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What is the Adelaide Fringe? Well, it’s part of a wider biennial international arts and cultural festival, incorporating the
best of international art, culture and world music. It is the second largest fringe event in the world and, whilst there is
some crossover with the event in Edinburgh, the artists and performances are so diverse as to render exhaustive
comparison irrelevant. So; what follows is a taste of what the 2006 festival brought to my table.
4:48 psychosis, by Sarah Kane/Brink Productions in association with budgie lung Suicide is ... ‘this ineffectual moral
spasm, the only alternative to murder’.
This is Sarah Kane’s final play. Whether a suicide note or not, it is a journey into, through and with the sick, psychotic, yet
self-aware suicidal individual. Truly modernist in structure, no protagonist is identified. Similarly, the script leaves the
number and identity of the cast open-ended and defies any conventional narrative or form.
We are guided through this decrepit passage by a mixture of internally and externally expressed monologue and
dialogue as the subject identifies its illness, debates the merits of suicide and ultimately succumbs to its cold pointy
claws. It is an extraordinarily personal piece, written shortly before Kane took her own life. All the more powerful for the
fact that it was written in the knowledge that it would only be performed posthumously.
Brink Productions assigned a cast of four characters to tackle this work and they work well. A certain symmetry is
obtained through these four characters who are at times complimentary in expression and at others, in conflict and
represent the duality and uncertainty of this tortured mind. The stage is a quadrangle of sand, upon which a fine mist of
water rains throughout the performance, which creates a contrived air of claustrophobia - a space that is both internal
and exposed. In sensory terms, it left us drowning with every breath. A truly powerful production and a sad reminder of
the tragic loss of one the our greatest contemporary playwrights.
The Bogus Woman by Kay Ashstead/ Leicester Haymarket theatre
Sarah Niles delivers an incredibly powerful performance as a young African woman who arrives in the UK seeking
asylum and is left bereft. Set in the vacant Queen’s Theatre on a stage which is not quite empty, Niles drives her 90
minute performance (no interval) with intensity and at incredible pace.
A political journalist in her native country she has fled fearing recriminations over her writing and arrives at Heathrow with
little but a glimmer of hope of what lies in wait for her in this new country. That glimmer is soon snuffed out as she
drowns in a sea of British Bureaucracy and is passed from one detention facility to the next. Niles flickers in an out of
more than 48 different characters as she portrays so many of the nameless faces of the bureaucracy which tosses her
about, effortlessly mastering regional dialects and mannerisms. The non-linear plot flicks back and forth from her
persecutory days in her native country and is effective in drawing us into her disorientation and isolation. This play won
the Edinburgh Fringe First Award a few years ago. It is particularly relevant to Australia today, where the base for recent
hysteria over border control remains.
Bob Log III
Vintage fringe. This is the stuff you go look forward to stumbling across. Bob Log III (the third, not 3) is a gimmick,but an
damn entertaining one. A singer-songwriter and one man band, Bob’s hook involves performing in a crash helmet and body
suit with an old telephone for a microphone which protrudes from his helmet and captures and distorts his heavy Arizonan
drawl nicely (see photo’s). This man from Tucson Arizona swaggers onto the stage with an air of confidence and a guitar. He
seats himself and after establishing a comfortable repartee with the crowd he launches into some of the most mind-
numbingly fast slide-guitar this side of the cosmos. A wise friend once told me ‘there is a fine line between genius and
insanity ... and you cross that lines when you strap a pair of cymbals between your thighs’. Bob Log’s cymbals are at his feet
and if we can judge him by the way he plays his music, he is a man completely possessed.
Fourplay
In a similar vein to Mr Log III, this Victorian string quartet defy convention. They are the nu skool string set. Inspired by
everything from post-rock to dub, this troupe first made a name for themselves with the indie kids for their arrangements of the
likes of The Strokes, Radiohead , The Beastie Boys and Nina Simone. However, it is their originals which are
the most inspired, so whilst wrapped in the warm wooded walls of the famous Spiegeltent*, this quartet takes us all on a
beautiful melodic trip, past preconceived notions of what it means to extend a bow beneath your chin and into the misty ether.
Travelling Wooden Circus Tent of Belgian Origiins Song Scapes by Bindi Blancher/ John Brennan
Vocal experimenteurs Bindi Blancher and John Brennand have spent 15 years in collaboration, experimenting with the audio-
sensory and spiritual qualities of the human voice. They combine to present a rich spiritual exploration of sound.
Each piece is generated from a unifying idea, created in a freeform way,based on a single thematic construct. Inspired by the
Gyoto Monks, John casts a deep meditative chant upon which Bindi’s higher tones soar and pass through. Her voice rises
and breaks up his monotone. This is as much a spiritual exercise as a musical exploration and performance. Bindi and John
begin each of their sessions together with joint meditation which centres them and builds a spiritual bridge upon which their
sounds pass. They begin their performance staring into each other and as they move closer their voices climb together until
you can actually see an electrical charge passing between them. Astonishing, yes. They continue and as he releases
sounds of the earth rumbling she moves away, leaving him to unravel and churn this dialogue with himself. Suddenly John
picks up a chair and moves around the room. Possessed by an ape he is now playful, but frightening. As John breaks off and
stops, Bindi addresses the room from above, like a bird. Perhaps a mating call, her voice is tremendous and fills the
room completely. They enter into a beautiful rhythmic dialogue. It builds and swirls, engulfing them completely. We are very
much onlookers.
Lost Babylon Shifting Point and T_factory
Some productions are best approached with caution, some are best not approached at all. This production is clearly one of
the latter. Lost Babylon promised to be an exciting exploration of the half-world in which science fiction meets reality; a
cautionary message for a generation wrapped in plastic, shielded from real risk and looking for trouble .... Think an
onstage version of The Running Man meets Series 7 : The Contenders.
Sadly, this collaboration between Shifting Point (Aus) and t_factory (Tokyo) fails to get remotely close to the sort of production
quality required to make this concept work. This ambitious international collaboration was sadly more of an odd coupling than
a marriage made in heaven. Forgotten lines and accents so heavy as to render certain characters completely unintelligible
amplified what was otherwise a tedious and frustrating affair.
The Good Body Adrian Bohm
The Good Body is Eve Ensler’s follow up to her global smash The Vagina Monologues. In a sense, it takes up where The
Vagina Monologues left off, tackling a different female body part ... this time it’s ‘the stomach’. Ensler examines what it means
to have a ‘good body’. Creating awareness of the unhealthy female bodily preoccupation is hardly new territory, however,
it is fresh in its delivery in this production. Australian actress, Leah Purcell (recent films include: The Proposition, Somersault,
Lantana) does a sound job of delivering the monologue, almost good enough to forgive her for doing so with script in hand!
This sort of fundamental paranoid vanity initially strikes me as the stuff of a female Woody Allen. Indeed, there is an ugly kind
of post-modern, self conscious humour in exposing the lengths to which people go to placate the ugly vain beast within.
However, more often than not, this humour is forced. The real affect is drawn out when Ensler lets her anger seep through
and we see the Woman baring her teeth behind a collagen-enhanced smile, which cannot conceal her seething anger. The
bitterness and frustration which follows the failure of vain attempts at achieving the impossible levels of beauty and charm she
seems to accept as benchmarks.
Ensler takes us across the world and examines the different perspectives of bodily identity from women from Italy to Africa. We
see the frustration of Isabella Rosellini, the ageing Italian model who claims she was fired from her position for wielding too
much power. Fired for upsetting the balance in a female industry which is controlled by males at every turn. We
also meet the woman who undergoes vaginal reconstruction surgery for the sake of her husband’s lagging libido but then
finds herself unexpectedly fatigued following his new-found passion for lovemaking.
In the end Ensler has succeeded in drawing us through her own dark seemingless hopeless passage of vanity into an
appreciation of the beauty of the body in all its forms.
Article and photographs by Toby Moritz
Vintage fringe. This is the stuff you go look forward to stumbling across. Bob Log III (the third, not 3) is a gimmick,but an
damn entertaining one. A singer-songwriter and one man band, Bob’s hook involves performing in a crash helmet and body
suit with an old telephone for a microphone which protrudes from his helmet and captures and distorts his heavy Arizonan
drawl nicely (see photo’s). This man from Tucson Arizona swaggers onto the stage with an air of confidence and a guitar. He
seats himself and after establishing a comfortable repartee with the crowd he launches into some of the most mind-
numbingly fast slide-guitar this side of the cosmos. A wise friend once told me ‘there is a fine line between genius and
insanity ... and you cross that lines when you strap a pair of cymbals between your thighs’. Bob Log’s cymbals are at his feet
and if we can judge him by the way he plays his music, he is a man completely possessed.
Fourplay
In a similar vein to Mr Log III, this Victorian string quartet defy convention. They are the nu skool string set. Inspired by
everything from post-rock to dub, this troupe first made a name for themselves with the indie kids for their arrangements of the
likes of The Strokes, Radiohead , The Beastie Boys and Nina Simone. However, it is their originals which are
the most inspired, so whilst wrapped in the warm wooded walls of the famous Spiegeltent*, this quartet takes us all on a
beautiful melodic trip, past preconceived notions of what it means to extend a bow beneath your chin and into the misty ether.
Travelling Wooden Circus Tent of Belgian Origiins Song Scapes by Bindi Blancher/ John Brennan
Vocal experimenteurs Bindi Blancher and John Brennand have spent 15 years in collaboration, experimenting with the audio-
sensory and spiritual qualities of the human voice. They combine to present a rich spiritual exploration of sound.
Each piece is generated from a unifying idea, created in a freeform way,based on a single thematic construct. Inspired by the
Gyoto Monks, John casts a deep meditative chant upon which Bindi’s higher tones soar and pass through. Her voice rises
and breaks up his monotone. This is as much a spiritual exercise as a musical exploration and performance. Bindi and John
begin each of their sessions together with joint meditation which centres them and builds a spiritual bridge upon which their
sounds pass. They begin their performance staring into each other and as they move closer their voices climb together until
you can actually see an electrical charge passing between them. Astonishing, yes. They continue and as he releases
sounds of the earth rumbling she moves away, leaving him to unravel and churn this dialogue with himself. Suddenly John
picks up a chair and moves around the room. Possessed by an ape he is now playful, but frightening. As John breaks off and
stops, Bindi addresses the room from above, like a bird. Perhaps a mating call, her voice is tremendous and fills the
room completely. They enter into a beautiful rhythmic dialogue. It builds and swirls, engulfing them completely. We are very
much onlookers.
Lost Babylon Shifting Point and T_factory
Some productions are best approached with caution, some are best not approached at all. This production is clearly one of
the latter. Lost Babylon promised to be an exciting exploration of the half-world in which science fiction meets reality; a
cautionary message for a generation wrapped in plastic, shielded from real risk and looking for trouble .... Think an
onstage version of The Running Man meets Series 7 : The Contenders.
Sadly, this collaboration between Shifting Point (Aus) and t_factory (Tokyo) fails to get remotely close to the sort of production
quality required to make this concept work. This ambitious international collaboration was sadly more of an odd coupling than
a marriage made in heaven. Forgotten lines and accents so heavy as to render certain characters completely unintelligible
amplified what was otherwise a tedious and frustrating affair.
The Good Body Adrian Bohm
The Good Body is Eve Ensler’s follow up to her global smash The Vagina Monologues. In a sense, it takes up where The
Vagina Monologues left off, tackling a different female body part ... this time it’s ‘the stomach’. Ensler examines what it means
to have a ‘good body’. Creating awareness of the unhealthy female bodily preoccupation is hardly new territory, however,
it is fresh in its delivery in this production. Australian actress, Leah Purcell (recent films include: The Proposition, Somersault,
Lantana) does a sound job of delivering the monologue, almost good enough to forgive her for doing so with script in hand!
This sort of fundamental paranoid vanity initially strikes me as the stuff of a female Woody Allen. Indeed, there is an ugly kind
of post-modern, self conscious humour in exposing the lengths to which people go to placate the ugly vain beast within.
However, more often than not, this humour is forced. The real affect is drawn out when Ensler lets her anger seep through
and we see the Woman baring her teeth behind a collagen-enhanced smile, which cannot conceal her seething anger. The
bitterness and frustration which follows the failure of vain attempts at achieving the impossible levels of beauty and charm she
seems to accept as benchmarks.
Ensler takes us across the world and examines the different perspectives of bodily identity from women from Italy to Africa. We
see the frustration of Isabella Rosellini, the ageing Italian model who claims she was fired from her position for wielding too
much power. Fired for upsetting the balance in a female industry which is controlled by males at every turn. We
also meet the woman who undergoes vaginal reconstruction surgery for the sake of her husband’s lagging libido but then
finds herself unexpectedly fatigued following his new-found passion for lovemaking.
In the end Ensler has succeeded in drawing us through her own dark seemingless hopeless passage of vanity into an
appreciation of the beauty of the body in all its forms.
Article and photographs by Toby Moritz
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The Adelaide Fringe