Lucy Fox, Laura Trenerry and Ell Sachs are The Trav­el­ling Sis­ters. 2017 win­ners of Best Com­edy and New Zea­l­and Tour Ready Award at Mel­bourne Fringe they’re at BATS Theatre to make us snort laugh. (They don’t exactly put it like that but it’s def­in­itely what I heard (and maybe did) at their open­ing night show.) These women are clowns – phys­ic­ally exag­ger­ated ges­tures, express­ive faces, mod­u­lated voices – all to make us laugh. With a suit­case full of wigs and a rack full of cos­tume changes they morph into dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters in front of our eyes. From yoga bud­dies, to lol­li­pop ladies, to a very naughty boy, they stuff a lot into their 60 min show. There are a few moments when I’m sus­pi­cious because we’re laugh­ing at char­ac­ter­ist­ics people have no con­trol over but gen­er­ally they’re hav­ing fun with care­fully con­struc­ted and expertly delivered sketch com­edy.

This show includes singing, dan­cing, a tiny bit of audi­ence par­ti­cip­a­tion. (Also a note that it con­tains par­tial nud­ity.)

 

Car­ry­ing on the absurdity is The Nose by Nikolai Gogol, adap­ted by Jonny Potts and Michael Trigg and set in Wel­ling­ton. Won­der­fully, ludicrously, spe­cific­ally set in Wel­ling­ton (except where it’s poten­tially expens­ive to do so). A deli­ri­ous epic tale fol­lows Alex Grieg as a ‘middle-everything unem­ployed bur­eau­crat’ as he tries to recov­er his Nose which he lost after a night out. We fol­low him sym­path­et­ic­ally, then not so sym­path­et­ic­ally, then begin to under­stand why the Nose may have left of Its own accord. It cer­tainly seems to be more suc­cess­ful without him. The script is chaot­ic and weird while high­light­ing some ser­i­ous top­ics. (A note from Jonny says “It’s just meant to be silly” while Trigg calls it a “ridicu­lous story”. It’s both of those things and lands points about cul­ture and soci­ety. All of that can be true at the same time.) Mostly though, I just really enjoyed watch­ing Bron­wyn Turei, Jerome Chandra­hasen, Maria Wil­li­ams, Jake Brown and Hil­ary Pen­warden on stage togeth­er. Glor­i­ous Fringe con­tent.

  • The Nose on at BATS Theatre as part of the NZ Fringe Fest­iv­al to 16 March 2018