Four hours. And an interval on top of that. This thing is long. When I mentioned to my housemate that the Fringe website said The Three Minute Project would go for approximately 240 minutes, we figured there must have been an error. “If it’s really four hours long it better be fucking brilliant,” were his words. Well, director Genevieve Brandenburg eludes genius in her project, but overall it’s not an unenjoyable evening’s outing, despite the length.

The concept of The Three Minute Project is taken from Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. Warhol took potential 1960s stars and filmed them silently, in black and white, as a kind of alternate portrait. Local artist Genevieve Brandenburg first saw this series when she was in high school. After graduating in 2010, Brandenburg was exposed to a number of people who she felt were interesting, talented and creative individuals and she decided that these people were worthy of something like Warhol’s portraits. Brandenburg spoke to her audience before screening The Three Minute Project. She spoke eloquently and earnestly about the reasons she felt compelled to create this work of art and what she hoped it would reveal about the people involved as well as about the nature of human beings. It is Brandenburg’s professed belief that you can “never truly know a person because everyone is immensely deep”: she expressed a hope that her film would reveal this, along with standing as a celebration of the individuality and creativity of humans in general. It is a lofty ambition and one that is probably only partially achieved.

In order to achieve her goals, Brandenburg worked with a similar concept to Warhol’s Screen Tests. 221 people were told to sit alone in front of a camera for three minutes but were not informed of much else. There are differences to Warhol’s work – for example, Brandenburg and cameraman Sam Young work in colour and with sound. This quite drastically alters the feel of the portraits created, although not necessarily in a bad way: the feeling they create is very different and as such is seems unfair to compare the results. The Reading Room serves as the backdrop for Bradenburg’s subjects, almost every one being given a floral chair to sit in, set against a blank wall. Although filmed over several months, this chair and the blank wall remain the same with only one exception. There is also a consistent buzz of noise from another room.

Watching the reactions of subjects put in front of the camera is entertaining, for the most part. While many did the Warholian thing and were silent, staring either at or away from the camera, there were a larger number who talked. Those who did seemed to use the word ‘awkward’ a lot, which is understandable. Some attempted humour, others chose to communicate in song or through the quotes of some literary idol, some told stories and some attempted to say something deep and meaningful (that usually came off simply sounding pretentious or naive). It was interesting that those who spoke tended to fall into two categories. Firstly and more commonly, there were those who seemed to be wanting to put on a show. Sometimes this was through jokes (the guy with the whale joke and the one with hand puppets each deserve a mention) but for the most part it seemed that people were performing a kind of character. Those who did not fall into that category seemed to see the camera as a kind of confessional to vent or to reveal something of themselves. Both say a lot about what these subjects might be like as people.

The subjects Brandenburg has gathered for The Three Minute Project were meant to cover a wide variety of walks of life: workers and artists, young and old, friends and strangers were apparently involved. While there are a few exceptions (mostly older family members, by the look of things) most of those put in front of the camera appear to be between the age of sixteen and twenty-six and, although their piercings and hair colours may alter, the majority of them seem decidedly middle class. That said, it doesn’t make the subjects less fascinating. What Brandenburg has created is an interesting record of Adelaide’s young, ‘alternative’ (and I use that word very loosely) crowd: a collection of portraits of a specific time and place. The show dragged at times, but overall those four hours went much more quickly than I had expected them to.

Press-Play! is the title given to three different plays presented by the Adelaide Duende Collective in the Bakehouse Theatre’s Studio over two weeks. The first week saw Renee Gentle present a solo performance entitled ‘Six Dollar Solitude’. Two plays, ‘Truth Teller’ and ‘Germany Diary’, take the stage during Press-Play!’s second week.

My timing was a bit off in going to review Press-Play! I had realised that there were a number of different plays being performed under this title but had not checked the schedule properly until a few days before I was due to go see the show. As such, I found myself seeing the final performance of ‘Six Dollar Solitude’, which is a shame because I’m hoping this review will make a few people want to go see it.

The premise of Press-Play! is simple: if you could go back and re-live your past, would you play it the same? In ‘Six Dollar Solitude’ we are introduced to the character of Alexandra, a young woman who buys a bike, gets on and keeps riding north. In her conversation with her bike, lovingly named Gus, Alex talks about her desire to get away from Adelaide and ends up deciding to ride her way to Alice Springs. During the course of this ride Alex encounters a number of different characters, all of whom are played with panache by Renee Gentle.

Gentle is a remarkable performer. The first character she steps into is that of a guy working at a bicycle store. The physicality Gentle uses to portray this character is amazing. Although the deep voice she puts on is still decidedly feminine, the delivery of the lines is completely masculine, the laughs and casually tossed out lines giving a solid impression of a certain male stereotype. The body language Gentle uses – her stance, the way she grips the bike and talks to the unseen customer – combined with the innuendo apparent in the script complete this picture of masculinity and provide some of the funniest moments in the show. Gentle moves on to the role of Alexandra, the main character of the show and the customer who the bicycle salesman was talking to in the play’s first moments. This is the character who takes us through the entire show, although others continue to come in at various points: Alex’s parents, the husband she is separated from, people she meets on her way to Alice Springs and a ditzy friend. Some of the characterisations are weaker than others. Stuart, the soon to be ex-husband, is a rather one-dimensional character, but it appears this is the fault of the script more than Gentle’s performance. It’s a wonder to see how quickly Gentle is capable of switching characters and embodying them so completely.

The stage is set up simply with a bike, a phone and a few black boxes, allowing Gentle’s performance to be the focus of the play. The lighting and music are similarly simple but effective. Lights are dimmed when Gentle changes characters, helping the audience to differentiate between them easily. Ting Yun’s original compositions play throughout the play from start to finish. While these are beautiful and usually not too distracting, there are moments when the music feels too obvious. For example, whenever Gentle’s Stuart appears the music seems to grow particularly ominous and almost reminiscent of crime shows. Apart from that, the show seems to be put together seamlessly.

Its script remains the only aspect that left me wanting more. The play starts well peppered with jokes, funny characters and relatable moments. However, its conclusion left me dissatisfied. It seemed to me that despite the physical and emotional journey the character made, not enough really happened. That said, in twenty-five minutes that is quite to be expected and it didn’t make the duration of the performance unpleasant, it just left me a little frustrated at the end.

Gentle’s performance alone made Press-Play!’s ‘Six Dollar Solitude’ worth watching. If the Adelaide Duende Collective have succeeded in getting people equally as talented involved in their other shows then they’ll definitely be worth seeing.

When I was a child I used to put on plays. Urged along by my parents’ encouragement, I would enlist the help of my younger brother and sister, as well as any other kids in the vicinity, to create some kind of masterpiece. I would have a clear image in my mind of exactly what I wanted to present to my audience. Inevitably, things would go wrong, but the audience remained largely appreciative. Anthony Frith in: How to Cook Anteater and Save the Galaxy for only Seven Dollars a Day reminded me very strongly of these early productions.

How to Cook Anteater is not up to the calibre of other shows I’ve seen so far at the Fringe. Kitchen noises are evident, there is confusion about the set-up, and the occasional awkward pause that seems to indicate a forgotten movement or word. That said, none of these things take away from the fact that there’s actually some good material under all the nerves and errors. In fact, many of the ‘faults’ of the show make it more entertaining.

Robert Kuhne and Axel Carrington kick off proceedings playing rough, blues-style music , one of them dressed as a scientist and the other in a really cheap-looking Santa suit. I’ve seen these guys play once before in their band Joe Head Joe and remember a lot of enthusiastic lyrics about meat. They bring some of their animal-product-related goodness to the small Ed Castle stage in How to Cook Anteater, but they spend more time playing intros to segments and acting in various skits.

The structure of the show is fairly straightforward: there are several sketches related to different topics. Science, bus stops, confessions and Westerns are the areas covered. Anthony Frith, Robert Kuhne and Alex Streeter (dressed for the entire show in a tiger suit) join Joe Head Joe in these sketches with various combinations of the five appearing at different times. The sketches are unpredictable and have an appealing, almost child-like silliness. The group are at their best when they’re making the least sense – a tiger tackling someone, bad lip syncing to pre-recorded tracks and sketches that last for two lines. These moments are enough to carry the audience through the rougher moments of the show.

There is never a moment in the show that makes you cringe or feel sorry for the actors but there are jokes that fall flat, lines that falter in the middle and some long moments between sketches where everyone seems to be figuring out what comes next. But this is to be expected. While several of the guys involved in both the writing and the performance of How to Cook Anteater have been on stage before it’s mostly been in a musical capacity. They haven’t done anything like this before. This combined with first show jitters, inter-state actors, last minute re-writes and the discovery part way through the show that they were running over time undoubtedly led to some of the hiccups experienced. The fact that all of the cast members are aware of this is comforting and I did my best to encourage them. The moments that worked were genuinely funny and the others showed promise: with a little refinement they could have something hilarious in time for next year’s Fringe.

They also might want to consider changing venues next time. The back room of the Ed Castle is set up awkwardly: two rows of chairs at the front of the stage are framed by small tables further back. But it’s the open door to the kitchen that proves most distracting, the bright light issuing from within as well as the sounds of pots clanging. The upside is the insight into the lives of the people within: “and then she was all like” said by one guy and followed by a terrible impersonation of a female voice remained a highlight.

How to Cook Anteater needs a little refining, overall. The roughness and anti-humour is part of the appeal, but some polish, confidence and weeding could leave these guys with something promising.

I’m not a fan of physical comedy. The sight of someone falling over does not make me giggle unless it’s happening at work or somewhere else where I’m equally starved for entertainment. I think it’s the fact that physical comedy so often tends to be either unoriginal or poorly executed. After seeing Dr Brown’s Befrdfgth, I’ve had to change my opinion.

The audience in Tuxedo Cat’s Yellow Room are talking loudly before the show begins. The 9:45pm start time means that the majority of them have a drink or two under their belts and it seems like it’d take a lot to stop them from chattering inanely to their neighbours. But no: all it takes is one look from Dr Brown. A peeking look from between the red curtains set up at the back of the small stage. Dr Brown spends the first ten minutes or so minutes behind this curtain and it’s a testament to his abilities that not once during this time did the audience get restless. Quite the opposite actually as the tension caused by Dr Brown’s actions as well as his interaction with the curtain were the cause of a lot of laughter. When Dr Brown moved out from behind the curtain the hilarity only escalated.

To describe the different elements of the show in detail would not only be time-consuming but would ruin the element of surprise inherently important to Dr Brown’s act. It is difficult to judge which parts of the show are always present and which are elements influenced by the audience or by what can be heard beyond the walls of the Yellow Room. Some things, however, must be consistent. Dr Brown, whose real name is Philip Burgers, has studied at elite French clown school Ecote Phillip Gaulier and he combines typically clownish facial expressions and movement with completely original ideas. Physicality, performance art and anti-humour are all utilised by Dr Brown to hilarious effect. Whether he’s looking disapprovingly at hecklers, getting an audience member to hold his eyes open or pretending to climb inside a bull, he manages to make the audience laugh. A lot. Oh, and he does all of this without uttering more than a word here or there. It’s very impressive stuff.

“You can get the fuck out now,” is the only real sentence that Dr Brown utters for the entire show. If I had followed this advice straight away perhaps I would have been left with a slightly more favourable overall impression of the show. There were moments in Dr Brown’s performance that dragged a little and there were a few jokes he returned to oftener than I would have liked but, overall, I was thoroughly impressed. Unfortunately, the segment after he had uttered those words seemed to drag a little. At first it was entertaining watching Dr Brown pull various audience members outside, haul their chairs away, steal their belongings and attempt to kick them as they exited. The audience’s refusal to comply quickly with his wishes meant that there was a lot of time spent on this section. However, there were definitely rewarding moments in it and I feel that it was partly the audience’s fault – their reluctance to leave – that caused this slight blemish on what was an otherwise entertaining and extraordinary show.

The end was not enough to mar the entire performance. The good points far outweigh the bad and I would highly recommend Dr Brown’s Befrdfgth to anyone who wants to see an original and unpredictable comedy. Be warned though, Dr Brown is a very friendly performer with an unusual idea of what is acceptable interaction between strangers. He may try to kiss you, get you to wave the hem of his robe around or climb over you. But, really, it’s things like that that make Befrdfgth so incredibly fun.

I don’t think I can overstate how much I thoroughly enjoyed this show. Just Like the Movies does not have any death-defying stunts nor does it make you think long and hard about anything in particular, but golly it’s a lot of fun.

Matthew Gregan makes his way slowly across the small stage at Paper String Plastic, singing about a place. He takes up his guitar as well as a position sitting on an amp under an American flag. His vocals are a softer version of the music playing as the audience first enters the venue: a bit bluesy, a bit country. The space is intimate and when Josephine Were walks on the stage the audience is captivated from the first words she utters. Were, sometimes in rhyme and sometimes not, declares that she is going to America. There she hopes to find a man, someone to love, “just like the movies.” Such a declaration sounds cloyingly sweet and saccharine but the jokes that are immediately apparent and Were’s honest, sometimes self-deprecating delivery keep them from being so. As the show progresses with Were encountering bad men with movie-star looks seemingly everywhere she goes, the audience’s attention is completely transfixed. Their heads follow the movements she makes on the stage and everyone is laughing, from the twenty-something beardy guy on my left (who smelt vaguely of beer) to the fifty-something couple on my right. Were studied with physical theatre company SITI in New York and her physicality combined with winning facial expressions, absurd situations and near-flawless timing make her the star of the show.

This is not to downplay the role that musician Gregan plays, however. His guitar is the perfect soundtrack to Were’s words, enhancing the moods and setting of the show subtly. With influences from Bob Dylan to B.B. King, the aim was to “make the music regional”, Gregan says. Whilst the obvious on-stage interaction between Were and Gregan is minimal – confined to the occasional, purposeful look at a dramatic music change, that kind of thing – the nature of the (mostly) blues music played matches the places and times that Were uses to break the show into segments and give it order.

The fact that Were’s speech and Gregan’s music match so perfectly is not surprising when you hear how much time the pair have spent thinking about creating something like Just Like the Movies. They’ve known each other a long time and have always intended to collaborate on a project. Were and Gregan had discussed the idea of setting some of her performance poetry to music before she headed on a study-holiday to the United States. Whilst there, Were noticed that there was a lot of bad stand-up comedy around but questioned whether she could do better. “I decided to challenge myself,” she smiles. While travelling Were had been writing poetry – the sort intended to be performed rather than anthologised – and first tried them out in comedy clubs. When she returned to Adelaide it took a lot of coaxing and a lot of cider to convince her to share the more embarrassing of these poems with Gregan. “There’s a lot of me in there,” she admits, a lot of the stories within Just Like the Movies are based on Were’s own experiences. There’s a story about spooning on a plane that I don’t blame Were for being embarrassed to share, but as Gregan says “they’re the only ones I really want to hear”. Were’s most uncomfortable moments are those that the audience seems to find most entertaining. Just Like the Movies began as a 15 minute segment in Bird Calls, a collection of solo female performances, at Adelaide’s 2011 Fringe Festival. It was then developed into its present form in time for the 2011 Melbourne Fringe Festival, although according to both Were and Gregan it varies a little every night depending on audience reaction.

Were and Gregan, under the directorial influence of Terence Crawford, have produced a show that flows easily, is funny and poignant, and manages to use both rhyme and pop culture references without being at all annoying. If you’re a poor student type who can only afford to go see one cheapish show (or even if you’re not), go see Just Like the Movies. It might not make you smarter, but it’ll sure cheer you up.

For more info, check out http://justlikethemoviesperformance.tumblr.com/

It has been a long while since I’ve seen any new sketch comedy. Although once a popular form of comedy, particularly in Britain, recent years have seen a decline in sketch shows both on television and on stage. The Golden Phung, a young group of Adelaide performers, aim to fill that sketch show void as much as they can and they do so admirably.

The Golden Phung, whose name comes from an insult levelled at cast member Roy Phung after a lost poker match, formed with the idea of bringing together young Adelaide Centre for the Arts graduates to create a bit of sketch show magic (not of the magician-related kind – although magicians do feature in the show). Having performed at both the Adelaide and Melbourne Fringe, the group are currently in their third incarnation. Spurred on by positive reviews and the desire to eventually create a television program, The Golden Phung seem like they’re here to stay.

Encylcopedia of Everything opens with a filmed sketch that introduces the various actors before moving on to a live explanation of the show’s purpose: ostensibly, to teach them what they need to know about everything. As a task it is very ambitious but as a premise it allows the actors to tackle any topic that takes their fancy whether it is ‘Unemployment’, ‘Religion’ or ‘Miscellaneous’. The interspersion of live sketches with pre-filmed clips is something that continues throughout the performance. While this could be jarring, it actually has the effect of tying the performance together and giving it continuity. Cast members Lucy Markiewicz and Peter Cortissos are quick to point out that these segments also allow them to use effects and settings that would have been difficult for the stage and, perhaps more importantly, give the actors an opportunity to make costume changes. Both the live and filmed sketches are deftly executed with a healthy dollop of over-the-top physicality and witty lines.

The sketches and jokes in the performance are wide ranging, with a good deal of meta-reference. Collaboration is behind everything The Golden Phung produce and it is this which makes their whole production work. The cast members are eager to share the variety of influences and writing styles that different individuals bring to the table, hoping that having such a variety will appeal to audiences of equally varying ages and backgrounds. The majority of the sketches that the team produce to meet this goal succeed in their purpose. Whilst there were a couple of skits that felt like they ran a little too long, they were outnumbered by the amount of punchy, relevant material. Particularly of note is Eddie Morrison’s turn as a street preacher whose words quickly turn from homophobic to homoerotic and a scarily accurate Centrelink-related sketch. Each of the seven performers brings something different to the mix and every combination of these actors produces a different dynamic, preventing any formulaic feeling in the skits.

The tiny upstairs performance space of the Worldsend Hotel could be a nightmare for some productions, but for The Golden Phung it mostly works. The audience are settled in cosily and the stage is very close to the front row: all of this creates a nice kind of intimacy that works well with the types of scenes created. The sound and lighting booth is settled on the edge of the audience space. Lisa Cioffi, who uses both sound and lighting simply and effectively, and video-man Calen ‘The Croyden Strangler’ Vanstone share this booth, and their laughter and cheers can be heard loudly throughout the performance. Although in theory this could be grating, in this particular instance the sort of camaraderie that such actions seemed to betray was actually quite endearing.

In fact, such a nice feeling that the different people involved are really there to support each other and have fun permeates the entire production. With an attitude like that, it is hard as a member of the audience not to be ready to laugh, even at the silliest or most distasteful of jokes. Running at just under an hour, Golden Phung’s Encyclopedia of Everything is quick, snappy and enjoyable.