You've Ever Seen! ★★★★

What the world needs now is a faux-German Europunk parody sibling duo thrashing their way through songs like Burger Store Dinosaur, I Wanna Be Your Kitten (for Iggy Pop), 2nd Best Friend, Ich bin kein Roboter (I am not a robot) I’m a Lion, Trying Not To Die and Rock Bang, all of which sound like variations on My Sharon meets Kraftwerk meets Plastic Bertrand.

So why go for a pale imitation when you can have the real thing, the pride of the Berlin unter Tage. Meine Damen und Herren – Otto and Astrid, the Red Dots (or, by a happy fluke of English to German translation, Die Roten Punkte)!

Clare Bartholemew and Daniel Tobias – like Bernadette Byrne aka punk cabaret superstar Bernie Dieter, as German as Flinders St Station (what is this Melbourne/ Berlin thing? Oh, jas gut, I get it now) – have been hauling this vehicle around the world for a couple of decades, and they’ve got it down absolutely pat.

The result is hilarious, really hilarious, and way, way smarter than they pretend to be. I turned to the person sitting next to me and said “these idiots could do a fantastic kids’ show.’’ She replied,“They do’’ – and she should know.

This, I hasten to add, isn’t it.

Jamie Mykaela: Floozy ★★★½
My admiration for Jamie Mykaela is boundless, both for her extravagant talent and presence and for her courage and freedom as an artist.
So if I say that her world premiere season of Floozy in the State Theatre Centre Studio is an uncomfortable experience, that’s not to discourage you from seeing it. As always, she’s a brilliant performer and a magnetic presence, and there’s much to enjoy in her stories of an Armadale gal it home and abroad.

(Read my complete review of Floozy in Seesaw Magazine link here)

Josh Glanc: It’s Great to be Here ★★★½
What do comedy agent provocateur Tomas Ford, lawyer turned fringe-filler Josh Glanc and funnyman superstar Steve Martin have in common?
They all play instruments from the lute family? Uh huh. All three are very hairy guys? Yep. Correct. Could be bears.
I know. All three have worked out they can do anything they want – and if they do it like it’s dead funny, then it is dead funny? Si! Correcto!
So when Josh Glanc wanders around the jam-packed Gold Digger marquee selling “hot chips, potato cake, dim sim, sausage roll” the giggles begin, and by the time he sings with a parrot from the wildlife sanctuary “ between the Giant Grapefruit and the Giant Strawberry” on the Bruce Highway or evicts a guy from the tent because he’s too tall, the punters are heaving.
On and on it goes; there’s the lonely widow who takes him upstairs to show him a turtle, the woman he intercepts trying to help a baby doll escape the show, the Sam and Dave classic bowdlerised as “Small Man” by a tiny puppet. It’s silly, sappy, doesn’t have punch lines, sometimes tails off into nothing, but Glanc is so sure of it, so confident that it’s really funny that we can do nothing but obey his demand that we piss ourselves laughing.

And when he pulls off his fake moustache and obeys our demand that he take off his shirt to reveal his tangle of a chest – told you – we howl with pleasure.