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The President Ros Packer Theatre “The President” is a co-production between Ireland’s the Gate Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company. Directed by Irishman Tom Creed, this production is claimed to be the first English language production of Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard’s play. Bernhard was born in the Netherlands in 1931 but was taken to Bavaria by his Austrian mother in 1937 during Nazi rule and had to join the Hitler Youth. He directly experienced Goebbels’ propaganda. It was first performed in 1975 and depicts his hatred of cowardly autocrats and their enablers, the abuses of power, the disdain and paranoia of privilege, and prophecies of the age of surveillance, corruption, and terrorism. In a small, unnamed country, there has been an assassination. However, the gunmen missed their intended targets, the President (Hugo Weaving), and the First Lady (Olwen Fouéré), killing instead a loyal bodyguard and the First Lady’s beloved dog. As a revolution brews right outside their front door, the First Lady sits with a mixture of hysterics, rage, and obsession. The President holds forth in a verbal tsunami of self-aggrandisement and vainglory, while his mistress, an actress, gambles his cash away in the blackjack room next door. The first half of the play is held by the formidable Olwen Fouéré.  Remembered from her impressive white-knuckle performance in “Riverrun” (STC, 2015). The First Lady is a self-absorbed, tormented character.  Preparing for the funeral of the late Colonel and with increasing anxiety around whether her son is or is not involved with the anarchists, she laments the demise of her beloved pooch and in insanely cruel to her near-silent maid (played heroically but Julie Forsythe). A commanding, narcissistic, haranguing egomaniac.  Played with admirable elegance and vitality both physically and verbally: this is a performance not to be missed.  The text is alienating with its endless repetitions but in the hands of Olwen Fouéré I appreciated her depiction of increasing detachment from reality.  I think the playwright and perhaps his translator here (Gitta Honegger) are nodding at Becket. Perhaps.  The scene is not without humour, but it proved hard going for many audience members and the house was decidedly less full after interval. The second half belongs to Hugo Weaving, and we know how he can command a stage. He shines, portraying the President with bottomless self-aggrandisement (“This country is too small for me”) and sleaze (he refers to his mistress, a third-rate actress, as “my child”). His paramour played by a subtle Kate Gilmore is an appropriate foil to the repulsive bigot she serves. Striking support is offered from from a mostly silent supporting cast Helmut Bakaitis, Danny Adcock, Alan Dukes, and Tony Cogin. Designer Elizabeth Gadsby creates a timeless setting (there is nothing to indicate this is 1975). It’s all very minimalist and contemporary with beautiful costumes.  Lighting by Sinead McKenna does its job during the scenes and becomes pulsating and flickers during the long curtain-down scene changes.  All of this is accompanied by Stephan Gregory’s extremely loud music.  Anyone alienated by the play is finished off by the lighting and music during the interludes.  The performances do lean into the loud and shouty – it’s an abrasive and difficult world to sit with and as I mentioned some opted for home at interval. Now, there hasn’t been a show that has divided audiences in Sydney for a while – from the water cooler to social media people either love “The President” or hate it. Why this why now is the most common question. Quoting from Steve Dow in the SMH “In a work marked by political satire, we look more for reflections of our times, for our fretting for democracy’s future to be writ large. Indeed, when Weaving’s president mentions a “huge paper conspiracy / against us / all the newspapers / every one of them / a massive paper conspiracy”, we think of a certain US political hopeful who recycles his cries of “witch-hunt” when held to account – but we are already getting that self-serving satire daily in our news cycle. The emphasis on newspapers in “The President” marks its age. This era deserves a political satire that addresses, say, social media and partisan media’s role in promulgating disinformation, our growing dystopia racked by irreconcilable division.” The closing scene of the production is worth waiting for.  This is the invention of Tom Creed and his collaborators. The audience is invited to leave the auditorium via the stage, past the President’s lying-in-state.  It is a cool gimmick and most of the audience (those who were left) took up the opportunity to be ushered onto and across the stage and then back into the foyer.  The idea is that the audience are mourners passing the Presidents body now lying in state. If you stick around, it adds a fair bit more time to an already long night. The idea of getting up close to Hugo Weaving is fascinating after such an energy filled eruption of a performance. But alas, I suspect it was a dummy.  I asked the usher, left in the house, if the actors would take a curtain call and was told no.  I guess they had left the building as well! Kate Gaul

Qui a tué mon père (Who killed my father) Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Writer and philosopher Édouard Louis takes to the stage in “Qui a tué mon père (Who killed my father)”, a deeply personal work directed by acclaimed theatre-maker Thomas Ostermeier. Growing up as a young gay man in the French provinces, Édouard Louis long held a deep disgust for his violent, alcoholic father, whose homophobic outbursts plagued his childhood. His book “Qui a tué mon père”, on which the solo performance is based, caused a sensation in France and internationally, and led to Thomas Ostermeier inviting him to the Schaubühne Berlin to stage it as a piece of theatre.  Using the broken body of his seriously ill father as a starting point, Édouard Louis undertakes a defiant rewrite of the recent political and social history of France. “Qui a tué mon père (Who killed my father)” examines France’s neglect of the working class and contempt for the poor, accusing the country’s upper classes and political operators of negligent homicide, even murder. The festival program tells us that this is “both a polemic against the class system and an intimate love letter.” And that “Qui a tué mon père (Who killed my father)” is an indignant and impassioned piece of autobiographical theatre from one of France’s most influential young writers”. Given that Adelaide also hosts a writer’s festival at this time of year, audiences are getting a double whammy with this production. So, who killed his father? The writer knows who: the successive French governments of Chirac, Sarkozy, Hollande, and Macron. By cutting and restricting access to welfare and disability benefits (and humiliating those who rely on them), those governments and presidents ‘broke my father’s back all over again’ after he was disabled by an industrial accident, condemning him to work as a street cleaner ‘bent over all day and cleaning up other people’s trash’. The performance is quiet, smooth, and very accomplished. Édouard Louis holds us for 90 minutes.  It has none of the theatrical bravado of an “actor”. It’s played on a simple set of table, chair and armchair. Behind him the muted monochrome projections (from videographers Sebastien Dupouey and Marie Sanchez) locate us in the vicinity of Hallencourt in Northern France, close to the infamous Somme, where Louis (aka Eddy Bellegueule) grew up in a toxic, violent, homophobic family and spent every fibre of his being escaping it at the age of 18. It’s ultimately a strange production – often humorous but largely distanced monologue and obviously an abridged version of a book (which I guess we can go read for ourselves).  It eschews theatricality and yet it feels right to present this as theatre.  Let’s face it, director Ostermeier is no slouch! The story is mostly compelling but it’s a bit of a stretch to conflate misogyny, homophobia, and classism as racism as our speaker does early in the piece. And the final scenes of dressing up in the children’s cape and party hat to name and shame the French politicians felt passe. Whatever your experience of “Qui a tué mon père (Who killed my father)” audiences leap to their feet shouting “Bravo!” – I guess this is what festivals are all about. Kate Gaul

Hillsong Boy The Fying Nun Hillsong was first formed in 1983 by Brian and Bobbie Houston as the “decidedly functional, even dowdy” The Hills Christian Life Centre, in outer-suburban Sydney. Now one of Australia’s most recognisable Pentecostal megachurches, it has congregations and campuses across the globe. In recent years, “unlikely king” Brian got widespread attention as a “close friend” of Scott Morrison, who had regularly attended Horizon Church, founded by a former Hillsong pastor, before he became Australia’s prime minister. Houston resigned in March 2022, after allegations of inappropriate conduct of “serious concern” with two women. In the same month, Hillsong was accused in Australia’s parliament of “fraud, money laundering and tax evasion”. Additionally, Houston was found not guilty of charges of covering up sexual abuse by his pastor father Frank, whom he described as a “serial paedophile”. (The court accepted Brian’s claim his father’s victim had asked him not to report to police.) Since then, there have been two four-part documentary series, a book, podcast and an SBS documentary on Hillsong.  And now The Flying Nun and Robbi James present “Hillsong Boy” created by ex-Hillsonger and performer Scott Parker and director Felicity Nichol. Parker spent 20+ years in Hillsong and this is his reckoning. In the foyer unfamiliar faces reveal themselves to be ex-Hillsongers ready to hear a familiar story - or as one person expressed “trauma – healing – trauma.” The production starts with Parker singing to a backing track.  Hillsong is known for its alluring Christian Rock and although it’s not clear if Parker is a singing sensation of the church if this is a fantasy or we are in the church.  There are the occasional projected flashes of the ecstatic Hillsong audience in the mega arenas.  We are encouraged to sing along but we need some more support from the sound world to feel safe.  A slightly rocky start to proceedings. Projected diary entries and conversations with a mentor give us more context – this is a kid in the maelstrom of adolescence who is questioning his actions and feelings about sexuality and identity. It’s mostly normal stuff except for the frame of Hillsong – are we waiting for salacious details of corruption and shame?  Being part of the Hillsong church means your life is organised 24/7 and we begin to understand that these plans and programs are created to isolate church members from the rest of society.  There is zero tolerance of criticism or questions, a belief that the charismatic leaders are always right and have exclusive access to what is and valid and truthful.  Sounds like a cult.  Well, that’s where Scott Parker’s interpretation of the institution ends. Felicity Nichol joins Parker onstage as a kind of in-depth interviewer with questions of ever-increasing intensity.  Its funny at times and Parker is a charmer and portrays the wide-eyed innocence of the youngster with ease. He talks about his music and what it means to him.  As an older teen he participates in and exorcism which (darkly and hilariously) involved rubbing supermarket oil on the bodies of other teens (in the dark, of course).  He longs and lusts to rub bodies with Daddy God and as his music becomes more frenzied.  He announces he is bisexual or pan sexual and that accepting his queerness transformed his life and gave him the resilience to fight back and eventually leave Hillsong. Leaving Hillsong has consequences – for his relationship with his family, his church friends, and his relationship to God.  There is great material here to mine but this first outing of the work leaves us blowing in the wind and we never really get to the nub of anything beyond the allure of Hillsong and what hooks young people in.  There is more work planned and getting “Hillsong Boy” in front of an audience is an important step on the way. It will be terrific if it can deep dive beyond the shop front crazy of the cult into a bolder investigation of faith, human behaviour, and identity. Collaborators include consummate Lighting Designer Benjamin Brockman who provides atmosphere and the requisite dazzle for a depiction of the Hillsong years.  Composer and sound designer Kathryn Parker gives us a rich palette of both real world and atmospheric sounds to support the story.  I eagerly await the next iteration. Kate Gaul

The Threepenny Opera Her Magesty’s Theatre, Adelaide In 2028, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s “Threepenny Opera” will turn 100. It remains as fresh today as a scathing critique of ruling-class barbarism and capitalist corruption. It is a work that tends to suit the times, whatever the times. Ruling classes are always barbaric and capitalism is always corrupt.  Barrie Kosky once again triumphs at this year’s Adelaide festival with a production that originated from Brecht’s theatre, The Berliner Ensemble, which Kosky premiered in 2021. The piece is set in Victorian London, but this “The Threepenny Opera “is, naturally, very German, and very Kosky! It has a kind of Berlin cabaret aesthetic and set in a less defined place and time. It all begins with one of the strongest opening (and closing) gestures I have seen in music theatre  -a bejewelled head covered in the plastic covered blue of a bleaching treatment pokes through a black glitter tinsel curtain to sing the “Ballad of Mackie Messer” (or, as it is known in English, “Mack the Knife”).  It is seductive, cheeky and heralds a story of a society teetering on an abyss. Brecht is good for you – that’s always a worry!  But with Barrie at the helm it may just surprise us! Macheath, known to friends and associates as Mackie (Gabriel Schneider), is a local hood who shacks up with Polly (Cynthia Micas), the daughter of a stand-over man and controller of the beggars of London, Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (Tilo Nest). Peachum and his wife, Celia (Constanze Becker), are none too happy about this, and enrol chief of police Tiger Brown (a quite brilliant Kathrin Wehlisch) to demand justice. Brown is besties with Mackie, having been soldiers together in India.  All these relationships fail — usually because of money, in some way. The work is glittering, entertaining and just as savage as can be. Kosky’s usual clarity with story shines and we never get lost over the three hours. The seven-piece band (covering fifteen instruments) with Adam Benzwi conducting are all good sports as they double as street toughs.  It’s all brash, abrasive, and brilliant. Weill sounds spiky and powerful. In the program notes, Kosky declares Weill as significant to music theatre as Wagner and these musicians further that claim. And incredible jungle gym set by designer Rebecca Ringst has the cast climbing, scrambling, and hanging from its geometric structure. It is an apt metaphor for the brutal clambering for survival these characters endure. A mixture of contemporary glamour and theatrical chic in costumes by Dinah Ehm are dazzling.  Performance styles are eclectic to say the least: vaudevillian expressions and gestures burlesque, knowing, and extended bows and audience interaction. The violence is cartoonish, and creepier and more effective for it. Kosky and his team have a knack for cutting through the usual posturing often seen in Brecht to something quite new, subversive and (also) gleeful. We’ll probably encounter many more “Threepenny’s” through our lives, but I posit none will be as incisive, unique, and unforgettable as Kosky’s take. Tim Byrne of “The Guardian” sums things up perfectly: “Kosky is undeniably a genius, to produce a “The Threepenny Opera” of great urgency and panache. It’s still a profoundly uncomfortable work, challenging a largely wealthy audience not just to part with their complacency, but their pretensions to compassion and altruism. One key song talks of food as the precursor to morality, the inference being that you can’t build a humanist society when people are starving. It immediately brings Gaza to mind, but also the homelessness and desperation on our own doorstep. You rarely get theatre as relevant as that.” Kate Gaul

I Hide in Bathrooms Waterside Workers Hall South Australia’s Vitalstatistix and Adelaide Festival present artist Astrid Pill and collaborators in what they bill as “a surprising meditation on love, grief, death and yearning.” Astrid pill is a multi-disciplinary artist with an impressive body of work spanning almost three decades. She is an engaging artist who moves like a dream, sings, and tells stories with a surreal intensity. Elegant, abrasive.  The show is both as well – alluring and repellent. Standing on the carpeted stage and flagged by two ambiguous piles of fabric covered glass boxes, I kept thinking I was watching a David Lynch film.  The temperature in the venue was reaching an unbearable heat, and Pill’s hypnotic performance transported me to a ferocious limbo land. Working with long-term collaborators and experimental theatre-makers, including co-devisors Ingrid Voorendt, Zoë Barry and Jason Sweeney, Astrid Pill draws on real experiences to create a work that fuses fiction with autobiography. “I Hide in Bathrooms” reflects on the experience of losing an intimate partner, falling for someone whose partner has passed away and traversing a relationship while dying. Shifting between these points of view, a woman addresses her romantic delusions, sense of mortality and capacity for hope. Developed over more than three years and premiered by Vitalstatistix as part of its 40th anniversary celebrations, “I Hide in Bathrooms” is shaped by the diverse artistic interests of Pill, Voorendt, Barry and Sweeney, who have worked across genres including music, dance, writing, video production, soundscapes, visual art and – of course – theatre. Above the stage hangs an ominous dark rock – an asteroid, weight, grief? It unlit and looming presence applied the necessary pressure to the scenario.  I mentioned the fabric covered glass boxes.  Inside the boxes are pieces of cut glass. The catch the incredible lighting with much beauty. Momento Mori.  Feathery pale flowers adorn the far corners of the stage. They catch what breeze there is in this stifling venue.  It may be an unintentional master-stroke to keep this production in this mausaleum. On the forestage, the auditorium chairs have been miniaturised and there are two platforms onto which Astrid can move – as she does – when communicating directly with audience members. All the design elements are top notch and support this moving painting, with superb sensation. There are video projections of the “character”, there is monologue from the widow/wierdo, there is song “The Great Pretender”.  Large words that allude to a cause of death relentlessly scroll through much of the piece. Betrayal.  Panic. Accident.  There is no narrative. This is all an excavation of the connection between love and death from three perspectives: that of a dying person; that of someone who is widowed; and that of a person entering a relationship with someone who is widowed. I loved the dance theatre aspect of the work – it was open and ambiguous in a way that text often is not. It is haunting. And more so the next day. Kate Gaul

Grand Theft Theatre Tālava - Wayville’s Latvian Hall Pony Cam is an experimental collective of five theatre makers from around Australia.They are driven, we are told, by a desire to bring people together to create experiences that could not otherwise be had. By subverting well-known forms, activating unexpected spaces, and inviting audiences into the work in unexpected ways, they create moments where audiences are challenged to question their assumptions, laugh at themselves, and reject habitual recourse. The current line-up for Pony Cam is Claire Bird, Ava Campbell, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub and Hugo Williams. Joined by theatrical adventurer David Williams, the company presents “Grand Theft Theatre” at Adelaide festival 2024. The intention is to recreate the theatrical experiences that changed their lives. It is lo-fi, gently chaotic and an ode to theatrical memories that we all carry – if we are middle class, white and have the privilege of indulging our broad interests in theatre.   “Grand Theft Theatre” is a paean to theatre’s power to create community and a recognition of our collective and personal memories. Through re-appropriation and recreation, moments remembered are bought back to life – these moments are from significant shows that have toured the world and from mostly well-known western cultural institutions and mostly male-driven iconic events. The company even include bits from shows in the Adelaide 2024 program. It is intentionally autobiographical, highly amusing and could have left us on an emotional high – but I will get to that. The audience arrives at a beautiful Latvian community hall in Adelaide.  G&Ts and a warm pretzel can be purchased – also a reference to a formidable experience in the past.  We are asked to write on and wear a sticky label announcing a memorable theatrical experience of our own. These become prompts to conversations between guests during the short intervals in the action. On the way out that conversation might be with a Pony Cam performer if they are not cleaning up after the crazy mess the show leaves behind (a metaphor?).  I wrote “1980” – a seminal work by Pina Bausch which I had the good fortune to catch as a teen at the 1982 Adelaide Festival (clang!). Frankly, its imprint on me is indelible.  I see its influence on my most recent work now decades later.  In a larger way the Bausch experience in Australia of the early 1980s pointed the way for the impact of German performance practices and – probably – leads us to this performance in a Latvian community hall in Adelaide 2024. David Williams’ experience recalls theatre across decades, the young performers of Pony Cam tell us about theatre from this century – shows that changed them when they were teenagers and when they were starting out making theatre themselves. David tells us his PHD is in the work of UK company Forced Entertainment and it’s easy to spot FE’s confessional style and some structural features in this work – but that’s the point.  The scattered chairs, seeming chaos, a formless meandering event.  But the community inside the hall know that we are pushing back against accepted theatrical mores. Across the evening, we see a stunning recreation of Simon Stone’s “Thyestes”, an actor reads from this text.  It’s a repetition of the word “remember’.  It is a powerful reminder that theatre is ephemeral. We experience it and then, once we leave, it’s gone. It remains only in our memories. To be remembered. It lives again when we talk about it. We cover everything from Betty Grumble’s vagina to “Charles Horse Lays and Egg” to events witnessed in Berlin to a three-hour journey to Hobart to see “Chicago”. And many more. During the various “acts” the audience is moved around the hall into different seating configurations.  By the end we are sitting on the stage gazing out at the company as we feel things conclude.  “Grand Theft Theatre” moves from humour to something more profound in its sideways exploration of theatre as a metaphor for death.  But it doesn’t stay there – rather it loses energy, and emotional connection towards its end.  Sure, this is intimate, there are moments of genuine vulnerability as we get to know each performer. There is great talent on display here and I am pleased to have encountered Pony Cam’s more “polished” version of this work after its premiere in Melbourne last year. But are we moved?  What sensation will survive this viewing to be remembered? Perhaps that’s the extraordinary experiment of “Grand Theft Theatre”. Kate Gaul

GOODBYE, LINDITA Dunstan Playhouse National Theatre of Greece and Adelaide Festival present director Mario Banushi’s haunting “Goodbye, Lindita”.  Over 70 gripping minutes audiences are treated to a production that is best described as authentic festival fare.  Original, confronting, theatrically astute, and entirely unique. “Goodbye, Lindita” is a poetic farewell, a visual meditation on mourning. A family experiences grief wordlessly, stupefied by their loss, until a series of extreme events seems to suspend the boundaries between their world and that of the departed Lindita. “I feel like mourning has a silent, almost suffocating quality,” director Mario Banushi writes in his program notes. “This is why it is a performance without words.”Trivial house chores are followed by poetic images and rituals originating from Balkan traditions. In the complete absence of dialogue and no defined characters, we witness a journey, an attempt to answer humanity’s oldest question: how can we reconcile ourselves with death? In “Goodbye, Lindita” the end is also a beginning, and the love shared an eternal sanctuary. “Goodbye, Lindita” sprung to world-wide attention after a presentation in a converted factory in Athens 2023. Conceived and directed by Mario Banushi, the 24-year-old son of Albanian immigrants, the production was part of a five-day showcase organised by the National Theatre of Greece. Michael Billington of The Guardian wrote, “I was witnessing the emergence of an exciting new talent”. The show begins with relatives tidying up clothes while vacantly watching television. A chest of drawers unfolds to reveal the stretched-out figure of a naked female corpse. The body is ceremonially bathed, adorned in a mask and sumptuous robes, and placed on a flower-festooned funerary platform. Soon, the relatives, predominantly female, silently gather and slowly start to judder, shake and, in one extreme case, take balletic flight through an open window. Mundanity is expressed and then the searing emotions that sit under avoidance explode through relentless, convulsive, and ritualised movement. Director Mario Banushi uses silence and stillness to great effect.  It is often confronting. A couple of breath-taking coup-de-theatre moments lean into the spectacular, but these are never gross or overplayed. It’s all a dash of theatrical magic.  Everything is poised and we are held lightly as this mysterious event unfolds. The set, designed by Sotiris Melanos, is a single room that stretches across the entire stage. Tasos Palaioroutas’ golden lighting bleeding in yellow from a hallway or through the window, often with the flimsy curtain fluttering is poetic and ethereal. When coupled with Emmanouel Rovithis’ complex, spectral musical composition the mood is elevated but never overwhelming. Sounds from the real world combine with Balkan rhythms to transport us into this strange netherworld.  The entire experience of death and grief carries its own rituals. The image of the Black Madonna is central. Banushi took his inspiration from an icon he encountered in a church on the island of Kythira. Inside the empty church he found a lone woman kneeling before the icon in prayer. This image stayed with him. A replica of the icon hangs on the wall in “Goodbye, Lindita”. Later, we see her embodied by a performer. This is beautifully presented though also means that the only Black female performer in the piece is relegated to this otherworldly role. The final image is one of the most striking, an elderly woman crawling towards a welcoming and tender Madonna figure.  The final pieta with Black Madonna lingers. Without a doubt, one of the highlights of 2024. Kate Gaul

The Ceremony The Courtyard of Curiosities Ben Volchok, master of “The Ceremony”, is one the most intriguing characters I have encountered in the theatre for a long time.  Some shows just scream pure Fringe and “The Ceremony” is one of them.  Unique, intellectually spiky, spurious, definitely silly!  Playing in the mediative surrounds to The Chapel at the Migration Museum this is an experience rather than a performance. A quick post show google tells me that Ben Volchok is a Melbourne based comedian who peddles his own style of stand-up/solos shows.  He creates multidisciplinary art across theatre, comedy, fiction, audio, and design. I was attracted to the blurb as is mentioned “The Ceremony” wasn’t about cults.  Just the mere mention of a cult gets my blood racing, and I was in. So how to describe this event – it is experimental and definitely interactive.  In fact, no two shows would ever be alike as Ben Volchok relies on the audience to construct the substance of the show.  He has the format – the (not) ritual falls into four parts.  On our chairs are slips of paper and a pen.  After a hilarious introduction about what the show is and is not – as well as several disclaimers – we are asked to name and write a meaningful event from our past.  Most of these are then read out to both hilarious and poignant effect.   We move then from the past though the present to the future.  Volchok as a great way of dealing with the existential aspects of our relationship to time. But the big philosophical questions remain – Who and Why are we?  How do we create meaning? Described accurately as part sermon, part group therapy, part comedy show, “The Ceremony” asks us to consider tradition in our contemporary world. As we rummage through our collective pasts/presents/futures we build a wholly new ceremony to take home for personal use. As if the ideas around this show aren’t deep enough what makes “The Ceremony” really special is Volchok’s desire (and ability) to remain present with his flock and it is that gift we are left.  The take-away just might be that we are slightly less afraid to contemplate our existence or at least know we are all in a similar boat. And perhaps to hold our humanity lightly. We all need a version of “The Ceremony” in our lives – mmm – but that starts to sound cultish and this is (not a cult). Kate Gaul

Alex Wright and Phil Grainger (Wright and Grainger) wrote this modern re-telling of Greek mythology in 2016.  Written in the heat of new love, we are told, the two have performed it around the world ever since. In The Yurt at The Courtyard of Curiosities we sit in traverse. The narrow space between the rows of audience is where these two weave a magical performance. Alex Wright with words, Phil Grainger on guitar. This is story telling at its most elegant as we are transported to a pub, a karaoke bar, a park bench and to Hades. We begin in Edinburgh. We are told it is grey – grey buildings, skies, streets.  Even the beer is grey.  This is Dave’s world.  He lost the ability to see colour as a child. The poetic writing is filled with clean cut images that burn into our imaginations – everything from the face of a jock to the cut and pattern of a shirt.  Bullied by school mates for singing to flowers Dave retreated to a world of grey and today is his 30th birthday.  Singing Springsteen in a Karaoke bar, his world breaks open as Eurydice enters all coloured in love. Now, if you know your Greek Myths you know how this ends.  But let’s imagine you don’t and in the hands of these master story tellers the plight of these star-spangled lovers is reimagined anew.  The joy of love is all sunshine and flowers. We are dancing on a meadow with friends and a feast.  I guess we know it can’t end well. In six short weeks, Dave’s is transformed by love, and he is almost broken by it when Eurydice dies.  The Gods will him to venture into Hades to retrieve his love. He encounters the three headed Cerberus and, with his music, soothes the savage beast. Charon appears and takes him across the river Styx. Dave is prepared to risk everything to save Eurydice. In the Underworld he sings a love song so achingly beautiful that Hades agrees to let Eurydice go. On one condition: she will travel behind him, and Orpheus must not look back until they both reach the surface. Just as they are approaching the light of the living world, Orpheus — plagued by doubt — takes one backward glance. And sees her. And loses her. Again. Despair! There is a parallel story that weaves throughout this tale.  An older gentleman is sat on a park bench, he is dressed in his finest and may be waiting to meet someone.  An older Dave?  If love is stronger than death is this Dave waiting for his Eurydice to return? Wright and Grainger immediately charm their audience and it is a pleasure to be in their thrall. In just over an hour, we are given a rare and blissful gift that appeals to our hearts and souls. Moving between our known world and the mythological has never been so engaging.  Catch “Orpheus” and then go see “Helios” – another myth reimagined and shared in a similar (but different) way at the Fringe. Recommended! Kate Gaul

Helios The Courtyard of Curiosities In a Yurt, seated in the round Alexander Wright fashions an intimate and masterful story from an Ancient Greek myth. He and his collaborator Phil Grainger have a reputation of crafting contemporary stories from Greek myths.  In “Helios” it is only Wright who takes the stage in person. He reads from cards, employs audience members to be additional characters and voices, fires an evocative and original soundtrack from his computer by Phil Grainger and takes us on a magical, memorable, and stirring story. The Yurt is lit with what seems to be a golden light. A woman in the front row asks Wright to turn down the sound – he doesn’t and assures her he knows what he is doing. We are asked to share what we know about the sun. Over the next 60 minutes we will learn a lot more. Helios is the god of the sun.  He lived in a golden palace at the far ends of the earth from which he emerged each dawn, crowned with the aureole of the sun, driving a chariot drawn by four winged steeds. This 21st Century adaptation has him as a commercial pilot who flies planes that drag the sun into place each day.  He has two sons Atlas (meaning “to carry”) and Phaeton (meaning “shining” or “radiant”), who are fourteen and seven when the story starts. They live on a hill in a tiny village in Yorkshire, the kind where you know who everyone is and where everything is, even if you’ve never been there before. We get facts about the sun - it takes sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Photons emitted from the surface of the Sun need to travel across the vacuum of space to reach our eyes.  These photons striking your eyeballs were actually created tens of thousands of years ago and it took that long for them to be emitted by the sun. “Helios” is a story of men and boys, of struggling with vulnerability, the love of late 80s pop and a yearning to be free. This is Phaeton’s coming of age story – of facing the school bus each day; his interactions with bullies; crazy teenage behaviour and, later, finally driving his father’s golden chariot into the city meeting up with the erstwhile bully. They share an unexpected kiss and end the day in chaos. “Helios” is an epic poem in Wright’s hands. His performance is virtuosic. More than the story of the sun, some tough boys and a banging soundtrack, “Helios” is a paean to courage, to sidestepping the middle of the road, to go beyond the edge and into the unknown. It’s a clarion cry to us all and a reminder that Helios, Atlas, and Phaeton matter because they are human which is truly the greatest gift a storyteller can give an audience. “Helios” has you laughing, crying and everything in between. Low fi and high class! Brilliant!  Run, do not walk! Kate Gaul

An Attempt to Lose Time The Warehouse Theatre UK writer and actor Miranda Prag take us on a journey to lose time. Just like it says on the tin!  She feels her life is hectic, imploding and losing meaning. The solo show follows her strange and philosophical attempt at a solution. Instead of being more productive, she aims to lose her perception of time entirely. Prag ignores clocks, takes the timers off her computer and phone to find a different way to structure her life. In the middle of this experiment, the pandemic strikes and, to escape London, she takes her canal boat north on an adventure. Prag’s narration of this story alternates with monologues on climate change, the fate of humanity, quantum physics, industrialisation, and natural history. Attempts at humour are added to highlight our disconnection between our mundane lives and the big picture. The personal and the philosophic are intertwined. The script has neither sophistication nor poetry so it’s a plodding 70 minutes as we amble through the journey. Spliced in between Prag’s spoken monologues are audio descriptions of what is on stage and the changing set. These are played as she deconstructs and then reconstructs a series of copper bars, bicycle wheels, tins of sand, string, metal levers and coloured discs, moving them from one seemingly abstract sculpture to another. Built in accessibility! The most interesting part of the monologue is descriptions of the far north of Scotland, the activity of moor hens and the changing patterns of light which are natures clock. Explanations of the equinox and what it means for those in the northern hemisphere and incidentally how cults and religions grow around nature’s strangeness are striking hearing these facts sitting in a theatre in Adelaide. Prag wears a dark green encrusted cape for the wackier parts of the show and even a helmet with horns – it’s all terribly serious at this point. The assemblage of this abstract sculpture is intended to be the transcendent achievement of the production. Once fully assembled and able to activate independently this sculpture of metal, sand, string, and plastic is meant – it think – to mirror time that has been eschewed and its relationship to Prag and by extension, humanity? The idea is strong, but its intentions are not achieved. It is a salutary lesson to those wanting to value add to a production to make more of what is often a simple story. There’s something interesting at the heart of this work but inside the unfocussed and meandering production it cannot be caught. The Warehouse Theatre is a little out of the centre of town but with its intimate cabaret seating and it’s a charming venue with a terrific bar.  Well worth checking out the rest of its offerings for Adelaide Fringe this year. Kate Gaul

Javaad Alipoor Company (UK) and Riverside’s National Theatre of Parramatta (NTofP), playing as part of the Sydney Festival, 2024. “Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World” - a co-production between the Javaad Alipoor Company and National Theatre Parramatta – makes its Sydney Festival debut as a full-scale production following a work-in-progress showing as part of Sydney Festival in 2022. Alipoor and cast members Asha Reid and Raam Emami work alongside Australian creatives Benjamin Brockman (lighting and productioin design) and Me-Lee Hay (composer and musician) with excellent results. Regular Javaad Alipoor fans get what they expect – a guaranteed dopamine hit from visually detailed staging and mind-expanding text. In 1992 Iranian popstar Fereydoun Farrokhzad was found brutally murdered in his while living as a refugee in Germany – stabbed more than 70 times, his tongue was cut out, and his genitals cut off. The case was never solved. “Things Hidden” is an investigation into this iconic murder and an interrogation into the nature of investigation. It’s a world of murder mystery podcasts that presents everything in the world as knowable. It aims to show the audience how, in this age of information, our ability to truly grasp knowledge is distorted by satisfying Wikipedia deep dives and endless podcasts that present their own version of events, revealed at truth. As Alipoor brilliantly demonstrates, knowledge is not the same as understanding. As with all Alipoor’s work this is also about the impossibility of translation, the reproduction of colonial structures, and the way the internet shapes our sense of knowing. It “gleefully mashes up genres, smashing together the quiet authority of the murder mystery podcast, the intimacy of autobiographical storytelling, and the visual spectacle of multimedia performance — while simultaneously deconstructing each of these forms.” (The Guardian) “Things Hidden” challenges us to look to the periphery of society in the global North – to acknowledge subaltern groups and their invisibility to a majority who have no need to look for them. The production also stars King Raam, a hugely successful Iranian artist – one so controversial that Canadian officials came knocking on his door to tell him that Iran wanted him dead. At first, Raam appears only in video footage, before we catch a glimpse of him behind a screen, and then he later steps on stage and addresses us directly. It is in this speech that he tells us about Iran wanting him dead, and he even jokes that if any of us in the audience are there to kill him, now would be a poetic time to do it! His personal story is actually the easiest to empathise with of all the content in “Things Hidden”.  His father, and environmental activist, mysteriously died while imprisoned. Raam is worth the deep dive into Wikipedia and for my money he steals the show!  The confusion of those in political exile who yearn for a homeland to which they cannot return is deeply moving. “Things Hidden” can be endlessly analysed and deconstructed. This is a world where anyone with a platform can rewrite the facts. If you get the chance go watch it yourself.  Recommended. Kate Gaul