Through circus, physical theatre and fairytale-like storytelling, A Little Rain Must Fall transports you to a magical world of adventure, fun and colour.

Daisy is maid to the lady of the house. When dusting she discovers an enormous box that, according to the label, has been left for her mistress. However Daisy’s curiosity gets the best of her and she opens the box. From the box a troupe of brightly dressed performers appear, delighting Daisy with their tricks and stories. Although Daisy is warned that if she dares to open the box, a little rain must fall, she cannot resist opening the box again and again. But Daisy should have heeded the warning as the stories the performers tell become darker and lead to serious consequences.

The performers are captivating and engaging, skilfully creating their colourful world with energy and imagination. Apart from a few misbehaving props and a dress covered in plastic baubles that had a tendency to break off, A Little Rain Must Fall draws us into its own reality and keeps us there.

A Little Rain Must Fall runs until Sunday 22 February at 5:15pm. Tickets can be purchased here

Will Pickvance is The Resident Musician, a man who can take one upright piano and make it sound like an entire orchestra.

The resident musician in question is the in-house pianist at Inver, a Scottish castle that that acts as an exclusive hideaway for the worlds most rich and famous. Will Pickvance takes us through highlights of the Inver songbook and has conversations with several of the guests, who are shown as Hunter S. Thompson-esque cartoons on a projector screen. At at intervals he texts a past Inver guest George who has promised Will he will fly him to America and get him an opportunity to play with Harry Connick Jr.

Will Pickvance’s piano playing is an incredible thing to witness. He plays complicated, fast jazz pieces completely from memory and most of the time not even looking at the piano, and the music he creates is as expansive and atmospheric as an entire orchestra. It’s a shame the Speigeltent stage is higher than the audience as it would have been fascinating to be able to watch his hands while he was playing.

The songs parody concepts of wealth; there was one where Will divided the cartoon crowd into those with old money and those with new money. There was also mournful ballad from the point of view of richest man in the world who isn’t understood by those around him. However, there was the feeling that his very British take on wealth and class did not quite click with the Perth Fringe audience. This seemed to be mostly because the humour felt a bit vague; we were not entirely sure what to laugh at. He also addressed the crowd almost the entire time as if we were guests at Inver, and at some points it almost felt like he wanted audience interaction, but then he kept going with the song. The most compelling part of the idea was himself as the ambitious pianist, wanting to escape his lowly job and live-out his dreams playing alongside music greats, but with no means to get away, he’s forced to keep on smiling and playing at Inver.

Despite taking a little while to get into the world that Will Pickvance has dreamed up, Resident Musician is quirky and fun. And, although Will plays the piano for almost an hour without a break, I could have watched him play for far longer.

Resident Musician runs every night at 6:15pm until Sunday 22 February. Tickets can be bought here.

Square Peg is Josh Earl’s memoir to finding his place in the world. Known for hosting the ABC’s Spicks and Specks, the Tasmanian comedian draws you into his life, makes you adore him, and delivers a faultless 60 minutes of comedy.

In Square Peg, Josh Earl says he’s never really fitted in. Not into his home town of Burnie in Tasmania, not with his work colleagues, or with his wife’s family in Duncraig. Through stand up and comedic songs played on a very tiny guitar, Josh Earl relays a 60 minute autobiography, with stories about growing up in Burnie, moving to Melbourne, and becoming a dad. His jokes throughout are insightful, identifiable, sometimes out of the blue, but always incredibly funny. He has a very joyful and lively presence on stage, and expertly paced each story and song, always the right length so that we were fully immersed in the scenario he was creating. By the end of the show he had us completely onside and when the penultimate story became somewhat poignant, the entire audience let out a communal “Awww” because we were so overjoyed that he had discovered a place to fit.

Square Peg has all the elements needed for great entertainment; jokes, music, stories and a happy ending. It leaves you wanting more and makes you wish you’d watched the Spicks and Specks revival.

Josh Earl – Square Peg runs from Tuesday 17 to Saturday 21 February at 7pm. Tickets can be bought here.

Dave O’Neil has become a household name through his ability to appeal to both the “bogan” and the “ABC watching” side of Australia, usually at the same time. With references to getting his dad’s car stolen at the local pub and to the host of the ABC show Collectors he continues this achievement with Dave O’Neil and Brad Oakes Live!

Kicking off the show was Brad Oakes, who began by being unable to get onto the stage, which quickly became a running joke throughout his set. The rest of his jokes ranged from the ultimate pain of stubbing your toe to picking up a girl 25 years ago. He also heavily relied on audience interaction, which felt a bit forced, as he was unable to establish enough of a rapport with the audience to make us willing to participate. This was not helped by remarks he made throughout that the show wasn’t going well, when the mostly mature aged audience seemed to be greatly enjoying themselves.

Dave O’Neil, as the more famous name, was who everyone was there to see, and it is clear to see why he is as successful as he is. He started off by making on-point jokes about Perth (Mandurah is Indigenous for “bogans by the beach”) and makes quips about what Tony Abbott would have been like at school, both sure-fire ways of getting the audience onside. He then continued on to talk about his life and especially his dad (who grew up in Inglewood but left before the BMW’s started moving in) and his brothers. He illustrated his jokes with slides of photos of him as a boy (or with that haircut possibly a girl). Although bumpy in places, his first show for the year was bound to have bumps.  O’Neil kept up such a steady pace and laughed at himself as much as we laughed with him that any bumps were insignificant in the funny and comfortable atmosphere he created. His conversation with the front row every now and then worked too, as any jokes made at their expense felt like an old mate poking genial fun.

Brad Oakes started the show better than he thought he did himself, but he mostly set us eagerly waiting for the main attraction. And only a few minutes of his performance, instead of sitting on plastic chairs in the upstairs room of a bar, it felt like we’d been transported to Dave O’Neil’s own living room where he’d invited us round for dinner and was telling us hilarious stories of his life and getting out the occasional photo album.

Dave O’Neil and Brad Oakes Live! continues until Saturday 14 February at 8pm. You can book tickets here.

If, like me, you have a tendency to shouting quiz answers at the TV in full knowledge that you cannot be heard by the quiz contestants, then I highly recommend Facty Fact, a quiz show where you finally have the chance at being heard.

With most of the games centred around Internet search engines, Facty Fact felt like if Spicks and Specks was run by a bunch of adolescent boys giggling over a dirty Google image search. However there is only one adolescent boy here, that being creator and host David Warneke. Although revealing a slightly concerning snapshot of Warneke’s mind, the games he’s created are both engaging and hilarious: one round was to Google image search people who wear hats a lot; another was to put together two sexual-sounding words from a list and search them on Google images in the hope it comes up with completely innocent pictures (thankfully searching “wet balls” literally came up with a picture of some plastic balls in a bucket of water).

While the contestants debated aloud as to what the answer might be, there were muttered conversations amongst the audience as well, and often we were asked what we thought before the answer was revealed.

The contestants, picked from the many comedians performing at Fringe this year, change every night and are announced on the day via the Facty Fact Twitter page. In this performance, the teams consisted of Jimmy James Eaton, Mike Goldstein, Adrienne Truscott, and Marcel Lucont. I was especially excited to see Lucont live, and he was also the highlight for me.

David Warneke is a very engaging and funny host and skilfully keeps the quiz moving, working equally well with all the comedians to keep the jokes rolling and the laughs coming.

With each performance changing as contestants change, I will definitely be going along to another Facty Fact as soon as possible. Possibly lacking in what are traditionally thought of as ‘facts’, Facty Fact makes up for it with laughs and leaves you with sound advice: to be wary what you type into an internet search engine.

Tonight is your last chance to see Facty Fact at The Gold Digger at 7pm. Tickets can be purchased here.

Comedy

For someone performing to a crowd of 11 people, Josh Makinda did a remarkable job of keeping his confidence. Switching between conversational audience interaction and long monologue jokes, Colourless Green Ideas is a mix of the absurd and the awkward.

Audience interaction is no doubt a regular aspect of Josh Makinda’s show, but with such a small crowd, it felt like the only way to avoid the show feeling like a comedic lecture (at least more than usual for a stand up comedy routine). This was not helped by the fact that it took place in a TAFE classroom.

Improvisation is Josh Makinda’s strength: he will ask an audience member a question a simple as what their job is, and from their answer his ridiculously lateral mind will take one word or idea and run away with it to the most absurd of places. He acts out the peculiar images in his head, of bald men using pencil shavings for hair or optometrists riding cross-eyed children, then somehow links it back to previously improvised jokes in a way that makes it look as if the audience were all planted and he had planned the whole thing all along.

Ironically though, it’s his planned jokes that let him down. His anecdotes were long, his way of telling them awkward, and the pay off not worth the hesitant laughs we gave him in the hope we would understand where it all was leading.

Despite sometimes feeling like an odd party where no one really knows each other and the host talks way more than anyone else, Colourless Green Ideas was an enjoyable 50 minutes with a lot of genuine, cheek-aching laughs that left us with very strange new ways of thinking about our places of work.

Josh Makinda – Colourless Green Ideas runs at The Noodle Palace at Central until Saturday 7 February and at the Fremantle Comedy Factory @ The Sail and Anchor from Tuesday 10th – Wednesday 11th and Friday 13th – Sunday 15th February. Tickets can be bought here.

The Tina of Tina Del Twist waltzes onstage in a haze of alcohol and past glories. She barely seems to know why she’s there, until she starts to sing. As her voice soars over the audience, the glamour and the stardom she still remembers comes alive once more.

Tina (Wes Snelling) is a singer long past her youth, but still living in a world where she is a star, singing to stadiums and traveling the world. Tina’s both immense, yet mellow voice, and her guitarist Twist’s (Stephen Weir) twangy playing merge into music more powerful than one instrument and one set of vocal chords would suggest. From song to song the duo transform the Spiegeltent from a smoky, dark bar during a blues ballad, to an outback hoedown where we felt like we should push away the chairs and kick up our heels during a country rendition of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. There were laughs aplenty during her banter with Twist and her audience interaction: wanting to “meet her fans” and blatantly asking us to adore her. But she didn’t need to ask, as all eyes were fixated upon her presence; heads swivelling on necks when she made several excursions around the tent and one to the bar.

When she spoke, in between swigs of vodka, Tina became a tragic figure to be pitied. But when she sang, she became a tragic figure to be reckoned with, her voice expertly soaring and falling, forceful and beautiful; the glamour and star she so desperately wanted us to see was suddenly right there on the stage in front of us.

Tina Del Twist runs until Sunday the 8th of February and tickets can be found here.

By The Last Great Hunt

Yoshi (Adriane Daff) and Tilly (Arielle Gray) are half sisters who, before their father died, had never met. Yoshi lives in Japan, where she creates video games and embraces the culture and look of kawaii. She also fiercely values independence. Tilly is a fully qualified nurse and had been looking after her sick father in her childhood home until his death. She loves historical fiction, Jane Austen and Autumnal tones.

Yoshi and Tilly are two different sides of femininity; Yoshi is determined to forge a successful path in a masculine industry, creating the strong female centred games she wishes she’d been able to play as a girl, all the while maintaining her cute-as-a-button kawaii look. Tilly on the other hand chose a more traditional female role, the one of nurse and carer. Her female role models are the wives of Henry the Eighth and the heroines of Jane Austen, and her only experience of the world is through these historical figures and characters.

Daff and Gray skilfully lead us through ups and downs of the sisters’ first meeting as the two contrasting characters pull and push at each other, trying to work the other out, often clashing, but then coming together to be perfectly in sync. Although named Yoshi’s Castle, Tilly is most certainly the heroine of this story. We laugh at her naivety and misunderstanding of the more world wise Yoshi, but she captures our heart strings and refuses to let go with her child-like delight in talking about the things she loves. Or simply her happiness to have Yoshi as a friend such as when Yoshi helps her dress up in the kawaii look. Tilly’s state of mind is shown through the books and characters she so dearly loves, as they are the only way she has been able to experience the world independent from her sick father. Even when presented with real life independence, she can only express it though books, crying that she thought she owned a Kerouac book, but she doesn’t and how can she travel without Kerouac?

Told with the help of a beautifully animated video projection and Mario inspired music created by Alwyn Nixon-Lloyd from the Perth band Boys Boys Boys!, Yoshi’s Castle slams together two very different worlds and the resulting residue is a magical, funny, sparkly story that will leave you with a happy sad lump in your throat and shows that, regardless of whether you are a Lolita or an Anglophile, femininity and independence are never mutually exclusive.

Yoshi’s Castle runs until Monday 9 February at 6:45pm at The Stables. Tickets are available here

The three men of Poncho Circus, a young and upcoming circus troupe from Canberra, use this imaginative premise to take us through a variety of circus acts; from juggling and hoop twirling to acrobatics and balancing enormous piles of milk crates on their chins. Throughout these acts there were definitely some moments when the audience collectively gasped (crates balancing on the chins), but equally there were as many awkward moments when juggling clubs were dropped and balancing acts had to be started again. Undoubtedly, the heat played a huge factor in this. At 32 degrees outside and who knows what inside the tent, the heat had the audience flapping their Fringeworld fans like a flock of birds. The performers’ hands would have been as sweaty as ours, not helped by their unfortunate costumes of hooded jumpers and heavy looking trench coats.

This performance shone when the performers bought the characters of the story to the forefront, and combined their acting skills with their circus skills to create not just physical feats to wonder at, but also a story to be invested in. The dorky, enthusiastic character of Patrick witnessing some illegal circus being performed and asking if he can join worked especially well; if he made a mistake he would grin broadly at the audience and we would forgive him for being so lovable. Another highlight was when a police officer announced to the audience he was drawing a wanted sign for an illegal acrobat, and needed to know what he looks like, asking the audience to shout out and describe his features. The kids in the audience took to this with great enthusiasm and humour.

In the end, Poncho Circus evocatively showed us what their own personal dystopia might look like, in no small part helped by the hand painted fabric set and the well crafted music. The three performers endeared themselves to the audience so that by the end, the cheers and claps they received as they took their bows were happily given.

Underground runs until Monday 2nd February and tickets can be purchased here.

The first half of Macbeth-ish… is basically a very long set up to a joke. A set up exactly as long as it takes to act out Macbeth in under forty-five minutes.

If you aren’t familiar with William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth have no fear, as Tempest Productions neatly summarises the most important parts of the play in a way that made me wonder what they’d left out. In fact, during the first half of I thought I had stumbled across a minimalist but very professional Shakespeare company. The actors excelled at their lines and parts as if they were performing at the Globe itself. But aside from the use of comic props such as foam swords and the actors themselves creating the sound effects from behind the red curtain that served as the backdrop of the stage, this shortened version of Macbeth seemed as tragic as the original.

However, this straightforward retelling is merely to ensure the audience completely understand the jokes that are to follow in the encore. They take their already abridged version and shorten it again, twice. And hilarity ensues. The props and sound effects, which initiated chuckles first time round had the crowd openly laughing, partly from relief that this was a comedy we’d come to, but mostly from the melodrama and humour that, revealed to us by Tempest Productions, was in Macbeth all along.

Shakespeare was as well known for his comedies as he was for his tragedies. Macbeth-ish… shows that those two genres aren’t so dissimilar, and that one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies actually has all the ingredients for a great comedy.

Macbeth-ish… runs until the 31st of January and from the 4th to the 7th of February at the Noodle Palace at Central, and for one night at Midlandia on the 5th of February. You can buy tickets here