2008

Adelaide Fringe 2008
Comedy
Rove McManus

Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide
March 15.
Melbourne Comedy Festival
Melbourne Town Hall
April 10-12. Tickets $39.90 – $ 44.50.

On stage for Rove McManus’s stand-up gig at the Thebarton Theatre is a giant picture of a goldfish in a bowl. The fish has large Disney eyes and extruding from its tail, in streaming black calligraphy comes Rove’s famous name. It is a joke very much at his own expense and it is a likeable …

Back with a Vengeance
Barry Humphries

Her Majesty
June 29.
Until July 7, 2007

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Barry Humphries is celebrating fifty years as a music hall artiste. In 1957 Mrs Everage from Moonie Ponds first peered around the door with her beady eyes and imperious curiosity to say hello. She really was a housewife then, with dull straight hair and a drab cloth coat, but she knew aqua from duck-egg blue and of course, her prudery and pretensions …

2005

The Pleasure of Their Company

Shaun Micallef and Glynn Nicholas

The Arts Theatre

Murray Bramwell

There have been plenty of comedy double acts in recent times – HG and Roy, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, Mick Molloy and Tony Martin, to name just a few. But, on first glance, Glynn Nicholas and Shaun Micallef seem an unlikely combination. For a start, Nicholas has forged a very successful career as a solo comic with a memorable range of signature characters …

Adelaide Fringe March 2004

Murray Bramwell

There is nothing like a visit to a psychic to give your brain a tweak and that is exactly what Michael Santos is here to do. Or maybe he will just do your head in. With Sidekick Bernard and not-very-subtle audience plant, Raymond, Santos (aka David Sant) is the Mindbender, reaching into the audience to tell us – Raymond’s radio mike permitting – our names, addresses and our deepest thoughts. It is hilariously cheesy …

2003
Back to My Roots and Other Suckers
Barry Humphries
Her Majesty’s

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Barry Humphries is not only back to his roots but also quite a few of his old tricks. Playing to full houses for a short season at Her Majesty’s, Humphries has rounded up the usual suspects for our delectation and occasional panic. These now include somebody called Barry Humphries. Not the Barry Humphries I shouldn’t think, but a simulacrum who, last time around, appeared …

15 February, 2002.
Murray Bramwell

Partly It’s About Love…Partly It’s About Massacre
by Fiona Sprott. Savage Wit and Vitalstatistix.
The Bakehouse, Adelaide. Until 16 March.
Tickets $18, $12 . Bookings FringeTIX (08) 8201 4567

Jezebel is back, not so much with a vengeance – although first-degree butter knife wounds are involved here – but with a story to tell about her heart, her hormones and the deep ambivalence of commitment. Jezebel is the creation of writer Fiona Sprott and actor …

1999
Remember You’re Out
Barry Humphries

Her Majesty’s

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The heavy red curtain rises on Her Majesty’s elderly stage, the auditorium is flooded with digitally-operated blue light and, through the blinding haze, Barry Humphries clambers out of a camphor glory box. It is an extravagant entrance for the shy, retiring Mr Humphries, a comic artist who prefers to communicate through proxies and intermediaries. But for his new show, Remember You’re Out, he is making an exception. Perhaps …