Presented by The Blue Room Theatre Summer Nights & DON’T BE LONELY

The Blue Room Theatre

Review by Kate Prendergast

Under the Blue Room Theatre’s crepuscular, cosying lighting, Fringe regular and multi-award winner Stuart Bowden returns to Perth to weave another offbeat tale with his low-fi one-man theatre of the posthuman absurd. In 2014, he was an alfoil-made robot trying to make do in a landscape of human ruin (She Was Probably Not a Robot). In 2015, he came to us in a lime-green sleeping bag as the last – or so he thought – beautiful bug of his civilization, mourning a father recently passed a (Before Us).

This year, Bowden is dead. Yeah, he died. On an alien planet. It was a terrible tragedy. The guy in the full-body leotard and green snow-cap on stage? He’s just an actor playing him. Reading stumblingly from a script, him-as-character carves character-as-him back into imaginary existence within a little space called by its architect ‘This Moment’.

So far, so a hipster’s wet dream.

The audience is also ‘dead’. Designated by Bowden as the remainder of the colony on the interstellar outpost, we perished when the land grew parched and the supplies ran out. Audience involvement is the indivisible element and engine of the show, with random-picked individuals filling in for two-part scenes, altering the ‘script’, and reflecting upon their own mortality from ‘The Hut of Eternity’. This enfolded act of creation with the crowd is hardly whimsical though, or the tactic of an opportunistic performer. Rather, it structures the crux of the show’s message: that art revivifies; that people are never gone so long as they are sustained in the memories and tales of those who experienced them.

As with his previous shows, Wilting in Reverse is earnestly crafted and wistfully spoken. It throbs with lonely-hearted dream textures, aches over love and loss, and is obsessed with the silly yet sublime fragility of the earth and its silly yet sublime inhabitants. Melancholic little songs permeate, built up progressively via feedback loops featuring ukulele, mini-keyboard and his own richly-timbered voice.

It’s all very symbolic, pretty metaphysical, and unfailingly bittersweet. Yet certain aspects of the show suggest Bowden to be guilty of overdosing on his own earnestness. Whilst the script-reading worked for a while – Bowden amusingly faltering in its recital, tripping over words, trying out variations of lines to amp up the organic, untested vibe – it generated less warm chuckles as the hour wore on, and the audience gradually understood the show wasn’t ever going to break out of its self-reflexive delivery. As a running gag, it didn’t have enough mileage – delightfulness sagged when it should have evolved.

Less surreal and exquisitely-built than his past stories, Wilting in Reverse still comes with a recommend behind it. There is in the end nothing quite like witnessing a bearded man thrusting his way determinedly through the ‘thick darkness’ of night.

Stuart Bowden – Wilting in Reverse runs until February 20 at The Blue Room Theatre. Tickets available here. 

Presented by Sharon Burgess Productions

Circus Theatre

Review by Jen Perry

Sean-tastic (Cian Kinsella) and the Famous Seamous (Cormac Mohally) are back – performing backflips, wearing next to nothing and making us all feel a little bit uncomfortable in Lords of Strut: Chaos. Based in Cork, Ireland, and a firm favourite at Fringe World, the Lords promise us they are going to give us everything, and they do not disappoint.

The premise of the show is simple. Sean-tastic and Famous Seamous are brothers seeking the ultimate dream of fame and fortune. Their mantra “do the do”, encompasses the inspiring message of the show: nothing eventuates from shoulda-woulda-coulda. Dreams are made from action. This led to the most magical part of Sunday’s act, when audience member Paul was given the microphone and got to play talk-show host to the Lords. In this moment, the room was alive with cheers of encouragement and sheer exuberant joy as Paul became a kind of everyman, “doing the do” for us all.

It would be unfair to criticise a show for lack of continuity when it’s implied on the ticket stubs, so I’ll only say that Chaos is erratic in the best way. The hour is full of skits and moments that inspire both raucous laughter and nervous twitters. This is the brilliance of the Lords; their commitment to character and scene are utterly endearing. Even if a joke or two did fall slightly by the wayside, I got the sense that this was perhaps, entirely the point.

The Lords of Strut are an act that all Fringe-goers should experience at least once in their festival run. At this point, it’s a rite of passage.

Lords of Strut: Chaos runs until February 15^th at the Circus Theatre. You can also catch the Lords in their family-friendly show until February 14^th. 

The bloke has copped a bit of flak for his last tour though, and spends most of the show’s hour trying to transition from stand-up comedian to Gaulier mime artist. The trouble is, Dave as a concept doesn’t exist when he isn’t running his mouth off. He’s an idea of a man, who sustains himself by talking. This is true even when the words don’t make sense, and he begins repeating phrases like “penguins in Sydney! I didn’t know there was penguins in Sydney! Penguins in Sydney! Is there! Is there!” right up until the lunatic breaking-point of meaning.

Meanwhile, the audience is giggling with a woebegone hysteria they couldn’t even explain to themselves.

Dave is the drag creation of Grafton-bred comedian Zoe Coombs Marr. She slips out of her male persona from time to time, turning what would otherwise be a straight parody of the adolescent, bullying and brutish jerk-circle of dominant masculine humour into something far more self-reflexive and crafty.

One of her strongest ‘reappearances’ is during a costume change. By virtue of some ingeniously designed tights, Zoe stands before us at one point with the illusion she is being piggybacked by a clown. This makes at least three clowns on stage at the same time – Dave, Zoe and the leggings – each of them goofing off the other.

The show is in parts jarring and patchy, and perhaps makes too much of the comic tension produced by mania. Even if we put aside the convincing yellow vomit episode, the act is not one designed to put audiences at ease. Its work is to disturb rather than delight.

On the whole however, Zoe Coombs Marr comes together as an inspired, gross-out gag on the performative relationship and nature of gender and comedy. Nothing if not original, it favours showing over telling – showing us a fake head wound, an interpretation of a Sia dance, a banana phone, and the equivalent of a beginner’s belly dance done with her face.

It truly was – her words – Clown Inception.

Zoe Coombs Marr in Dave 2: Trigger Warning runs from Jan 24-27 at the DeLuxe venue in Northbridge. Tickets available on the Fringe World website.

What is seen cannot be unseen. Yet when it comes to something as shocking, confronting, and sensationally smutty as The Freak and the Showgirl, that doesn’t happen to be a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.

The show brings to Perth American Horror Story: Freak Show actor and self-styled “Seal Boy” Mat Fraser alongside the bodacious Miss Coney Island, a.k.a. Julie Atlas Muz. They are also man and wife. In their on-stage gambol, this joyfully depraved pair pushes the constructed boundaries of convention far beyond what you’d ever expect. And then some.

However far you plunge into the performance, however much you think your standards are smote, and that you’re well-nigh shattered on the deluge of their challenging outré— they bravely, faux-frivolously go that little bit further.

Bringing home what a powerful force the body is to delight, disrupt and scandalise, the show uses the camp spectacle of cabaret to lambaste the absurdity of so-called social ‘norms’. Insuperably, you’ll find many of your assumptions and ‘standards’ rapidly collapsing into a disorientating and titillating non-structure. It all makes for something cheeky, freaky, and fun. And also —you have been warned— very, very explicit.

If you want to experimentally tongue what to expect from the show, here’s a taste: minge-happy and minge-hippy super-cuts; a freaky BDSM severed-hand routine ten times more sensuous and strange than Fifty Shades; a knowing tribute to the ‘freak shows’ of the ‘30’s; an Australian typecast that’d win awards for schlock value; and an ‘inspiration porn’ montage-backed aria that compounds the heartfelt with pain, chagrin and irony. That’s not to mention a clever ‘crip-strip’ routine, where Fraser’s prosthetic arms are figured as just another prop to shiver off to get to the underlying erotic.

Amidst the spray of doughnut crumbs of a sexy corrupt transvestite cop, and in-between the full brazen flesh of quivering buttocks in a g-string, well— the audience just could not get enough.

An orgiastic apogee of Fringe World socio-political debauchery, future crowds should prepare themselves to leave the Spiegeltent slack-jawed and with eyeballs leaping from their sockets, feeling all sensationally and ideologically queer.

Especially after that finale. Think Emu beer, volunteer nudity, and casual promiscuity. I’d give the assurance that you get the picture, but believe me, you don’t. Seen to be believed folks, seen to be believed.

The Freak and the Showgirl will run until this Sunday, 22 February. Find out more here.  

Who could describe the myriad raw, comic, multiform, dark and effulgent elements that Icarus Falling sends into spiralling motion before its small audience?

This is physical theatre melded with Greek mythology — a re-imagining of Icarus and his incarcerated heart, living alone in a prison-tower with his abusive arsehole father, Daedalus. Capable of only crude, barbarous creations with his hooked, arthritic claws, Daedalus is more animal than the Minotaur that stalks the labyrinth below.

Yet the act’s structure is far too Protean to be subsumed entirely into myth. Whilst initially grounding itself in ancient story, it soon launches off into a space of its own, becoming a richly figured inter-coiling with a man’s open rib-cage; a confrontation lashed with meta-irony; spoken poetry sprung with comedy, and ambushed by — surprise! —ninjas.

It is also explosions and playing video-games in your room for three days and not changing your clothes for three days and other clichés and shit.

What it expresses is the twistedness of life, the agonizing and obsessive contortions of love and the awful residue of all-too-human error. It’s about depression, suicide and the naive violence of prescribed gender play. It’s about the interminable fall of humanity through its own restless past and rearing future.

The images that performer Scott Wings weaves before us are so visceral as to almost sear their colour and form against the red-lit gloom of the Blue Room’s tiny hollow. We see the face of Icarus’ lover that he knits out of tower cobwebs; we look down with him as, helpless, he watches tiny figures perish in the maze below. We see suicide in a jar of lightning.

Then we watch him tenderly address the sky—apologising for all the missiles that made her mascara run, and for all the A-Bombs that gave her such a god-awful fake tan.

It’s difficult to talk about physical theatre and performance poetry without making it sound uncomfortably wanky; pretension clings to the reputation of both genres. Yet Wings somehow manages to creep under our prejudicial skin by constantly undercutting his performance with bathos, playfulness and wit. I laughed with unguarded delight at his portrayal of Minos as a languid, cell-phone savvy dandy, and at his flyaway references to Zelda (“you fuckers!”) and Bon Jovi.

This is, in other words, theatre that knows itself; the kind of intimate knowing that brings into the open its own attendant pains and weariness and piquantly revolving comedy of the absurd.

Little wonder the show had a sell-out premiere season at Edinburgh Fringe last year; it is an utterly transfixing hour. Contrary to my pre-show predictions: I recommend.

The final performance of Icarus Falling will be Tuesday, February 17. Find out more here. 

To begin with, let’s get the facts out of the way: Peter Combe is the Australian legend of children’s entertainment. ‘King of the Kids’ since the eighties, this is a man who has produced seven gold albums, two platinum, performed sell-out shows at the Sydney Opera House (twice), and claimed three ARIA awards.

The Fringe World Spiegeltent rejoiced in his silly.

Accompanied by Phil on keyboard and the lively all-singing, all-dancing troupe of girls from the WA Performance School, Combe filled the space with his matchless warmth, humour and vivacity.

‘Would you like some jelly and some ice-cream in your socks?’ he asks us in marvellous outrage. ‘Would you like porridge in your trousers?’

‘NO!’ shrieks back the audience. No indeed.

Maintaining the attention of under-tens is quite a feat, as I’m sure any parent is well aware. But Combe is a veteran and master player of that game. He had bubs in the audience waving their chubby arms in glee; toddlers thumping out their boogie in the aisles; ten-year olds doing circles around him with blue balloons; and notably, a conspicuous gaggle of twenty-somethings recalling with love and ringing tenor their cassette-playing, newspaper-hatted, ‘bellyflop-in-a-pizza’ childhoods. The show’s finale was crowned with old-time favourites ‘Spaghetti Bolognaise’, ‘Mr Clicketty Cane’, ‘Juicy Juicy Green Grass’ and the enormously catchy ‘Newspaper Mama’. Car rides home will resound with renditions thereof, but the only uncertainty lies in whether it’ll be the adults or the kids leading the sing-song.

It may be that this review is infected with the bias of extreme nostalgia from an original Comberbitch. But honestly – there is not one on this continent who hasn’t a special place in their heart for this composer of anthems for the Australian youth.

Bless him. Bless him and his quirky berserkey turkey from Turkey.

Wash Your Kids in Orange Juice ends February 15. You can find out more here. 

Comedy                                                  

There aren’t too many lady comics around. And those that are— according to the boorish sods dogging Mary Bourke’s Twitter account— should really be in the kitchen making sandwiches.

“What is it with men and sandwiches?” the Irish comedian wonders aloud.“Surely a full roast dinner is both more sexist and time consuming”.

Flat-toned, debonair and with an assured and sardonic wit, Bourke proceeds to lampoon and lance the bloated toxic mess that the image of feminism has become in the era of Tindr, Twitter and Kardashian Konfidential (the novel with absolutely, unassailably no right to exist).

The show is far from a man-hating tirade. No harpies are launched in a storm of fury against male testicles, no self-righteous jeers are spat; both genders get the rough, raw and cunningly snide treatment.

It’s a deep chuckle of a ride. Mocking the vacuous stridency of faux-feminism as it’s embodied in Marilyn Monroe quotes, middle-class mumsnetters, and Kim K’s peachiful caboose, Bourke works to purge feminism of its insipid reputation of mindless cheerleading, across all situations, on all terms.

So much so that Bourke looked faintly disdainful at the gratuitous whooping of a woman in the crowd, who seemed rearing to rip off the old bra and swing it around the old head. The ideology of equal rights between genders doesn’t mean— as is made clear—wanton vindication.

What this wry and commanding lady demonstrates is that femininity and power are not mutually exclusive. A woman can be funny—convincingly and barbarously so—and at the same time wear high heels, unbound hair and a floral-print dress.

With an old gramophone recording warbling out prissy rebukes and paternal coos behind her, Bourke scorns the phony trailblazers of gender equality and punctures the swollen entitlements of patriarchy. She shows up the hilariously belittling lyrics of Joe Cocker, derides ‘homeless magician’ hipsters, and ushers the one terrible syllable of ‘moist’ into the air.

We are also introduced to the fearless Granny Bourke; a roadside-spitting Nan who— along with the terrifying billboard image of a giant, flamingo-legged, dead-star-eyed Cameron Diaz— was the inspiring force behind Muffragette.

In the end, Bourke does make us a sandwich. She goes into the kitchen of comedy (with all its gleaming knives) and makes us up a sandwich full of hater’s baloney and personal beef. And then, coolly, she slams it into the oafish face of the 21^st century.

It more than hits the spot.

Muffragette will be showing at various locations until Saturday, February 21. Find out more here.

“Oh look at that body. Oh look at that body. Oh look at that body. I got gout.”

Such is the booty that Jollyboat brings. The crew is made up of a couple of laddish rogues from the “Yorkshire sticks”, who have plundered pop culture and the cultural treasure trove of pirate puns for the sake of a gag, so sailing it over to Perth as a musical comedy act in their first ever appearance Down Under.

It’s a rum yet satisfying concoction. Bobbing somewhere between Flight of the Concords, Jack Black and X Factor, we’re treated to an evening hour that is goofily witty, a little slapdash, populist and often good-naturedly raw on the gills.

The pair’s opening parody-mix leverages out a laugh-a-second from the crowd, with everything from Katy Perry to Titanic to The Kinks getting the pirate-pun make-over. I don’t think they could find better iconography for themselves than in the pink plastic balloon cutlass one of the brothers waggled with swashbuckling mock fervor over his head. But then again, the older brother’s beard and angry beetle-browed rock-face was also pretty darn rocking.

The act also features a b-boy bible rap to everybody’s favourite sandal-wearing homie JC, a sinister Craig David love/hate tribute, and a comprehensive defilement of the Disney Princess suite. You will never look at either Ariel or sushi the same way again.

The rehearsed sections of the show run a lot smoother than the semi-improvised segues in between, and it’s during the latter that you are moved to do away with any doubts you might have had over whether the pair are true-to-life brothers. It is sometimes smirkingly amusing to see the un-staged sibling up-staging, undercutting and interjecting play out. I guess you could say it adds an authentic drama component to the act.

Whilst some of the so-named ‘Britishisms’ may have skimmed over a few audience heads (or at least those that have somehow evaded the QI blitzkrieg), it is often the case that holding true to original cultural riffs beats the slinging of a tour-town reference that risks entirely missing the mark. Many Fringe acts hailing from overseas are wont to do this; our responding laughter is not so much gratification as a bark of solidarity over the tacit agreement of ‘well, they tried’.

If you’re looking for a bit of raffish UK comedy as part of your Fringe binge this summer, ship yourself off to see the hearty two. Almost “every day they’re shoveling”.

Jollyboat will be showing at various venues until the 21^st of February. You can find tickets via the Fringe World guide here.

“I take heaven into my body and it comes out in your face! In your face! In ALL YOUR FACES!”

Bounding about the Big Top in sequinned bodice and black tights, Tessa Waters shrieks with joy and mimes blasting ‘Art’ out of her tits and vagina. So, yes: Art is basically an abstracted sublimation of celestial come.

With this metaphor I take no issue.

A caveat though, before I go on: I must admit myself to be far from the ideal audience member this show hopes to target. A manic and cynic by turns, and sporting a form that finds analogy with Perth’s topography, any kind of challenge-laden message to “let yourself go”, “embrace yourself as you”, “love yourself honey, you’re beautiful” just sets off in me a perverse chain reaction towards a heavy and hopeless kind of grim. For me then, at times the affirmation-emblazoned stage act felt a little like a vajazzling group therapy class with sequins and mandatory crumping.

Yet from the generous cheering and clapping (and the entertainingly agog expressions of some), much of the audience (of which was made up of equal parts men and women) seemed to be having a feel-good ball of a time. Through dance and open-invite crotch-petting, spectators were encouraged to embrace their body; its lines and its movements, sharing in the triumphal cheek of the wild glam-booty-bam powerhouse woman’s woman before them.

“I love this. I love all of this,” she gushed, giggling dopily and fondling her divinely curvaceous self with unabashed pleasure.

It is certainly impossible not to be drawn in by Waters’ appeal. Vivacious, sweet, cute-girl-clownish and dangerous in turns, she’s like the messy diva love-child of Cher and Tim Curry. With supreme self-assurance, she gate-crashes the typically masculine arena of comedy, challenging its erogenous zone monopoly and bumping her ass mock-angrily against its central penis-pillar.

Her dance numbers to ‘Foxy Lady’ and ‘The Barber of Seville’ are bold, goofy and sexy, and she set the audience a-hooting when letting a plain-clothed woman touch her Valkyrie-armored mega-boob. To which, of course, she opera-orgasmed.

Glamorous, bawdy, and wholesomely naughty, this buxom sugar-pop warrior will probably make select future audiences sing too.

WOMANz will be performing until the 9^th of February. Tickets are here, via the Fringe World guide.

Dr Professor Neal Portenza proposes to autopsy comedy live on stage. He seems rather to amputate its body in all sections, then fling its fly-away limbs willy-nilly in about the audience. It is crude, transgressive, obscene and really quite entertaining; in a titillatingly traumatic kind of way.

To attempt an unavoidably imperfect précis, this interactive comedy involves various characters speaking in silly accents (the main incarnation sounding a great deal Kermit’s moronic uncle), a red beret, mild audience abuse with a flaccid ribbon, a stolen man-on-man, lips-on-lips kiss, gratuitous bag-snatching, an impossible mission, portrait painting, an enormous drug baggie (labelled DRUGS with black marker on the outside) and an opportunity to thwack the maniac before us with multicolour pool noodles.

‘Can we keep them?’ asked one audience member after the highly gratifying walloping had ceased. ‘Can you keep them?’ Portenza echoed, outraged. ‘What do you think this is, a Noodle Palace?’

The venue is indeed the Noodle Palace.

There is no doubt that the act is awful. It could hardly be more balls-up (or indeed balls-friendly, as an exceedingly short lab-coat and loose jocks made roundly clear). But drawing constant attention to the screwy, shambolic nature of the show works as its central shtick. Portenza apologizes constantly for forgetting props and botching his routines, hollering unabashed to ‘Nathan’, the average-joe techie  at the back to solicit advice and issue blame. The audience is also invited to rate each portion of show a score out of ten on a little dicky whiteboard on stage.

Honestly, it’s hard to tell whether the man is actually deranged or just playfully so. This acidic and volatile slipperiness between artifice and authenticity gutter-slides through the act in its entirety. From the very start, there is a cleverly staged uncertainty over ‘who is the real Neal Portenza?’ There is also the insoluble mystery over whether some intransigently rude hecklers were faux or genuine.

One such man— mocked for being an ‘arrogant reviewer’— I am almost certain was planted, calling out a repeated ‘FOUR!’; which whilst a low score on the Professor’s whiteboard, is a rather high one for the average reviewer. I suspect I and others like me were being primed.

Yet, like the rest of his smartly conceived mess of a performance, I also suspect this was a gag that was at once co-conspiratorial, mischievous and fatuously-meta sly.

I expect my bafflement with the doctor will never be fully overcome, nor my amusement ever fully understood.

Dr. Professor Neal Portenza will run at various venues until February 12.