2006
Murray Bramwell

Whenever the Fringe is talked about – big statistics are sure to follow. In 2006 there are 4000 artists, 1400 technicians, 500 acts and 6000 performances. That is a lot of action – and in the Darwinian struggle for audiences some already will have come to grief at the box office.

In theatre, where more than a hundred items are listed, Adelaide is seeing a quantum increase in activity and, already, a great deal that is engaging and high calibre. There are shows turning up wherever two or three can be gathered together, and some venues – Queens Theatre, Union Hall, the Fringe Club at Higher Ground, Holden Street and the Bakehouse – are hubs of enterprise.
Many local productions have short seasons supported by dedicated posses of friends and family, while interstate and international shows must compete first for visibility and then for audiences.

Among the strong contenders in the first week is Andrew Dawson’s Absence and Presence, an elegantly staged solo mime and video portrait of his relationship with his father, an English suburban postman, which deftly captures a life lived in habit, contemplation – and, the artist later realizes when he returns to the postman’s own letters – one of insight and affection also. The Bogus Woman, Kay Adshead’s compelling portrait of an African asylum seeker falling into the indifferent world of the UK detention centres, features a strong performance from Sarah Niles and has much to say to the land of Baxter and Villawood.

Also at the Queens is Brink Productions’ reprise of 4.48 Psychosis – Sarah Kane’s play for voices on the subject of love, anguish, therapy and suicide. Director Geordie Brookman keeps his four actors cornered on a square of sand . Notorious, because she took her life soon after writing it, Kane’s play, is problematic, but has mordant wit, articulate anger and febrile poetry – Brink does well to capture these contesting struggles.

Women’s perspectives are also to the fore in local company, Maiden’s staging of Clare McIntyre’s Low Level Panic. Thoughtfully directed by Rachel Paterson, it is a study of faltering self esteem as three young women confront their emotions and the often predatory fantasies of others. The Good Body, a new work from vagina monologist Eva Ensler, is also about self perception, weight gain and the tyrannies of beauty for women. Leah Purcell gives a vivacious performance with the Botox speech clearly an audience highlight.

Cabaret is in good order this Fringe. Borge Again, Rainer Hersch’s witty tribute to Victor Borge is a must. Pluck, the zany string trio is fun, and Eddie Perfect continues to amaze.

The Adelaide Review, No.288, March 24, 2006. p14.