Mar 04

360 ALL STARS – Grand Auditorium

360 All StarsCroquet Club 2nd March 6:30pm

Fabulous Feats and Street Beats                                                        by GARY CLARKE – 4 .5 K

It was a hot sunny afternoon down by the riverbank at The Croquet Club.  We were seeking to beat the heat with some cool relief and we found it in the imposing edifice of the Grand Auditorium.  It came in the form of chilled air pumpin’ into the venue from massive air-conditioners and chill beats pumpin’ out from the stage via Gerry and Perry. (Gerry Peterson and Sam Perry).   The combination of huge screen scenes, fabulous feats and funky beats meant we were in for a treat. This circus brings the big tent to the street.

Not your usual circus, with 360 All Stars, jugglers were skittled for the man with the big balls, Basket Ball Free-styling guru Basketball Man.  The unicycle was retired and the BMX wheeled in, flat out in the hands of Peter Sore.  Acrobats were dumped for breakdancers as we got physical with BB Physick and BB Leerox, poppin’ and lockin’ their way through a high energy set.  While Rhys Miller rounded out this circus crew with some curvilinear cavorting in, on and around the Roue Cyr.

360 Crew got down and they pushed our red button.  The crowd were up and the tent erupted.  It was 60 mins. of relentless high energy grooves and high power moves… A full house was hooked for the duration.

The buzz continued as we stepped out into the warm evening.

My only gripe was the lack of any female presence on the stage.  There are truckloads of highly talented XX performers out there.  So how about it guys?

If you are into feats, beats and street culture sneak-or run away and join this circus.            4.5K

Mar 04

Fringe 2018: COMEDY – JIMEOIN: RIDICULOUS – Flinders University Plaza – 4K

After almost 30 years in the industry, many comedians grow stale, unable to form new jokes and riding on the wave of their once-lucrative popularity. Sometimes their sense of humour becomes dated, or their jokes repetitive.

This is not true for Jimeoin.

There’s something about Jimeoin’s style of charming observational humour that stands the test of time.

He is your favourite party guest; your funny uncle; your Irish dad that shows off when your friends come over.

His 2018 show RIDICULOUS at Flinders University Plaza started with warm-up act GEORGIE CARROLL, an emergency nurse in Adelaide. Her style complemented Jimeoin’s perfectly with her disdain for the picture-perfect mum at her son’s school and stories of psych patients in the emergency room.

When Jimeoin’s time to shine arrived, he danced onto the stage with his signature shoulder shrugs, exaggerated winks and knowing nods to the audience.

His audience interaction is something that keeps his routines fresh; you’ll often find he’ll stop midway through a joke because he was reminded of a better one, either through his unique train of thought or from an audience disruption.

While he covers a range of topics including religion, technology, relationships, toilets and sex, his brand of humour is not edgy or offensive. Jimeoin’s observational style does just that: it observes, leaving the audience laughing and nudging their friends, whispering “that is so me!” (a phrase I heard multiple times throughout the night).

This seasoned comedian also uses physical humour incredibly well throughout his performance, sometimes going minutes without speaking yet still leaving the audience doubled over with laughter.

 

Jimeoin’s casual chatter combined with his timeless style and impeccable comedic timing ensures I’ll return to his shows year after year. His show is over for this year, but keep an eye on next year’s fringe guide for his triumphant return to this great city.

 

4K.

Mar 03

FRINGE 2018 – Kids/Dance – Disco Kids – The Austral – 3K

By Julia Cudsi

What little kid doesn’t love to party? Following a tested and true formula for entertaining little ones, Disco Kids takes a dash of automatic bubble machine, a sprinkle of awesome balloon animals and a handful of funky disco beats and turns it into a fun afternoon out for all concerned.

Although this was a great way to expose young ones to the Fringe, I can’t help but feel that the show itself was overpriced, with a family ticket costing $45 for what was, really, just some funky music and strobe lighting and no guidance or real interaction from the hosts. I also wouldn’t recommend taking children much over 5 years of age along, certainly not unless they have friends their own age to join them: this really is a show aimed at quite young children.

Having said that, the show is good, clean fun. If you are looking for something to entertain your kids for an hour or so on a lazy weekend afternoon, Disco Kids is a fairly safe bet.

3K

Mar 03

FRINGE 2018 – Escape Room – Escape Room Treasure Hunt: The Bootlegger’s Dilemma – Gluttony – 4K

By Julia Cudsi

For the uninitiated, an Escape Room is a very specific type of activity – if you like your evenings out to be a passive occasion where you sit in a comfortable seat sipping on wine and not interacting with others, then this is definitely not an activity for you. However, if you thrive on interaction, bouncing ideas off of other people and solving puzzles, then you can’t go wrong with an Escape Room.

Following the usual formula – a group of people are set up in a room with a specific scenario and have to find clues in order to reach a solution – the Bootlegger’s Dilemma is set in Prohibition-era New York, and your task is to hide several bottles of moonshine in 45 minutes – before the Feds arrive and you end up swimming with the fishes when your mob boss finds out. But the task is more challenging than it seems…

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this Escape Room is that the incredibly detailed scenario has been set up in a tiny demountable – and, according to our host, all in the space of less than 48 hours!

This is a highly recommended show, whether you are a long-time Escape Room connoisseur or a complete newbie looking for something unique to try this Fringe.

4K

 

Mar 03

MARATHON – ADELAIDE FRINGE 2018

With their dialogue falling into sync with the pounding of their feet on a lonely road at night Steve and Mark discuss life and love. They are in training for the New York Marathon.
Brilliantly and convincingly brought to life by Ross Vosvotekas and Adam Cirillo who run for virtually the entire 55 minutes (they have been in training for over 4 months) Marathon is showing in the band room of the Crown and Anchor Hotel until March 18th.
The play opens with Steve lying on the ground, seemingly resting or asleep until Mark roughly rouses him. Steve complains that he is not fit enough to run today, that he has the flu. His friend Mark continues to drive him on.
As their run progresses one can start to sense that all may not be as it seems. The roles of the two runners become reversed with Steve now being the one to lead. Disorientation starts to set in and familiar landmarks are missed as a fog descends.
Highly recommended.
5K
Note : Show contains coarse language and adult themes.
Written by Eduardo Erba and translated from the Italian by Colin Teevan.

Mar 03

FRINGE COMEDY— Scientology the Musical— The Speakeasy @ Gluttony — 4K

scaled_Website_Hero_SquareBy Belle Dunning

The year is 1954, and you’re about to begin your training to become a Scientologist. Don’t think you have any problems in your life that need fixing? Don’t worry, you don’t know what’s wrong with you until Scientology tells you. And trust me, your personality test results will likely be the worst they’ve ever seen.

George Glass Comedy returns to the 2018 Adelaide Fringe to once again share with audiences their incredibly clever, sci-fi rock music exploration of the world’s most bizarre religion. As with George Glass’ previous creations, ‘Scientology the Musical’ will be unlike anything else you’ve seen. The cast of four — all genuinely musically talented — will enlighten you on some of the key principles, teachings and myths surrounding the world of Scientology, all through cleverly crafted and incredibly catchy songs. The opener, ‘It’s so hard being right all the time’, was a particular highlight.

The dialogue is fast-paced and witty, the energy is high and many of the ‘truth facts’ dropped will leave you genuinely concerned that people believe this stuff. The show very cleverly reveals the bizarre duality and inconsistencies of Scientology through the neurotic and confused musings of the characters themselves, who are — alongside you — on the endless journey to enlightenment.

Watching them push peanuts around on the floor with their noses and recite excerpts from Alice in Wonderland to gain favour (both apparently genuine occurrences aboard L Ron Hubbard’s ship back in the day), you realise how frighteningly gullible people can be when under the influence of a cultish figure. Yet at the same time, you can’t help but laugh.

On your journey you will learn that ‘things can be two things’, that hugging will fix everything and that a billion years isn’t enough when you’re waiting for the return of your leader (except when you run out of your abstinence pills).

Scientology the Musical is bizarre, intellectual and fantastically musical. If you like a healthy blend of religion, sci-fi and cynicism you won’t be disappointed — and for an affordable price, you too might be granted permission to open the carefully guarded briefcase of secrets, although it’s highly likely you’ll lose your mind.

Kryztoff Rating 4K

Mar 03

FRINGE 2018 – A GAME OF CHESS: THE PROKOFIEV VIOLIN SONATAS – 4.5K

by Riccardo Barone

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Checkmate! No, Stalinmate! Entering in the world of Sergej Prokof’ev you have to make sure you can stand high dosage of sarcasm, anger and obsession. But never define his music as grotesque, or he will come back from the death to strangle you!

These two immortal jewels, the violin and piano sonatas n 1 in F minor Op 80 and n 2 in D major Op 94a, have been performed with so much intensity and energy by Lachlan Bramble, Associate Principal 2nd Violin Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the pianist Kenan Henderson that you could really wear the composer’s moody energy.

We know how the form, the structure and the classic influence have been so relevant in the Russian composer’s works. Both sonatas have been written for his friend/violinist David Oistrakh, which has been his opponent in some chess tournaments too. Indeed the elegant Radford Auditorium of the Art Gallery (closed to the public on that time) has been guesting a brilliant scenography with a big chess carpet with giant chess pieces and a chair in the middle, where the narrator Martin Penhale has been reading some monologues written by Kenan Henderson based on quotes of Prokof’ev and Oistrakh. On the top hanged on the wall: pictures of the Maestro playing chess, portraits of himself and Oistrakh.

During the performance: sensations of wind blowing through the grave, quoting Prokof’ev, and visions of walking across a pink-iced landscape (Andante from the 1st sonata), quoting myself.

 Kryztoff Rating  4.5K

Mar 02

FRINGE THEATRE – Mengele – The Bakehouse Theatre – 5K

scaled_Untitled_designAlexander Ewers

Mengele. A confession. A biopic. A requiem. An indictment. A warning. It is hard to know how to describe this show, or how to define its impact on the observer. The emotional palette ranges through sombre, frightening, enraging, sorrowful and every unnamed and unholy combination thereof. Mengele the man as reincarnated in Mengele the show – prepare to leave bearing an indelible imprint on mind and soul, with more questions than answers, with uncomfortable truths and comforting lies that will haunt in moments of solitude.

One of a suite of plays in Guy Masterson’s Lest We Forget season, Mengele is a brief glimpse into the mind and soul of Josef Mengele, the notorious Auschwitz “Angel of Death” as played by Tim Marriott. On the beach in which he ultimately spends his final moments, the show imagines his interaction with the enigmatic Azra’il (Stefanie Rossi). There follows a stream of consciousness, the epilogue of a soul at war with itself, as Azra’il coaxes forth a dialogue and diatribe horrifying but transfixing in its self-righteousness. It could be said to be the confessions of a dying man, except that it is no confession – it is a maelstrom of remorseless justification and consummate vanity, an unapologetic attempt at self-expungement. Mengele unleashes the undimmed ideological wolves of Nazism. Eugenics are exalted. Weakness reviled. Strength worshipped. God abhorred and cruel gods venerated. But this is no mere history lesson. Each of these motifs are disquieting in their familiarity, and parallels cannot help but be drawn to the currents of xenophobia, autocracy, and callousness… even cruelty, rippling through society today.

For 60 minutes, Marriott holds sway, delivering a performance that commandeers and manipulates the emotions. For there are moments when one feels empathy, even amity towards Mengele. But at every point, the wildest flourishes of rhetoric are contained and balanced by Stefanie Rossi, who in her debut performance as Azra’il, is every bit Marriott’s stage peer. Azra’il – mysterious, powerful, inscrutable. Completing and echoing Mengele’s thoughts in a way that simultaneously questions, refutes and placates, she possesses an insight only possible through mutually shared experience. Azra’il…. is this a reckoning with the spirit of his victims, the spirit of Israel herself? An externalisation of a moral subconscious hitherto repressed? A conversation with God, or death, or both? Perhaps all are true – for Death is Mengele’s oldest companion and in her presence, the demons of the conscience must eventually be faced.

Entertainment is too trivial a word for this experience. Factually biographic, historically accurate, culturally and socially necessary – Mengele is endorsed by Holocaust historians, advocates of Jewish culture, and theatre enthusiasts alike (New York Fringe Encore Winner). Theatrically, little stage embellishment is necessary, but two noteworthy inclusions do leave a profound effect. A montage of concentration camp scenes is interposed between the three key acts … memories replayed or perhaps simply a graphic reminder? Lending further awful gravitas, weeping Yiddish melodies lilt in and out during the play, moments when emotional composure is nigh impossible.

Doctors and gods. Doctors who are gods. Family. The elderly and the infants. The innocent. The invulnerable. Mengele touches on it all – it is theatre of both the physical and the metaphysical, painted in ambiguity and yet planting seeds of clarity. Viewers will physically depart after the hour concludes, but the deep questions the performance inspires linger far longer in the mind. How can history be merely the past when humanity IS history, and humanity is past, present and future? And where humanity treads, there always lies a choice – will history repeat, or can the future be made anew?

A must-see masterpiece, with a message more relevant than ever. Lest we forget.

Kryztoff Rating 5K

Mar 02

FRINGE CABARET – Hans: If You Don’t Love Me… Leave – Gluttony – 3K

By Peter Maddern

One can experience very different emotions watching Adelaide’s own Hans, or as he would have it, the German boy making good in his adopted homeland. The show is glitzy, the banter at time sharp and never is there a moment for pausing – it’s a 60 minute smiling, singing, splash around on a long stage. If that is all you are after, then a Han’s hour might just be the way to kick your Fringe evening off – for many it would seem at Thursday’s modest turnout it was.

On the other hand, Matt Gilbertson’s whole character / alter ego is devoid of sense and originality. His own PR says he’s from Berlin “bringing a touch of Bavaria” but Berlin isn’t in Bavaria. As my accompanying German friend confirmed his German is worse than mine; he presents as a guy dressed in drag doing Dame Edna (who doesn’t present that way) lines we have all heard before. He can’t much sing and despite attempting to display an array of talents – from swinging through the air (what was that all about?) to playing the piano one thing is for sure that beyond stomping up and down he can’t dance.

It’s splashy and trashy and given the years he has been around the opportunity to define a character as a comic voice of Adelaide it seems has been foregone either for want of ambition and talent or due to the constraining influence of his maker’s other media responsibilities around town. Either way Hans sits nowhere much.

In a Fringe where there are 1200 other options and at up to $38 a seat, God knows why one would buy a ticket to Hans but under our scale of ‘if it’s okay to go to if nothing else was on’ I am obliged to give it 3 Ks. As for his invitation to leave if you don’t love him, you may well find yourself sorely tempted.

Kryztoff Rating 3K

Mar 02

FRINGE 2018 – THEATRE – The Colour Orange: The Pauline Hanson Musical – Raj House – 4.5K

scaled_Sydney_Fringe_Critics__Pick_2017The current political landscape is dark and divisive. At times like this, when politics becomes a caricature of itself, all we can really do is laugh. The Colour Orange outlines the history of One Nation and the unusual rise, fall, and rise again of Pauline Hanson.

Through music played by five-piece band, The Flaming Howards, the audience is taken on a wild ride through Australian political history that is all too familiar for many of us. The original songs were hilarious, well researched and catchy.

The cast is brilliant: expressive, adaptive and pitch-perfect. The small team of five actors rotated the roles of Pauline Hanson and also played familiar faces like Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard, Kochie and the kind of “Aussie Battler” you’d encounter in a Facebook comment section.

One thing that may throw you is the role of Pauline Hanson continuously changes. The audience adapts quickly to this and there appear to be logical reasons why the actor keeps changing. I had a personal favourite Pauline (Kirralee Elliot), so while the other Paulines were excellent, I found myself hoping for Kirralee’s Pauline to make another entrance.

Outside the small performance space at Raj House, a range of orange-themed merchandise is available for sale. The pieces were adorable, reasonably priced and a great little extra to an unforgettable experience. This, combined with the soundtrack available for pre-order is simply a cherry on top of a polished show.

This musical was tight, intelligent, hilarious, entertaining and overflowing with musical talent. It drives home a powerful message about the power of publicity. It is a must-see for those disenchanted by Australian Politics and just those who need a laugh.

4.5K