Adelaide Fringe
\nTheatre<\/p>\n
Scorch
\nby Stacey Gregg
\nPrime Cut Productions
\nFebruary 15.
\nHolden Street Theatres until March 19<\/p>\n
Angel
\nby Henry Naylor
\nRedbeard Productions
\nFebruary 15.
\nHolden Street Theatres until March 19<\/p>\n
We Live by the Sea
\nby Alex Howarth and Cast
\nPatch of Blue
\nFebruary 17.
\nThe Black Forest, Royal Croquet Club
\nUntil March 19.<\/p>\n
Bookings : adelaidefringe.com.au or phone 1300 621 255.<\/p>\n
The Fringe has once again inundated Adelaide\u2019s\u00a0 inner city and environs and, after Saturday night\u2019s luminous parade, is open for strolling business. The Garden of Unearthly Delights and Gluttony return to familiar sites at the East End and the Royal Croquet Club has now set up its tents by the River Torrens.<\/p>\n
The Fringe program lists 1357 events and, second only to Edinburgh in its scale, offers an uncurated smorgasbord ranging, as ever, from the sublimely extraordinary to the potentially horrendous. In theatre alone there are 149 listings in locations including The Bakehouse, GC at the German Club, and Tandanya.<\/p>\n
Holden Street Theatres, guided by Martha Lott, have again scheduled excellent productions, including sponsoring recent Fringe award winners from Edinburgh. Scorch, by Belfast writer Stacey Gregg, and vibrantly performed in the round by Amy McAllister, is a revealing, sometimes confronting, depiction of Kes, a teenage girl gender-transitioning to the boy world.<\/p>\n
Gregg\u2019s narrative swirls with hip hop cadences, social media namechecks and Irish patois, as Kes (named for the Ken Loach film about a boy and a kestrel) finds a soulmate\u00a0 and falls disastrously into legal peril in the innocent pursuit of love.\u201d I flew too close to a star,\u201d Kes says, and the audience feels the heat. Scorch is splendidly poised, and McAllister is outstanding.<\/p>\n
Following last year\u2019s Echoes, Holden Street is presenting another play from the trilogy Arabian Nightmares by UK writer Henry Naylor.\u00a0 Angel also is topical and gives a human voice to the Syrian crisis as Rehana, a young woman from Kobane in Northern Syria abandons her studies in law to join a women\u2019s militia and rescue her father who has remained to repel ISIS attacks on their\u00a0 besieged\u00a0 town. Based on actual events, Angel describes how Rehana became a lethal sniper and a mythic hero of the resistance to Islamic State.<\/p>\n
Tautly directed by Michael Cabot, this monologue is fresh, sometimes funny, suspenseful, and compellingly presented by Avital Lvova, as she describes the catastrophic events which changed Rehana\u2019s situation from ordinary, secular Westernised life as a student to the killing fields of cruel and barbaric invasion. Angel is another early Fringe four star highlight.<\/p>\n
We Live by the Sea, researched and written by Alex Howarth, in collaboration with the cast of Yorkshire company, Patch of Blue, is a richly detailed, gently presented study of autism as experienced by Katie (memorably played by Alex Brain) a high school student parented by her loving , often exasperated,\u00a0 sister Hannah (Alexandra Simonet). Katie has an invisible friend (made visible by Lizzie Grace) and meets Ryan (Tom Coliandris ) who has demons of his own.<\/p>\n
While candidly portraying the difficulties and isolating effects of autism, this play captures the intensity and originality of Katie\u2019s experiences and the warmth and insight she brings to others. Tender, but never mawkish, with a lyrical musical score, We Live by the Sea is an excursion well worth taking.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
\u201cLight and heat in the Adelaide Fringe\u201d The Australian, February 22, 2017, p.15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adelaide Fringe Theatre Scorch by Stacey Gregg Prime Cut Productions February 15. Holden Street Theatres until March 19 Angel by Henry Naylor Redbeard Productions February 15. Holden Street Theatres until March 19 We Live by the Sea by Alex Howarth and Cast Patch of Blue February 17. The Black Forest, Royal Croquet Club Until March 19. Bookings : adelaidefringe.com.au or phone 1300 621 255. The Fringe has once again inundated Adelaide\u2019s\u00a0 inner city and environs and, after Saturday night\u2019s luminous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-37","category-archive","category-fringe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2744,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2743\/revisions\/2744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}