It’s hard to put Vyom Sharma’s Seven Stories into a box. However, if forced to try, I’d say it’s divided roughly equal amounts between theatre, comedy and magic show.When you mentally put those things together, one probably gets visions of red curtains, top hats, spangled jackets and scantily clad women hovering about as doves appear from handkerchiefs. This image couldn’t be further from what the show really is; raw, intimate and entertaining.

The performance takes place in Gluttony’s Carry On tent. The way in which the stage is set up is vaguely sinister in a classic ‘Sword in the Stone’ kind of way – a line of old books at the front, an empty table, and a hatstand with a dream-catcher dangling from it. This strongly contrasts the persona of Sharma himself – he is energetic, enthusiastic and has a contagious smile.

The show itself consists of, as promised, seven stories. It begins with Sharma ‘rehearsing’ for the show – reading from a textbook of magic which he will later use in his final story. He makes fun of himself, invites audience participation, and delivers a deliberately awkward and fumbling first trick – making the moment when he demonstrates his true talent at magic all the more amazing.

This isn’t a magic show with story-time in-between tricks. Instead, Sharma delivers a host of different experiences and tales, and uses very elegant magic in order to augment and underscore these. There are tales about first love, about the loss of wonder, and even about murder – made all the more memorable when at an unexpected moment, Sharma makes the impossible appear real through sleight of hand and trickery.

He also delivers some killer one-liners.

Unfortunately, the night I attended was the one following the strong rains Adelaide experienced on Wednesday. Marshy lawns and mild flooding resulted in the cancellation of many shows the previous night, and it seemed, one day later, people were equally not keen to venture out into potential mud. As a result, the audience for this particular show was made up of about eight people. This had both good and bad aspects however.

From the beginning, Sharma engaged well with the audience – speaking to people individually, and addressing us all in a familiar and friendly fashion. It broke down a lot of the performer/audience barrier, and as a result made the show seem a lot more accessible; fitting in well with the story-telling style of the performance. It seemed no member of the audience was left out. When near the end of the performance his video equipment didn’t work, as such a small group we were invited on stage to watch his final, mind-bending card tricks up close.

Despite the benefits of being in a small group, I believe that the show would be better with a large audience. It’s a performance which relies on participation and engagement in order to succeed. People feel less inclined to join in if they make up a large percentage of the audience; they get self conscious. Sharma has a personality and style which, with a bigger crowd, I think would only shine more.

This show was an unusual mix, and, at least for me, unlike anything I had seen before. Magic. Comedy. Theatre. Strange tales. Con artistry. Disguises. Pseudonyms. Take a chance on Seven Stories.

Au Bonheur Des Dames is a film so obscure that it doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page. Filmed in 1930, it is silent, based on a novel of the same name first published in 1883, and, despite being an 82 year old film with a 129 year old plot, is still surprisingly relevant.

The film is presented by the Fiddle Chicks, an Adelaide band made up of Emma Luker and Dee Trewartha who play the score for the film live.

The plot focuses on Denise Baudu (Dita Parlo), an orphan who comes to Paris to live with her widowed uncle and his only daughter Geneviève (Nadia Sibirskaïa). Her uncle owns a fabric store which is failing, due to the new, well publicised and hugely popular ‘Au Bonehur Des Dames’;  a department store run by the womanising Octave Mouret (Pierre de Guingand). To help ends meet (and the plot advance) she takes up a job as a ‘model’ in the department store, a role which seems to consist of 80% sitting around in a room full of women wearing underwear and occasionally fighting and leap-frogging, 15% having lunch and 5% actually parading in high-end clothes for wealthy female customers.

I’m not sure if it is just me, but I initially had set view of silent films as simple, melodramatic and hilariously overacted. While this film ticks boxes two and three, I think actually this is necessary in a film that cannot rely on sound to get its point across. It was also remarkable how it managed to cram in so many plot features; a lecherous manager, a cheating fiancé, the impact of tuberculosis and an overly promiscuous fellow model were just a few.

Naturally there were the typical hilariously overacted scenes that silent films are notorious for. The protagonist’s innocent-yet-come-hither expression was oft repeated, with increasing audience laughs every the actress cracked it out. The predictable-yet-necessary love plot between Denise and Mouret had masterful moments of ‘lingering glances’ and clichéd lines (expressed in French dialogue cards with English subtitles). However, in terms of plot, themes and impact, this film is on par with modern day cinema.

I think I just assumed that films made in the 1930s were ‘tame’ and ‘100% G rated’ which made the scenes of attempted assault and the violent twist at the end so much more shocking. Au Bonheur des Dames tackles the ideas of capitalism, the potential negative impact of ‘progress’, the breaking point of a human being, and even touches on issues of feminism.

The film alone would be enough of a selling point for this event, however, what really made it stand out was the exuberant and energetic live score. Luker and Trewartha played with an almost unbelievable stamina for the entire 85 minutes of film with only a ten minute break during the interval.

I think the only down point of the event was the 1930s fashion parade in the interval. While a great idea in theory, it broke up the film at a critical point, and, while the clothes were interesting to look at, the segment was a quite awkwardly presented.

Other than this, the event was spectacular. Whether intentionally or inadvertently, the Fiddle Chicks have managed to tap into the recent popularity of both the 1930s and silent films. However, watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and The Artist, whilst both excellent, are not an alternative for this event.

The music augmented what was already an unusually entertaining film, and overall, Au Bonheur des Dames highlighted to me that cinema hasn’t improved over time – it’s just changed.

George Cockcroft’s The Dice Man has been sitting on my shelf with a bookmark three quarters of the way through for the last few weeks. It’s not that I’ve been lazy, that the prose was too difficult, or that  the plot was not enticing – quite the contrary. The simple fact to explain my lack of enthusiasm to finish the novel is that it is very, very frightening.

It isn’t full of murderers (well, mostly not). There aren’t ghosts, spells and tales of the occult. Instead, the fear is more cerebral. When the warped logic presented throughout the novel is coupled with with the unhinged, unlikable protagonist, and the breakdown in society around him the result is truly disquieting.

Luke Rhinehart is psychiatrist, a man and is completely tired of human shortcomings. He feels caged in by society and by his own profession. As a result he surrenders his personality completely to the die. They determine his decisions. They become his God.

“Understand yourself. See yourself. But don’t be yourself.”

The Six-Sided Man is the stage adaptation of this novel. Performed at Higher Ground in the middle of the day, it runs for 75 minutes and has only two actors; Gavin Robertson as The Man, and Nicholas Collett as The Psychiatrist.

The stage was fairly barren, consisting basically of three door-sized frames, a desk and some chairs. No props were used, with the actors relying almost exclusively on mime. Interestingly, in a play based on a man who uses dice to determine his actions, not a single die was to be seen.

This is not the book on stage. Instead, what writers Robertson and Andrew Dawson have done is break down the novel to its bare ideals, and presented these in an entirely new way. The Psychiatrist is never named as Rhinehart, and you hear nothing of the children he twists to the will of the die, and there is no mention of the neighbour he rapes and summarily begins an affair with.

Instead, the play consists predominantly of interactions between The Psychiatrist and The Man, with various bathroom scenes, radio interviews and visual interludes dispersed between. While Robertson remains The Psychiatrist for the entirety of the play, Collett takes on numerous roles, which at times could be a bit confusing. However, I don’t think this detracted from the show.

The writers did a phenomenal job in boiling down this story to its essence and adapting it to a live format and I enjoyed the entire performance. The main underlying ideals are still strongly present, and the dark humour of the book was maintained. However, where the play fell short was when it descended too far into humour. In one scene, they were building towards a tense confrontation, when in the middle of it they cracked out a psychiatrist joke which has been doing the inbox forwarding rounds for years. It ruined the moment, and in some ways cheapened the performance on either side of it.

In terms of comparison to the book, while the ideals are there, the disquiet is not. Darkness was sacrificed for audience comfort, which I think is a shame. The plot is muted. This aside, Robertson and Collett are to be highly commended on their performances.

Overall as a show, on its own merits this was a great performance, and whether you have read all of the book, half the book or none of the book, I strongly recommend it.

“You could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision” – Veronica Lake.

Veronica Lake was a 1940s Hollywood star. Starring in a string of hits, and having a hairstyle arguably more iconic than ‘the Rachel’, her future seemed set. However, her popularity faded as the decade went on, and she gradually slipped into oblivion until her death from complications of alcoholism in the early 1970s. Her story is littered with husbands, booze, failed Academy Award attempts, and a narrowly averted plane crash.

Before Friday, I had never heard of her.

Drowning in Veronica Lake is a one-woman show. Starring Alex Ellis, and written by Phil Ormbsby, it has been doing the Fringe Festival circuit since early 2011. I chose this show because for me, the premise of an old Hollywood biography framed in the supernatural was too tempting to miss.

Walking in to the theatre I immediately noticed two things; one, the audience was about 90% made up of women, and two, it was hard to see where the ‘stage’ ended, and the seating began. This lack of distinction between audience and performance space I think was a real asset to the style of the show, making it feel more as though you were being told someone’s life story, and not merely watching an actor recounting lines.

From the beginning, Ellis is on stage; she doesn’t really have a choice. She stands with her back to the audience, costumed in a long gown which extends down far longer than an ordinary garment, forming a large, fabric circle cementing her in place. People who enjoy literal depictions of metaphors will appreciate the fact that she really is “drowning in Veronica Lake”. Other than the actress and the lake of fabric, there is nothing else immediately visible on stage.

While the show is a bit slow to start, I think this is due to the fact that it takes a while to become acclimatised with the character and with the story-telling style of performance. It is structured chronologically – starting with Lake’s (then named Constance Keane) first casting in a film at the age of 17. Throughout, we are shown the destructive relationship between Lake and her mother (both played by Ellis), are given hints about a darker undercurrent of pre-existing mental disease and get glimpses into a patchy childhood of expulsions, underage beauty contests and possible abuse. We finish up with the reason for the title; who really is Veronica Lake, and is she slowly drowning out Constance?

Lake had a reputation of being difficult to work with, earning her nicknames including “The Bitch” and the highly intellectual and witty “Moronica Lake”. Ellis depicts these aspects of the character with an underlying edge of vulnerability and child-like innocence. She is constantly ‘name-dropping’ and then is ‘surprised’ when the audience doesn’t recognise who she is talking about.

The performance  is very clearly set in the now, with Lake speaking from ‘beyond the grave’. Her descent into alcoholism, cynicism and depression is subtle, and the violence and unhappiness of some of her marriages is performed in such a masterful way that I left the theatre wondering how I had such vivid images in my mind despite having only just essentially been told a story by one woman on a stage.

I’m generally dubious about one-person shows. It is difficult to hold the attention of a room full of people and remain believable and in character. However, Drowning in Veronica Lake manages to take an interesting concept and present it in an accessible and entertaining way. Ultimately we are left wondering – is fame worth the human toll?

If you are a fan of great showmanship, magic, apples, humour and just generally enjoying yourself, then you should definitely stop by and see Morgan & West: Time Travelling Magicians.

Rhys Morgan and Robert West are Victorian Era magicians, complete with top hats, appropriate facial hair, and a somewhat left field penchant for Harry Potter. Their performance takes place in ‘The Palace’, a venue which is somewhat hidden in its spot up the back in The Garden of Unearthly Delights. Inside the audience is met with a fairly empty stage, save for a few stools, a table, and a mysterious red envelope pinned up on the back curtain.

We are immediately asked by a disembodied voice to think of a number between 1 and 600, to write it down, and then place it in a wooden box up the front. The reason why doesn’t become apparent until the end of the show. When Morgan and West appear, they introduce themselves, and then announce that there will be no fewer than ten audience participants over the course of the next hour.  On a rainy night in the middle of the week, the show is not even close to sold out, thus making the likelihood of being one of these participants quite frighteningly high.

The show is polished, with the dialogue and banter between the two clearly well rehearsed and familiar. They finish each other’s sentences, fly through tongue twisters easily, and readily make jokes. All while performing a host of different magic tricks. No-one is here to see a man escape from a vat of water whilst handcuffed (though there is a pretty interesting take on ‘the bullet catch’). Instead, there is sleight of hand, card trickery, needle swallowing, apparent psychic powers,  a novel way to count loose change and a brief musical interlude with a balloon dog and a tragic ending.

While at times during the show, Mr Morgan in particular pretends to be bumbling along, making a few ‘mistakes’. However, this all turns out to be part of a greater scheme which will make you want to go home and crack out your abacus and school maths textbooks.

This is the first time that Morgan and West have performed at the Adelaide Fringe. Speaking to them after the show, they were ridiculously pleasant and completely un-phased by the fact that we were all standing in persistent drizzle, claiming instead to feel more at home with the rain. I learned that they met whilst in university in England, where Morgan was studying Physics and West was studying chemistry, and have been performing together for four years.  It’s interesting to think of two scientists pursuing a career in magic. After the Fringe they will be heading on to Melbourne and Sydney.

I really enjoyed the show. There are no pyrotechnics or puffs of smoke, but you feel involved in what is happening on stage (and, if you are one of the ten, you will have less of a feeling and more actual involvement). The part of me that likes dismantling toys, pens and gadgets wanted to go back the next night, just to see if I could spot how some of the tricks were done.

At the end of the night, the magicians said that if we liked the show, we should tell our friends. If we didn’t, tell an enemy. I like to think that if you’re reading this, you’re a friend and not part of some elite hit squad out to get me. So on that note, I suggest you go and see it. It’s definitely worth a look.