Category: Melbourne Fringe 2014

5 Good Reasons to See Shakesprovisation

1. Much Ado About Something
Shakesprovisation suits those of you who love the Bard, or those of you who resent him because you had to study Hamlet in high school. Using only your suggestions, the players will create a Shakespearean play for you on the spot (with hilarious results).

2. Romeos and Juliets
This show features some of Australia’s finest improvisers- your favourite members of The Big HooHaa, Impromptunes, The Improv Comspiracy, and Fresh Blood’s Written it Down including Matt Saraceni, Ben Russell, Sophie Kneebone, Daniel Pavatich, Tegan Mulvany, Wyatt Nixon-Lloyd, Luke Ryan, Natalie Holmwood, Roland Lewis, Sarah Reuben, Cameron Neill, Sarah Reuben, Jimmy James Eaton, and Brianna Williams.

3. All’s Well That Ended Well
The latest Perth ex-pat offering, this show is new to Victoria after enjoying a SOLD OUT season at Perth Fringe 2013. Come and enjoy what literally tens of Perth audience members could not!

4. Tight-Ass Adronicus
Can’t afford to see the latest professional Shakespearean production? Wish you could see Hugo Weaving carve it up in Macbeth, but don’t have the funds? This is a cheap alternative (with hilarious results!)

5. Midspring Night’s Dream
Shakesprovisation is on at the Portland Hotel in Melbourne’s CBD at 6pm. Pop in after work, enjoy a pint of James Squire, see the show and still be able to get home in time to see The Bachelor. #teamsam

For information and tickets see the Fringe Website:

http://www.melbournefringe.com.au/fringe-festival/show/shakesprovisation/#

The Crepe Hanger’s Ball by Martin and Ailsa Dunlop

By Colin Flaherty

It was the memorial service for Agatha Ignacia Dunlop. Her nephew and niece, Martin and Ailsa Dunlop, paid tribute to this cantankerous old woman with an hour of stand up (who cares whether that’s what she wanted, she’s dead anyway!). This was an interesting way to package an hour of stand up and theatre that worked reasonably well.

The opening eulogy did a brilliant job in setting the scene and painting a picture of the deceased. This very unlikeable woman was described using some wonderfully colourful language and we learnt of all her amusingly disgusting character traits. It was nice how they addressed the audience as family members and acquaintances which immersed us into their world.

Both did short sets of stand-up which was the main purpose of the show. Ailsa’s brand of stand-up was very dark, very graphic and immensely self-deprecating, while Martin went the lighter storytelling route with a few short tales from his life. Both were a little hit and miss in getting laughs but they certainly could hold our attention. Although prefaced with some witty lines about Agatha’s appreciation of their comedic work and both containing dark and graphic material, these sets weren’t particularly tailored to the overall story and just came across as their regular club sets presented verbatim.

This pair really shone when they were on stage together for some short theatrical pieces. One was an awesome Tennessee Williamsesque dialogue that allowed them to adopt silly accents and spout some wonderfully surreal lines. The other piece was a pair on concurrent monologues that had a beautiful twist in its conclusion. In both pieces Martin adopted a simpleton persona while Ailsa played the straight woman. Although they were often on the cusp of corpsing and they dropped character once to point out how clever they were (which disrupted the flow of the scene, resulting in dropped accents and losing their places) the duo pulled these off with ease and had the audience in hysterics.

Even though we were presented with some so-so stand-up in what was essentially a two hander stand-up package, it was the premise and the theatrical scenes that made this show for me. If you’re up for some gallows humour and want to see some great comic actors strut their stuff, don your mourning clothes and pay your respects to Aunt Agatha.

The Crepe Hangers Ball is on at the Portland Hotel at 9:15pm until October 4

http://www.melbournefringe.com.au/fringe-festival/show/the-crepe-hanger-s-ball/

Who Are You Supposed to Be? by Keith Gow

By Lisa Clark 

Sometimes, though not often, I see a show that I think someone has written especially to make me happy and this is definitely one. A funny, intelligent and geeky romp through the sexual politics of fandom, bring it on.

Who Are You Supposed To Be? By Keith Gow first debuted at The Edinburgh Fringe in 2013 and Australian actress Jennifer Lusk played the lead Ashley but another person, UK-based Cameron McKewen played Gene Peterson. Like our own Rob Lloyd (and the character they play), Cameron is ‘Con Famous’ in other words he is a minor celebrity in the real life fan convention world, known for his Dr Who blog Blogtor Who. Rob Lloyd has also been involved with a Dr Who podcast, Preachrs Podcast is currently voicing the part of The Doctor in an audio series, has a Vlogcast about pop culture and fan conventions called The Con Artist and gained a reputation around the conventions with his Dr Who themed comedy show Who Me? as well as his striking resemblance to Tenth Doctor David Tennant. The casting of Gene is inspired, although Rob’s personality in real life bears little resemblance to the annoying introvert Gene, the blurring of character / performer adds another delightful layer to the play.

Rob and Jennifer each play their parts beautifully, Jennifer as the strong, plain talking, yet vulnerable Ashley carries the play effortlessly and Rob’s dweeby Gene who grows in insight and warmth as the narrative progresses is a lot of fun as her nemesis cum potential boyfriend. Ashley has travelled to London for a UK holiday that includes a trip to a scifi convention where she has the chance to meet her favourite Dr Who actor Peter Davison. While there she meets Gene and though they don’t really know each other it turns out they have communicated previously through social media, a lovely touch that reflects a lot of modern life relationships. An awkward and bickering friendship develops despite their disagreements about women’s involvement in genre and “non-canonical boobs” (my favourite punny line in the play). There are scenes on each of the four days of the convention and you can tell it is a new day from Gene’s new geek Tshirt of the day. One of the scenes has them on the phone alternately discussing each other with someone else which worked a treat. The themes discussed by the pair go to the heart of all that is good and bad about the modern fan scene and issues discussed passionately on-line. I was also impressed by a beautiful line in the play that referenced something that had happened in a new Dr Who episode of only a week earlier!

Written as a tribute to the 50th Anniversary of Dr Who, it is a very Who heavy script though there are many other geeky references; some as obscure as a character from Babylon 5, others as mainstream as a quote from Toy Story. Intelligent, and funny, this is one of the best Dr. Who tribute plays I’ve seen as Gow explores modern geek culture and relationships with laughs and tenderness. Ten years ago I might’ve thought that this is too niche to fandom for success as a play, but things have changed and nerd culture has grown and seeped into the mainstream and there is a huge audience ready to love this and ‘get’ it. If you enjoy Doctor Who or have been to a fandom convention, you simply must see this play.

Who Are You Supposed to Be? is on at The Owl & The Pussycat (opposite Richmond Station) until October 5th

http://www.melbournefringe.com.au/fringe-festival/show/who-are-you-supposed-to-be/

5 Good Reasons To See The Ultimate

1. The characters will resonate with people who love, and love to hate reality T.V.

2. The intimate venue of Club Voltaire brings audience and cast together for an hour of entertainment.

3. Covers all facets of reality TV so everyone will find something that resonates with them.

4. It will make you laugh, then feel bad for doing so.

5. It is so close to watching reality TV that you’ll feel like you never left the couch.

For information and tickets see The Melbourne Fringe website

http://www.melbournefringe.com.au/fringe-festival/show/the-ultimate/

Advertising Death

By Colin Flaherty

A pair of Funeral Directors in financial and ethical trouble, a soon to be grieving widow, a corrupt doctor and a kinky priest; some great characters for a comedic play. The band George Glass (Nic Conway, Pud Hamilton, Henry Koehne, Alister McMichael and Daniel Murnane) attempted to stage their story as a Rocky Horror styled comedic rock opera but found that they didn’t quite have the abilities of Richard O’Brien.

The plot had plenty of twists and turns, so many that it was easy to lose track of what was going on if you weren’t paying close attention. All the characters were repugnant souls, even the ones initially portrayed as objects of sympathy, and you were supposed to laugh at their lack of morals but beyond that they didn’t exhibit a lot of depth.

This was billed as a dark comedy but the actual comedic content of the script was somewhat lacking.  You could see that there were some potentially great ideas in there but the writing and execution were not quite up to par. They often went to tasteless territory just for the sake of it and didn’t hit on anything particularly witty. There were some amusing lines within the script but the cast had major issues with timing and the general ability to sell these lines so most of it fell flat.

One saving grace was their talent as a band. They all had the musical chops to write catchy songs and swap between instruments, but this didn’t help them as purveyors of comedic songs. The initial songs each had a funny line repeated ad nauseam but, combined with the lousy sound mix when the full band kicked in, it was difficult to pick out anything else amusing. Later songs went the melancholic route to add some emotional texture to the show. A few tunes appeared to have been shoehorned in so their relevancy to the story was vague at best.

A hell of a lot of effort went into the staging of this play. There were plenty of costume changes to bring the characters to life and elaborate props were used in key scenes which unfortunately led to extended periods of a dark stage as they struggled to change for the next scene. Our raised hopes for the climatic ‘Funeral of the Century’ came close to being fulfilled with a number of fun surprises. All this colour and movement certainly went a little way in maintaining our interest in the story.

After seeing this show, I learnt that it has had a number of runs previously, but nothing appears to have been learnt from these performances. It’s a shame as this has a lot of potential to be a great show but in its current form it still falls way short.

Advertising Death is on at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute at 10pm until September 27.

http://www.melbournefringe.com.au/fringe-festival/show/advertising-death/

10 Things You Can’t Do On Stage

By Colin Flaherty

Rules are meant to be broken and that is the conceit behind this very Fringe show. Caitlin “Coby” Yolland & Jaklene Vukasinovic set out to flagrantly disregard all that their drama training had instilled in them. It was an ambitious endeavour but raised questions about whether their method was the most entertaining and effective one.

This is a show devised by a pair of recent Drama graduates keen to show off what they have learnt in University and apply it literally to a performance piece. It also gave them a platform to display their acting chops, most notably as improvisers. Through some songs, numerous improvised scenes and general banter, they broke the theatrical rules, pointed them out and discussed them; some were glossed over while others received in-depth exploration.

The main problem with using improvisations to illustrate the rules was that some may question the purity of their spontaneity. They had to demonstrate a violation clearly so they needed to have some sort of pre-planned structure to do so, which may seem like a cop out to Impro fans. Typical of most Impro theirs was a mixed bag in terms of success, sometimes missing some obvious threads that could be followed to laughs. When they did manage to hit upon an interesting thread they were talented enough to develop it into amusing ideas to delight the audience.

Their banter appeared to be a mixture of scripted and off the cuff dialogue that, while keeping with the mood of the piece, may seem too messy and unprofessional for some audience members expecting a bit more polish. However, the duo’s stage personas were delightful and perky making an hour in their company an enjoyable experience but a lot of the time you wished that they would just get to the point without all the faffing about. I know that this banter sometimes led to some ‘rule breaking’ but when it didn’t we were in danger of drifting off.

This show is certainly geared towards young thespians and is likely to float the boat of drama students. Although there are a number of amusing moments to raise some laughs, it may not be enough to maintain the interest of the general public.

10 Things You Can’t Do On Stage is on at The Portland Hotel at 8pm until October 4.

http://www.melbournefringe.com.au/fringe-festival/show/10-things-you-can-t-do-on-stage/