Traditional claw-hammer bluegrass banjo isn’t exactly the most exciting Fringe prospect amidst all of the raunchy burlesque, daredevil acrobatics and bawdy stand-up, but Abigail Washburn exceeds expectations to give an enthralling show weaving modern elements of indie rock with her traditional bluegrass roots.

Re-scheduled a full half-hour early, I was more than a little annoyed to miss a good portion of Abigail Washburn, as were more than a few other show-goers, but we made the most of it and by the end no one seemed to care anymore. If there is one thing that bluegrass can do it is to whisk you away from your daily urbane trouble to a care-free time without punch-cards and deadlines -oh, what a world to live in!

With her softly soaring voice and delicate fingerstyle banjo playing, Abigail Washburn weaves beautiful yet haunting tales of love and loss, the sounds creating the picture more than the words themselves. Abigail’s proficiency at the art of claw-hammer banjo is impressive too, being an almost-dead music style outside of select musical circles.

While it is often highlighted that Abigail Washburn incorporates more modern and alternative aspects into her songwriting – she isn’t exactly croaking out appalachian standards – it is her strong sense of traditional playing and melody which makes her accessible to a wider audience. She doesn’t fall into the trap of being overly twee and quaint, avoiding the trap of novelty that so many of these gypsy/folk/blues performers fall into.

Abigail Washburn brings sincerity to her music, taking us on a real journey rather than showing us what we think “old timey” music should sound like, pandering to an alternative crowd who have just discovered Tom Waits. Getting to hear such music without all of the usual aesthetic trappings which normally go with this kind of festival performance was the greatest treat of all, stepping back in time while keeping the energy and passion of a modern performance.

I’m not a fan of modern dance by any means but SOAP is the most amazing show I have seen to date. The impression it left on me was profound, and I doubt that mere words can convey just how powerful the experience was.

I was disappointed at first when I found out the majority of the show wasn’t performed underwater as the advertisements portrayed it, but within minutes I had forgotten about that and was enthralled in the mix of comedy, athleticism and emotional intensity made by not much more than a half-dozen bath tubs and some truly inspirational dancers.

To be honest, I was so caught up in and swept away by the show that I can’t remember the exact when and where of what happened. A mix of opera, ballet, modern dance and slapstick comedy, each act differed from the last, changing from comical and cute to daring acts of physical strength and dexterity to powerfully silent narratives of love, passion and lust. Soap never lingered long enough to become boring, and each act surpassed the previous one. Bodies soared through the air borne on trapeze ropes and muscles twisted and contorted in truly awesome physical feats.

When the water filled tubs did appear I was glad they had been saved for the final third of the show, letting the tension build up to its watery finale, a mind blowing spectacle that looked as if it could end on disaster at any second. The water itself took on the form of another dancer, arcing and falling perfectly in time.

Soap is a difficult show to review conventionally, as you really can’t get across just how much of an impression it leaves on you, mentally and emotionally. Berlin-based directors Markus Pabst and Maximilian Rambaek more than live up to the hype as a breathtakingly creative duo. Equal parts ingenious and exciting, Soap is one of the best, if not the best show on at the Adelaide Fringe in 2012.

There are a lot of preconceived ideas about “Burlesque”, particularly with the recent resurgence in Neo-Burlesque, which has certainly skewed the general consensus of what Burlesque actually is. The general picture it seems to conjure up involves corsets, garter belts and either Playboy Bunny cuteness or Suicide Girl rock-show antics. With that in mind I was shocked and surprised by what turned out to be a two-woman, multiple-personality, lesbian cabaret musical act.

Liesel Knieval aka “Hard-Boiled” Lollie P. Jones and her organ-wielding sidekick “Kinky” Leonie deliver a lot of action for two women on a very small stage with nothing but a screen and a few chairs between them. Liesel delivers much more than just playing the sassy, if not a little sleazy detective of the same name, she plays every single character – and trust me, there were a lot – minus a little audience interaction, but we’ll get to that later.

We meet Lollie P. Jones, the seemingly sultry black PVC trench coat clad detective in a seedy bar where she takes on her first case, a tale of Country and Western music and home surgery gone wrong, line-dance battling with bull-dyke backyard surgeons and singing lewd songs about eating in at the “Y” – just make the letter with your first two fingers and you’ll get the idea of how the rest of the songs went.

Lollie P. Jones wasn’t so sultry by now – her trench coat was long gone – and had turned into an amalgam of Humphrey Bogart, Lucille Ball and KK Juggy from Machine Gun Fellatio. My expression of odd fascination turned into an ear-to-ear grin and the same went for just about everyone else in the room, even Liesel’s partner Leonie having trouble keeping both in character and time amidst the maelstrom of personalities coming from that leopard-print leotard clad bombshell owning the stage.

The next part of the show concerned a macabre bake-off involving “feeders” – google that one folks, just not at work – as well as the aforementioned crowd participation, and more schoolboy references to pie than I have ever heard in my life. Lollie dragged up some of the more colourful characters from the stage, including the obligatory drunk hecklers from the back row and conscripted them into playing a motley lineup involving a nun, a jailbird and two somewhat inebriated co-joined German twins for some heavily innuendo-laden interrogation.

I’m not sure what was funnier; watching a man in a nun’s habit awkwardly spank Ms. Jones, the German twins constant drinking and mimed masturbation or the fact that the poor guy dragged up from the front spent the whole time trying to hide the fact that his pants had split down the crotch earlier that night and he didn’t have a chance to go home and change. This, of course, is the best thing about live entertainment, and I’m pretty sure every other show Liesel and Leonie do is as chaotic as this one was.

The final act was as brilliant as the first two, although you might want to watch out if you’re easily offended by racial stereotyping – although really, if you are easily offended by anything much you’d probably have walked off in the first ten minutes! A seedy adventure into the underbelly of Shanghai, Lollie’s final adventure involved monkey-love, hilarious accents and a Kung-Fu Fighting routine that looked like it was going to take out the front row.

As with so many acts, a two-piece often makes the most noise as they compensate for their small number with wild and raucous passion. You can tell that Liesel and Leonie have been at this kind of nonsense together for a long time and love every second of it. I only wish that more “Burlesque” acts could take themselves a little less seriously and put in half as much fun as these ladies do bringing their own loud and lewd brand of sexy back.

The Snowdroppers take their name from the 20s slang for Cocaine addicts, although comically I was told by a couple of colourful characters I met waiting in the line that “Snowdropping” is also an Australian colloquialism for stealing underwear off people’s clotheslines. This kind of weirdness is exactly what you can expect at a Snowdroppers show, with as much theatrics coming from the audience as from the band. I certainly had no idea what I was in for.

Befitting the red curtained circus tent that is the Vagabond theatre, the Snowdroppers appeared to be more vaudeville than blues, launching into stomping country and gospel right off the bat, blowing some serious harp while they were at it. “Stompy” was one of the terms used to describe the Snowdroppers by the fans I had befriended earlier and it was an apt description. What few people were seated on the wooden benches around the outskirts of the Vagabond quickly swarmed the stage and soon enough Rockabilly girls and Swing dudes were pounding the floorboards along with Goths and parents alike. It was easy to see that this Sydney band have a strong following in Adelaide.

Seeing a band that would normally be rocking out in a booze-soaked pub get to act out in an intimate vaudeville theatre was just awesome, for lack of a better word, and so appropriate for what the Snowdroppers do so well.

Guitarist Pauly K looked like a well-scrubbed Nick Oliveri from Queens of the Stone Age while singer Johnny Wishbone cavorted around the stage like Jerry Lewis pretending to be Elvis Presley. Tearing through a list of recent hits Rosemary, Do The Stomp and Great Western Highway, Johnny Wishbone sang about sin and salvation, more snake oil salesman than preacher, the crowd eating up the guilty pleasure that is the Snowdropper’s schtick. Best of all however was the good old fashioned sing-along of Shit, Fuckin’, Yeah!, which had the whole crowd belting out some classic Australian lyrical genius.

Throughout the set the Snowdroppers showed their Rock and Roll roots and began to grind out some heavy numbers, which clashed a little with the old-timey country sound of their more “traditional” songs – Johnny was ripping into his punked-up banjo, although it just wasn’t able to cut through the mix, especially the bone-shaking bass and drums from London and Cougar Jones. It felt like there were two great bands on stage all at once, they just couldn’t pick which one they’d rather be.

As the night went on the show just got crazier. A few suspicious substances from the crowd found themselves on stage and during an intimate moment of crowd interaction one rather forward young lady got herself more than a handful of Mr. Wishbone’s unmentionables, although his lack of surprise makes me think this kind of craziness happens to them quite a lot with their particular brand of hormone-fuelled gospel-blues-punk.

The show finished in a sweaty and smokey climax of dancing, yelling, stomping, and screaming that looked like it would go on for days, the band as exhausted as the crowd when it finally came to an end. The Snowdroppers sure aren’t authentic blues, but they don’t pretend to be – they’re punk-rock honkies and they know it! Like the infamous Jon Spencer said – “The blues is number one, but I don’t play no blues… I play ROCK AND ROLL!”

What the Snowdroppers are is a damned good time, singing about doing all the things you shouldn’t be doing but doing ‘em anyway ‘cos they feel so damned good.