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