Today’s guest reviews of three fringe shows come cour­tesy of Tony Barnes. Thanks Tony!

The Fringe Wives Club – Glittery Clittery

A year ago, while tour­ing sev­er­al of her shows at the 2018 NZ Fringe Fest­iv­al, Tessa Waters men­tioned that she had anoth­er show in devel­op­ment that she would bring to the 2019 Fringe. Fringe Wives Club Glit­tery Clit­tery is the show that Waters was refer­ring to and since mak­ing those com­ments Glit­tery Clit­tery has won Spir­it of the Fringe at Edin­burgh 2018 and Best Cab­aret, Adelaide Fringe 2018. Cur­rently run­ning until Sat­urday in the late night slot at Bats, it is a cab­aret show that deliv­ers lively songs, eye catch­ing cos­tumes and disco dance moves that are both comed­ic and fun. Glit­tery Clit­tery cel­eb­rates all things clit­or­al. Fit­tingly it provides an all-encom­passing sens­ory exper­i­ence that teases out a his­tory of ignor­ance, mis­un­der­stand­ing and sup­pres­sion that formed around the clit­or­is. Lead­ing us out of the quite recent dark ages Glit­tery Clit­tery pro­motes body pos­it­iv­ity, know­ledge and can­did­ness. But the desire to edu­cate remains sec­ond­ary to Glit­tery Clit­tery’s great­er pur­pose, present­ing cab­aret as the very best vehicle to provide mean­ing­ful enter­tain­ment.

The shows abil­ity to deliv­er on its intent hinges on the tal­ents of co-writer­s/per­formers Vic­tor­ia Fal­con­er, Rowena Hut­son and the afore­men­tioned Tessa Waters. Per­son­al­ity is to the fore, the per­formers exude cha­risma, self con­fid­ence and the camarader­ie gained from many months on the road. As much can be seen in the ram­bunc­tious ad-lib­bing that weaves through­out the show and the song lyr­ics that are made up on the spot by Fal­con­er in response to audi­ence sug­ges­tions.

Glit­tery Clit­tery is a show that dis­mantles bar­ri­ers between per­formers and the audi­ence. It’s an excep­tion­ally well craf­ted, finely honed and road tested pack­age and it’s not hard to see why it’s suc­cess­fully trav­elled the world. It’s argu­ably one of the most thought pro­vok­ing shows at the fest­iv­al and inar­gu­ably one of the most enter­tain­ing.

Fringe Wives Club Glit­tery Clit­tery on at Bats Theatre to 23 March 2019.

Dry & Damaged

Dur­ing the open­ing show of Dry & Dam­aged at Ivy Bar, comedi­an Clara Van Wel’s informs us that this is her first ever full length stand up com­edy gig. It offers the audi­ence the oppor­tun­ity to see a show being developed as it occurs. Though billed as run­ning for 50 minutes Van Wel’s wealth of mater­i­al means that the show on open­ing night ran for an extra 30 minutes. It cer­tainly offered value for what was already a Koha show. Dur­ing that time Van Wel covered a range of top­ics includ­ing men­tal health, rela­tion­ships, fam­ily, sexu­al­ity and much more. The deliv­ery was often rap­id fire and tan­gen­tial. Van Wel seems fas­cin­ated with com­ing at top­ics from fresh per­spect­ives and chal­len­ging the audi­ences abil­ity to make asso­ci­ations in order to get the joke. Van Wel rejects a dumbed down take on world and tries to take the audi­ence with her. It’s not a jour­ney for every­body at this stage in its devel­op­ment.

It’s rare to see a show in such a nas­cent form. It takes con­sid­er­able cour­age from the per­former to test the waters in this way and a cer­tain amount of for­bear­ance by the audi­ence. Wheth­er Van Wel decides to trim and hone Dry & Dam­aged or con­tin­ue to try out her full rep­er­toire remains to be dis­covered by future audi­ences. While the new­ness of the mater­i­al makes for a slightly uneven show Van Wel already brings to the stage a unique per­sona that provides an excel­lent plat­form for deliv­er­ing a dis­tinct­ive and mem­or­able hour of comed­ic insights. It’s a show for the curi­ous adven­turer.

Dry and Dam­aged on at Ivy Bary to 23rd March as part of the NZ Fringe Fest­iv­al

Missing Lids

Miss­ing Lids by Dis­cotheque starts with five yel­low cos­tumes on stage, the lights go out, the dan­cers appear in match­ing out­fits, the lights go out again and the yel­low body­suits are donned. A voi­ceover advises the audi­ence that they are at a con­tem­por­ary dance per­form­ance and not to be alarmed, just in case they’d wandered into the ven­ue by mis­take. The sar­don­ic advising sig­nals that this will be a sly and sub­vers­ive show that’s going to chal­lenge and pro­voke. Fur­ther voi­ceovers indic­ate that the show could be about per­formed fem­in­in­ity, the mar­ket­ing of beauty, gender roles and social con­form­ity.

The cho­reo­graphy of Holly New­s­ome cre­ates dance moves that are altern­ately robot­ic, fren­zied, self con­sciously posed and per­formed with a touch of fury. It’s breath­tak­ing in its pacing and intense, sug­gest­ing the psych­ic strain that is imposed on all of us at this time and place. There is also a play­ful­ness to the show’s present­a­tion. It uses humour and satire to expose the absurdity of mod­ern expect­a­tions about beha­viour and present­a­tion. Miss­ing Lids embod­ies a sub­stan­tial crit­ic­al view­point that drives what is a coher­ent and con­vin­cing nar­rat­ive. Its con­clu­sions are open to a range of audi­ence inter­pret­a­tions, leav­ing us rich­er than when we first entered the per­form­ance space.

While the dan­cers (Bree Timms, Issy Estrella, Olivia Foley, Neve Pierce and Tiana Lung) are required to oper­ate as an un-indi­vidu­ated col­lect­ive dur­ing a few of the syn­chron­ised sequences dur­ing the first half of this work, the ensemble’s exe­cu­tion is sharp and pre­cise. The unre­lent­ing pace is main­tained and places con­sid­er­able demand on the dan­cer­’s tech­nique and stam­ina. The dancer’s skill and phys­ic­al con­trol are con­vin­cingly demon­strated. As the show pro­gresses the dan­cers break out the clois­ter­ing body suits mask­ing their faces and become indi­vidu­al­ised. It’s telling that it requires a group effort to free the first dan­cer and one of many power­ful moments scattered through­out the work.

As a show Miss­ing Lids deliv­ers lots of ideas while provid­ing a dynam­ic and vis­cer­al exper­i­ence for the audi­ence. Recom­men­ded.

Miss­ing Lids is on at Te Aua­ha to 23rd March as part of the NZ Fringe Fest­iv­al