Murray Bramwell
Twenty three days and 187,000-plus tickets later, the Adelaide Fringe has folded its tent, assembled its caravan and gone its diverse ways. In fact, by now it seems as if it has dematerialized – as if the Garden of Unearthly Delights in Rundle Park was never there, nor the comedy queues in Angas Street, nor for that matter, the flurry around any one of the 259 venues which have hosted this sprawling mega-event.
Director Christie Anthoney can be well-pleased with the work of her team of dedicated workers and volunteers and the city has – with the Fringe, another successful Womadelaide and the excitement of the Clipsal 500 – had a mad March party. The weather has been balmy and, for a while, the living easy. Even the Torrens replenished, just in the nick of time.
With 500 events to choose from, it wasn’t hard to find plenty that tickled the fancy and even the neo-cortex. The Garden of UD proved a winner again- and provided an important epicenter for the whole festival. It also had no shortage of highlights – Company of Strangers offered high-class burlesque at the Spiegeltent while, at the Bosco, Sam Wills, the Boy with Tape on his Face delightfully redefined the rules of audience engagement with gentle coercion and playful invention. The music list included Abby Dobson, the Blackeyed Susans – and Stephen Cummings, with his ramshackle memoir of temps perdu and a life in Sports.
The theatre program – intrepid often, was sometimes over-reaching and disappointing. The UK imports were notably fewer and a hint that times are getting tougher in the ruck and maul of the Fringe. At the Queens, Guy Masterson made a welcome return with David Mamet’s Oleanna ( co-starring Joanne Hartstone) and Matthew Rajac’s The Tailor of Inverness, based on the turbulent history of his Polish father in World War II, was a strong choice by Holden Street Theatres for their Edinburgh sponsorship. Also at HST, was JP from Japan’s Theatre Group Gumbo, a phantasmagoric journey into the Forest of Truth. Farcical, earnestly sentimental, often unfathomable, you could say it left no theatrical stone unturned.
The momentum that the Fringe provides can also help Adelaide companies make their mark. Martha Lott’s production of Scarborough by UK writer Fiona Evans, ably performed ( by Emily Branford and Sebastian Freeman) in the tiny confines of the board room in the Manse at Holden Street put a forbidden tryst under the close scrutiny of an audience limited to thirteen. At the Bakehouse, After the End by Dennis Kelly was also about a couple taking refuge – this time in a bomb shelter, but with all the danger on the inside. With high production values and crisp direction from Daniel Clarke, actors Hannah Norris and Nick Pelomis created a gripping work that well deserves a further season. Another highlight was Death in Bowengabbie, Caleb Lewis’s shaggy tale of a young man drawn back to a hometown where people are just dying to see him. Engagingly performed by Andrew Brackman, this is Lewis doing what he does best – telling a dark tale with a twinkle in his eye.
The Adelaide Review, No. 350, March, 2009, p.26.