Melbourne Fringe 2016 – Page 4

CULL

By Colin Flaherty

CULL examines our social media habits, in particular the things we see in Facebook feeds. Patrick Durnan Silva and Honor Wolff of The Very Good Looking Initiative reveal the dark side of it all. Even innocent things like cat videos are not safe from this duo’s disturbing dissection. This sets the scene for some biting satire about the online world…but all I ending up getting was a nibble.

This is an extremely high energy, all singing, all dancing show which features so much dancing that it threatens to overwhelm the comic elements of the show. Sure, there are some klutzy dance moves to enjoy but it seems to be more a showcase of the duo’s musical theatre skills. Delivering dialogue while out of breath certainly has us laughing at them but it slows down a perky monologue.

The script has some witty lines to entertain but a lot of the scenes fail to end on strong punchlines. Instead they either transform into a Lynchian nightmare with impressive sound and lighting, drift off to nothing or simply flit to the next sketch. This may be considered post modern but ignoring comedic principals is risky and unfortunately it doesn’t really work for this pair. A number of serious topics relating to Internet use are covered, for which they should be commended, but apart from some wacky overacting there really isn’t anything amusing offered to us. You get the odd nervous titter from the darkness of it all but these scenes lean too far into tragedy.

A lot of the dialogue is performed in the requisite screeching which grates on the nerves of an old fogie like me so I’m certainly not the target demographic of this show. The younger crowd appeared to get a lot more out of this, particularly some pop culture references that may sail over some people’s heads. I sensed though, that a lot of their laughs came from recognition rather than any witty insight offered by the pair.

Silva and Wolff are certainly not afraid to make themselves look silly in pursuit of a laugh which helps to sell the lines and their slapstick works well. Their comedic arsenal can be boiled down to pushing repetitive sequences past breaking point, awkward freeze frames, long pregnant pauses, and darkness for shock value laughs. Oh…and did I mention that they can sing like divas and dance up a storm?

A full frontal assault on the senses, this wild ride through the online landscape is full of colour and movement and fits the experimental tag offered in the Fringe guide. Those born after the MTV Generation will have fun laughing at the ridiculousness of their peers but others may find CULL largely style over substance.

CULL is on at The Courthouse Hotel until September 23
https://melbournefringe.com.au/program?event/cull/6f23d97f-0149-4d4f-b6c8-898d2a8f0477

5 Good Reasons to See The Mighty Little Puppet Show

1. We’re back!

We were actually quiet surprised when our little show had quiet a successful world premiere at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival. We had wonderful reviews, great feedback and really supportive audiences. So it seemed only natural to bring the show back for Melbourne Fringe…and at The Butterfly Club, one of Melbourne’s best fringe theatre and cabaret venues.

2. It has puppets!

If you missed us at MICF The Mighty Little Puppet Show has puppets in it…but these puppets are like nothing you’ve seen before.

What’s unique about our puppets is that they are custom-built, by the extremely talented people at The Puppet Workshop.

Our puppets (called The Ritas) are brightly coloured and blank-faced, we’ve also had large selection of eyes & noses build that can be attached and removed to The Ritas whenever we want.

Meaning we can create new and interesting puppet characters for every performance.

3. It is an improvised show!

Yup…every show will be improvised so no two shows will be the same. The Ritas were specifically created because The Mighty Little Puppet Show is completely improvised.

We wanted our puppets have the potential to be just as spontaneous as the scenes they will be in.

4. We have a NEW stellar line-up of Special Guest Stars!

We were fortunate to have some of Melbourne’s most respected, popular & experienced performers guest star with the Ritas for our Comedy Festival season.
This Fringe is no different, we have assembled a stellar line-up of stars from the Melbourne Comedy scene, who are ready to raise hell with our puppet crew.

Our guests include:

-Lliam Amor, Elly Squire, Ross Daniels, Damian Callinan, Dilruk Jayasinha and Lauren Bok.

5. We have NEW members to our amazing troupe of impro-puppeteers!

We are very excited to welcome three new cast members to this Fringe season.
We have:
-Hallie Goodman (an puppeteer & improviser from New York how has worked with The Improv Conspiracy).
-Amanda Knights (A regular performer with Impro Melbourne & First Draft Theatre).
-Danny Alder (An actor/improviser who was seen in Eastenders & was a regular performer with impro/comedy troupe The Crew).
They will be joining our senior Mighty Little troupe members who will be returning for Fringe duties: Scott McAteer, Caitlin Yolland, Petra Elliott & Rob Lloyd.

The Mighty Little Puppet Show is at The Butterfly Club from Monday Sept 19 to 25 – 10pm. No show Friday.

Tickets can be purchased at: https://thebutterflyclub.com/show/the-mighty-littles

For more info: https://melbournefringe.com.au/program?event/the-mighty-little-puppet-show/9f769e57-2b1a-4c3c-963a-f039b1dfeba8

Political Asylum’s U.S. Election Comedy Special – A satirical guide to the upcoming U.S. election

By Lisa Clark

Political Asylum has been a regular part of the Melbourne Comedy scene since 2009 with a monthly show and elections specials, it has also always been part of Melbourne Fringe Festival. This year at Fringe they could not help but do a special about American Politics and the extraordinary shenanigans leading up to this year’s American Presidential Election. This is probably influenced by the fact that two of the main producers of Political Asylum have been living in the U.S. for the past couple of years.

The atmosphere in the main room at The Lithuanian Club was set beautifully with the American flag flying on screen, red white and blue balloons and streamers (Go Doggies! Oops the AFL finals are on, sorry) and American political music playing, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan etc. Host Toby Halligan was energetic and firing on point with great snark and sharp observations and carried the ninety minute showcase well.

First up Laura Davis who just keeps getting better every time I see her, slaying the crowd with her material about gun control and then her magnificent feminist gear which though slightly off point was so stunning she had the audience gobsmacked and delighted. This was followed by Michael Shaffer who really impressed with his relaxed on stage persona and smart up to the minute jokes about things that have just happened in American politics. I look forward to seeing more of Michael in the future.

Impressive up and coming Alanta Colley changed the pace of straight standup to present us with a hilarious political quiz a bit like Who Am I from Sale of The Century but without the home viewer. It was a fantastic way to expose the politician’s appalling and ridiculously inappropriate CV. Am looking forward to seeing Alanta’s own show later in the festival.

Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall changed the pace again, for his delightfully daggy, “Meanwhile in Canada”. A Canadian expat, Alasdair celebrated Prime Minister Trudeau and focused on the contrast of the sanity of Canadian politics verses its disturbing next door neighbour. He used the big screen for his accompanying pictures well.

It was time to welcome back Matt Kenneally from his two years studying in America. He had a lot to joke about with his only glitch being his ignorance about the rise of gun violence in Melbourne over the past year. Not to the extent of the US but worrying none the less. He’ll soon pick things up and anyway, this was about America and there he knew what he was talking about. He knows people who are voting Trump and why. He shared the terrifying heart of the election. It’s great to see Matt on stage again doing comedy about politics where he has always shone.

It’s also fantastic to see Jess Moir on stage bringing her bubbly personality to political comedy again. Not sure why I’ve not see her for a while but she’s an intelligent endearing comedian and I hope she does more in the future. Then the traditional finale with the not quite so bubbly but still amazingly energetic Grandfather of Australian political comedy Rod Quantock. Still able to surprise and have fun while making caustic observances and inciting revolt. He’s a legend.

I loved that the comedians stayed on topic and were making astute jokes about recent incidents rather than hashing up old tropes. I particularly appreciated the lack of lazy ‘jokes’ about Donald Trumps hair. These were good political humourists, they went for the policies and the quotes.

This was the first of two Political Asylum’s at Fringe this year. The main team (Toby Halligan, Mathew Kenneally, Jess Moir, Alanta Colley and Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall) are a solid group worth getting out for and the guests which will be different for the next performances will be just as good as tonight’s I’m sure. What better way of spending a night at Fringe than laughing at America.

Political Asylum’s U.S. Election Comedy Special is on at The Lithuanian Club – Main Theatre Sept 16 and 17 at 8.30pm

https://melbournefringe.com.au/program?event/political-asylums-us-election-comedy-special/eefbbb7b-b5a7-4470-9527-01cba29fa458

Old Maude by Infinite Dads

By Colin Flaherty

Setting a sketch show entirely on board a flight bound for Bali is a fascinating concept and the team at Infinite Dads (Jarryd Bendall and Jenni Townsend) present some fun high-jinx at 40000 feet. Greeted by the cabin crew and enduring all the pre-flight checks, the audience is transported to this claustrophobic environment where we meet all manner of wacky characters. While the audio safety briefing is pretty funny, the video version on the facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Infinite-Dads-149616882119093/) is better as it fills in some of the gaps.

They cover most of the standard tropes of air travel but thankfully not the food. It’s not all predictable fare – they manage to add some interesting twists to some well-trodden paths and there are a number of absurd sketches that go in inspired directions. However, the many arguing couples and a pair of YouTube teens could easily fit into any setting and seem to have been shoehorned into the theme.

The pair throw themselves wholeheartedly into the performance with plenty of exaggerated gesturing and wacky voices. They corpse a number of times, slowing things down a little, and this enthusiasm rubs off onto the audience somewhat. When they introduce a third character into this two hander things get a little clunky. Bendall ducks off stage, re-emerges as a new character and does the same disappearing act to get the original guy back into the scene.

Using minimal costume changes, they transition from one character to the next quickly to ensure that scenes flow seamlessly from one to the next, which happens so smoothly that it leaves minimal room for audience applause. Townsend switches genders for some of the roles but this is often not vital to the scene. Perhaps she digs putting on a comical moustache?

Being set on a plane means that staging is streamlined as they are usually performing seated next to each other rather than bouncing all over the stage but they get physical when required. It was nice to see all the sketches being tied neatly into the same world. This was not just with characters from other sketches popping in and out but a montage of the entire cabin that shows a particular sequence of events– a clever concept that saves this from being a sequence of disparate scenes.

The airplane concept was a pleasant surprise as the pre festival publicity doesn’t mention it at all. With almost everyone used to airline travel nowadays, there is plenty to appeal in this amusing hour of sketch by a pair of talented comedic actors.

Old Maude is on at The Improv Conspiracy until September 23.
https://melbournefringe.com.au/program?event/old-maude/8320dbb1-44cc-4f1a-b292-3dc94f145f52

5 Good Reasons to see COSMONAUT by Ryan Good

1. The show is a countdown of the worst sex tips ever written by Cosmopolitan Magazine

2. You will learn sex moves involving grapes, your hair, pepper, lube, and ukuleles. They are all terrible.

3. You can see a bisexual, polyamorous American storytelling comedian. Mark that one off your bucket list.

4. There is a dream sequence that involves the death of Donald Trump. It’s very (if only temporarily) theraputic.

5. Silver spandex. Light up dildo. Enough said.

COSMONAUT by Ryan Good is on at The Arts House Sept 16 til Oct 1

https://melbournefringe.com.au/program?event/cosmonaut/c9aa70e3-8d65-43c4-8275-f1808627f246/session/606b512e-1032-4ec6-840c-f830ef3c2f5c/

The Astruds: Rent (is Due)

By Lisa Clark

The Astruds are a musical duo with a show full of great songs, beautiful singing and lots of laughs. Sarah Wall & Freya Long could easily have chosen to be a straight music duo but they have chosen the more interesting comedy song path and they have chosen well.

Opening with Sarah strumming her guitar wearing headphones sitting on the floor in a living room, there is a sense that the Astruds are letting us into their twenty-something world of life after an arts degree, in a share house on the dole. For anyone who’s older and been there, there is a great deal of enjoyment to be had from the nostalgia, little has changed. Many performers pick a theme and try to shoehorn their non-theme material into it, but The Astruds stay on theme throughout, illustrating their world with songs like “Give me a Job”, “I’m wearing Grandma’s rags”, “The Centrelink Blues”, “When Will I be a Celebrity?” and “Where does the money go” and the lyrics are clever and funny.

The Astruds main inspiration clearly comes from Garfunkle & Oates and Flight of The Conchords in song style, gentle melodic harmonies and also a grunge aesthetic, but then this grungey style may have been specifically implemented to fit in with the show’s theme. The grand finale shows they can do sazzy showbiz and they sprinkle some minor cute costume additions throughout. These are taken on by Sarah and include grandma’s robe for “..Grandma’s Rags”, a Tutti Fruity hat for the charming Brazillian inspired “Fruit Song” and finally a decoupaged sparkly hat with a tribute to Queen B (which I couldn’t see clearly up the back) whom I assumed was Beyonce, but the song “Chocolate” was clearly based on the tune to “Toxic” by another “B” Britney Spears. It had the audience laughing a lot which is the main thing.

Sarah and Freya are very good comedy song writers who only need to put more work into their appealing on stage personas and in-between song banter to have a top comedy festival show on their hands. They need to fearlessly commit to the anger and frustration of sharehouse conflict and dealing with passive aggressive housemates, this helps give the show more dramatic interest and colour. The comedy writing in the songs is so good that comedy banter between the songs should be a piece of cake! My other advice would be for the duo to tell us their names at the top and let us get to know them (or at least the stage version of them) a bit more.

Australia has produced some of the best musical comedy in the world and I’ve been waiting for the new wave of musical comedy talent for a while. Earlier this year I was astonished by the musical comedy talent of Jude Perl and now I’m impressed by The Astruds. Sarah Wall & Freya Long are excellent musicians with gorgeous harmonising voices and funny songs to sing. Things are looking good for musical comedy.

The Astruds perform Rent (is Due) at The Butterfly Club til Sept 18

https://melbournefringe.com.au/program?event/the-astruds-rent-is-due/888ea559-b124-4198-9b07-0dc12ac2fcd7