Cabaret Therapy

Each year the Melbourne Cabaret Festival throws fresh, interesting and daring shows at the audiences of this fine city and each year we demand to be further challenged by shows which will excite and stimulate our imaginations and maybe just shock us a little.

Last night at the Butterfly Cub I watched something inspiring and beautiful performed by someone clearly in control of their milieu. Situated at the end of Carson Place, off Little Collins street in the CBD, the approach to the Butterfly Club just imbues it with the very spirit of cabaret and climbing the stairs past the various posters, through the dimly lit bar area decorated with nik-naks and kitsch ornaments and toys of yesteryear one is reassured with the ambience of a venue comfortable  in its silliness.

I had been invited along to see the first night of Dash Kruck’s new show ‘I Might Take My Shirt Off’ – as show about – well- trying to put on a cabaret show.

Dash emerges timidly from behind the curtain at the rear of the stage, approaching the microphone as though it were about to bite him and immediately apologises because he is wondering what is the best way in which one can possibly start a cabaret. This is all new to him – apparently.

This leads to his first number, which is - appropriately enough - about how to start a show, and showcases his prodigious performance skills, contrasting his strong and punchy singing voice with his initially timid on-stage persona.

The timing is crisp and his musical accompaniment from Matthew Nutley on piano, Darren Steele on double bass and Bryn Bowen on drums is perfectly judged, being bombastic and subtle by turns as the performance calls.

The show takes the form of a personal journey following a break-up and is supposedly the idea of an unseen German therapist whose voice is heard sternly directing dash on occasion to express himself. This means that the audience have their part to play in all of this therapy and members are selected to participate in helping Dash express himself more, meaning that nowhere is safe - you  have been warned!

To keep track of his achievements, Dash has a list of things which every good cabaret show needs and crosses these off along the way, until he is both drunken and shirtless and free by the climax.

The audience were very receptive to the performance, hooting and hollering along to some of the more risqué numbers and gave a deafening applause at the close of the show which was well deserved.

This is a highly entertaining evening of song and comedy which takes its audience on a personal journey through the darkness of rejection to bathe in the warm light of acceptance and healing.

‘I Might Take My Shirt Off’ is on at The Butterfly Club, Carson Place until June 28^th.

Liberation Day

One of the most idiosyncratic of the numerous bars and venues in Melbourne CBD is The Butterfly Club. Tucked away at the very end of a laneway leading from a subsidiary backstreet in Melbourne's CBD, this venue is a treasure-trove  of entertainment from cabaret and stand-up to straight theatre and music.
Finding the venue at the far-end of Carson Place, I ascended the stairs to the bar area lined with a cornucopia of various toys, trinkets and knick-knacks from bygone days lending it a cosy, intimate atmosphere thanks to the mismatched furniture and often threadbare seating.
Despite a pre-show drink spillage, I was all prepared for an enjoyable evening of entertainment. The lights dimmed and we awaited the arrival of Amelia to the stage.
After a few silent seconds, series of thuds from the rear of the room had the audience turning their head to see what the commotion might be to find Amelia being slowly wheeled down the steps toward the stage on a parcel trolley, holding aloft a bottle of champagne. Her able wheeler pulled her onstage before (noisily and calamitously) disposing of said trolley backstage.
There followed an hour of entertaining anecdotes punctuated by appropriately chosen songs with slightly altered lyrics, all predicated on the notion of 'What is liberty?'
Amelia's previous show 'Storm In A D-Cup' was an honest and funny look at herself and her life growing-up in rural Australia.
This new show explores her quest to liberate herself from her own seemingly-calamitous lifestyle and to attain some form of balance and fulfilment.
The journey this takes the audience on is full of perfectly selected and altered songs from AC/DC to Disney, and Chumbawamba to Whitney - each illustrating Ryan's points perfectly as well as showcasing her amazing voice.
She is ably accompanied throughout by the marvellous piano playing of Matthew Carey, whose tinkling between set-pieces adds beautiful atmosphere to the tales told.
Will Amelia extricate herself from her bad habits and achieve her dreams? Is she solely responsible for the Prosecco shortage? These are both questions which may never be satisfactorily answered, but this is a show which is laugh-out-loud funny and bristling with talent.
Amelia Ryan - Lady Liberty is playing at The Butterfly Club, Carson Place, Melbourne CBD at 8pm until May 31st.

Surreal Comedic Hybrid

I know it has been a while since I last posted a review here -but I've been busy doing science.
I have been roused from my critical dormancy, however, by the news that an accident involving a teleporter, some ping-pong balls and several cans of energy drink has resulted in the amalgamation of two of Melbourne's freshest faces into one unified example of comedic talent.
Capperjack is the brainchild of comedians Nick Capper - he of the wild hair and wild ideas - and Jack Druce - whose youthful looks and calm demeanour belie the hilarity within.
First and foremost this is a sketch show and perfectly combines the manically bizarre ideas which were so present in Nick's show during the comedy festival with the quieter, more contemplative whimsy of Jack's show.
At the top of the show we are made privy to the moment when Jack was inspected by the Chief of Comedy during a gig and was summarily fired from his chosen profession. Jobless and penniless, Jack must seek alternative employment with the help of the world's worst recruitment consultant, one Nicholas Simon Capper.
What follows is hilarious and very, very strange.
Through the use of some very silly costumes, voice over monologues, great characterisation and denim Capperjack keeps the laughs flowing for the full 50 minutes of its runtime.
Capper and Druce clearly have a good rapport on stage and the smoothness with which the sketches run through the show is testament to their professionalism as entertainers.
So, if you fancy an evening of weird musical numbers and a supporting cast of  talking eggs, car accoutrements, strangely neanderthal shop assistants and ostriches then this is the show for you.
Hilarious and very strange, Capperjack is on at the Imperial Hotel on the corner of Spring and Bourke in the CBD at 6pm until October 2nd.

Far From Grimm Tales

...And they all lived Happily Ever After.
Ever wondered what happened next? Did Red Riding Hood get on with her life or was the gruesome death of her Grandmother a life-changing experience? Did Snow White go on to live la vida loca after marrying her Prince? And what of the seven dwarves?
In her new show After Ever After, Rama Nicholas continues the stories of the Brothers Grimm some twenty years after they supposedly finished and reveals the fates and misfortunes of various characters so familiar from childhood.
Playing all of the characters herself, Nicholas inhabits a variety of guises from a kung-fu Red Riding Hood to a penitent Big Bad Wolf to all seven dwarves, bringing each to distinct and startling life.
The story has several threads to its plot with various characters headed toward a collision which will change the land of fairy tales forever and the audience were amused, amazed and touched all in the space of an hour.
This is a very polished and professional performance from Nicholas where she smoothly transitions between characters with ease and her costume changes are barely noticeable. Her vocal work throughout never once makes it ambiguous as to which character she is at any one time and this is no mean feat.
Showcasing her considerable acting skills, Nicholas presents a hypnotic show with an impeccable central performance which held the audience's attention throughout.
Highly recommended, After Ever After is on at the Portland Hotel until April 20th.

Nick Capper

Last night I took myself to the Forum on Flinders Street to see Nick Capper's show - Standing Room Only. I was running at a dash, so arrived at the venue hot and bothered and out of breath, but looking for comedy – and comedy was certainly delivered.

Performing in an upstairs room which seems to be a sauna with pews, Capper stands before his packed audience squinting into the stage lights, performing with a style veering from Steven Wright lugubrious torpor to the frantic passion of Billy Connolly.

Seldom cracking a smile and with his halo of tight curly hair, Capper delivers his material with a dry humour which is more slowburn than raucous laughter, which is not to say that there are not moments where the audience is laughing uproariously, just that the predominant reaction is of wry smiles and knowing chuckles.

This is mostly gentle, observational humour with surreal asides and the occasional impassioned rant. Capper quickly establishes a warm rapport with his audience and has already invited us all to become a gang, roaming the streets of Melbourne, within the first five minutes of the act. It is this sort of left-field humour which makes Capper so fresh and interesting and ensures that even though some gags may not quite hit the spot there are plenty which provoke gales of laughter in the room.

His best material comes when he is riffing off observations about the world around him - such as an impromptu Elvis impersonation - rather than some of the longer story segments, and his pitches for musicals and the kids show he has written are just plain bizarre.

If you’re looking for a show which is a bit out-there in its humour and where the gags really seem to come from nowhere to knock you for six with laughter, then this is for you.

With A Little Help From Her Friends

The Melbourne comedy scene is not short of female comics, fortunately, but many of them use a style of delivery which teeters between cute and ditsy and have never really engaged me. Similarly with male comics projecting an alpha-male, macho image.
Rose Callaghan, however, has arrived on the scene and is anything but ditsy. This comic takes to the stage like a fish to water, confidence just pouring from her.
She tells tales of frank honesty concerning her housemates who judge her slightly dissolute lifestyle; the perils of dating and her sexually adventurous mates. Her delivery style is punchier and more direct than many of her contemporaries which elicits hearty laughter from the audience rather than mildly amused chuckling and she has a great command of the stage. In style she has it all under control and manages a couple of call-backs which round-out her routines in a satisfying manner.
Rose's mates for the evening are Nick Capper and Tom Ballard, both excellent comics.
Nick is a hilarious and surreal comic with a dry wit and comic timing I haven't seen since Steven Wright. His slightly uncertain, slowburn delivery is a welcome change of pace in stand-up and he keeps the audience baffled and laughing with gags about albatross, his life growing-up on a farm and his Father's idea of a valuable life experience.
Tom Ballard will be familiar to many from radio and television and is clearly comfortable on stage, even when performing in front of an audience containing a few seasoned comics, a reviewer and a festival organiser. This was professional comedy, delivered in hilarious fashion, the audience laughing non-stop throughout the set which covered such diverse topics as male topiary, the efficient consumption of chips and a novel solution to the boats situation.
Rose Callaghan And Mates is at the Duke of Wellington Hotel on Flinders Street at 6pm and is a great way to start the evening by anyone's standards.

Chairman Of The Board Games

If you enjoy nothing more than a roll of the dice or facing someone as they ask you a random question from a card then you'll love the Late Night Board Game Slumber Party.

Hosted by Melbourne-based British comedian Neil Sinclair and featuring three different guest comedians each night it is a game nerd's dream comedy show.
The format is straightforward - three comedians compete against one another over the course of several different games played within the hour to get as many points as possible in order to win a prize for their team mascot in the audience.

Points are awarded and removed by Neil Sinclair on a seemingly arbitrary basis, but supposedly for giving the best answers or being the most skilled if the round is physical such as the non-copyright infringing game where contestants must remove blocks from a stack and replace them on top without toppling the stack.

This is a great way for anyone to end an evening with lots of interactive fun, cheeky humour and underhand competitiveness.

Late Night Board Game Slumber Party is on at the Games Laboratory on Little Lonsdale Street each Friday and Saturday night during MICF at 10:45pm until April 12th.

Skye High Limit

Back at the Tuxedo Cat, I was intrigued by Lisa-Skye's Lovely Tea Party - a late night combination of stand-up and chat show.
Last night her guests were Pajama Party themselves - Sarah Jones and Nicholas J. Johnson.
The show began with Skye welcoming us to her new show in characteristic flamboyance before she invited her guests onto the stage to give the audience a taste of what their show would bring.
This was very funny and gave a good taste of what to expect in their full show which I look forward to reviewing later in the festival.
Skye then asked her guests to pick categories from a board and would ask them questions on their fears, pet peeves and other topics
Skye is the perfect host for this style of irreverent show and if you're seeking something a bit different before you head home at the end of the night I heartily recommend seeing this.
Lisa-Skye's Lovely Tea Party is playing at the Tuxedo Cat on Wills Street in Melbourne at 10:45pm Thursday to Saturday and 9:45pm Sundays until April 20th.

Gentlemanly Misbehaviour

Do you like magic?
If you answered 'No' then we cannot be friends, I'm sorry. I love magic. Particularly the small-scale stuff. None of that making an elephant disappear or walking through the Eiffel Tower for me. I prefer my magic with a bit of personal interaction which is why I was delighted by the latest show from A Modern Deception, the incredibly talented trio of Alex De La Rambelje, Luke Hocking and Vyom Sharma.
Beginning with a mindblowing feat of prediction the astonished the packed audience with almost an hour of sleights, card tricks and other astonishing acts.
Audience members were invited to assist be supplying a shoe or a phone or simply their hand and there was joy to be had with each twist in the proceedings.
The presentation style of this trio is always warm and welcoming and there is never a hint of mockery so the audience know that they are in a safe space and can take part without fear of ridicule.
All due credit to their director Daniel Lammin who keeps the show pacy and tight.
A Modern Deception - Gentlemen Of Deceit is at The Spring Street Conference Centre, Melbourne CBD from 7:30pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings until April 19th.

Anger Management

The first night of MICF 2014 concluded with an hour of straightforward stand-up from Canadian Pat Burtscher.
His show Overwhelmed at the Tuxedo Cat, is an hour of his musings and rants on such subjects as monetary equality, drug education, life and death and whatever else crosses his Canuck mind.
Burtscher is angry - and this makes him hilarious. Venting his ire on stage to a full house last night he told the audience how he would solve many of the problems which the world has today from the injustice of CEO pay to climate change to the war on drugs.
His suggestions for the alternate uses to which the DEA might be put following the decriminalisation of drugs is one which should have the backing of all people living in large cities.
Pat's rambling, angry stoner delivery fits perfectly with his material and he held the audience in fits of laughter for the full running time of his show.
Overwhelmed is on at The Tuxedo Cat, Wills Street until the end of the Festival.

The Kraken Awaits

A man appears from the side of a stage dressed in jogging pants and lycra t-shirt. He is trying to reach for a pile of clothes on the other side of the stage but his way is hampered by lengths of coloured string tethering him. As he slowly, painfully makes his way across the stage, the tethers remove his clothes one item at a time.
Thus begins Kraken by Trygve Wakenshaw - a one-man mime show where Trygve acts-out a series of odd situations and interacts with the audience when they least expect it.
 There follow a series of scenes where Wakenshaw impresses with his audacity, flexibility and creativity. This is a young performer clearly enjoying his craft - entertaining an audience clearly enjoying what he has to offer.
Wakenshaw's imagination is ferocious and it is a testament to his abilities as a physical performer that the audience were drawn-into his imaginary world, laughing along and gasping in horror at all the right moments.
Although, frankly, what he was doing with that horse I don't think I want to know.
Kraken is on at the Tuxedo Cat on Wills Street in Melbourne at 20:30 until April 19th.

This Is the Way The World Ends...

Once upon a time there was a disaster.
And everybody died.
Everybody!
Stuart Bowden's show She Was Probably Not A Robot is the tale of the last human and the intergalactic robot which has watched over the planet for millenia.
With a face that is more beard than man, Bowden combines music, mime, comedy and drama to weave a tale which is at once touching, sweet, and hilarious.
The story of the last human survivor of a worldwide cataclysm and his attempts to continue leading a normal life takes the audience on a beautiful journey across oceans and across space. There is love, pain and wonder. There is also a hobby-horse.
Set adrift on his waterbed across the oceans after massive tidal waves have engulfed every city in the world, we follow our protagonist as he comes to term with his loneliness and isolation, all the time watched from above by an alien robot with a child's voice which has been working on a secret project light years away.
Bowden's transformations from hapless adventurer to floating space robot are a delight to observe and the delivery of his tail amazes and delights at every turn.
The protagonist's journey across the streets of the city on his waterbed involve the audience directly as he wandered amongst us, describing the meandering route his bed was taking. Avoiding being hit in the face or back of the head with the inflatable bed was a skill in itself.
The character of the robot is one which brings a simple pure delight and had the audience giggling along as the silvery object drifted across the stage commenting on the dramas on the planet below.
This is a very well performed and written piece which will delight and entertain and is on at Tuxedo Cat, Wills St. in the CBD until Sunday April 6th.

Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With Improv Comedy

If like me you are a bit of a Doctor Who nerd then you'll be aware that this year is a pretty big one. A children's television show created by a Canadian, directed by an Indian and produced by a driven and creative young female producer is perhaps not the most obvious production to have survived fifty years of changing television taste, but survive it has. Initially a TV show it has transcended a variety of media over the years spawning multiple books, a stage play, audio adventures, comic books and now - finally - improvisational comedy.
Normally the home to bold warriors, cunning elves, sly wizards and violent ogres Dungeon Crawl at the Trades Hall is a regular Wednesday evening of improvisational comedy often set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons and hosted by Ben McKenzie and Richard McKenzie (no relation). However, last night the time vortex opened and deposited the show into the realm of the Timelords.
With a brightly clad Ben McKenzie acting as Piebald Guardian (Dungeon Master is not a title for any Who adventure) four new and unusual Doctors were sent on an adventure to save the Universe.
Our cast of rogue Timelords included Scott Gooding as a very jaded and tired 512th incarnation; Vicky Kyriakis as a fan-baiting female eco-warrior incarnation; Toby Halligan as a Malcolm Tucker style incarnation swearing the aliens into defeat and Amanda Buckley as a literal medical interpretation of the character specialising in bi-cardial ailments.
The dice were rolled and in adventure after adventure our band of miscreant Timelords gamely fought off hipster lizards, sent a perfectly nice guy called Brutus off to kill Caesar and attended a mysterious garden party in a timeloop. At every turn they were ably hindered by the villainous machinations of Richard McKenzie in a variety of devious guises.
The improvisational nature of this show meant that nobody knew from moment to moment precisely who would say what or how they would act and that kept everything delightfully fresh.
My own personal highlights included the been-there-done-that attitude of Scott Gooding's Doctor; the cheesy medical-based puns from Amanda Buckley's Doctor and the vein-popping swearing anger of Toby Halligan's Doctor.
In the end it all turned-out to be a ploy by a lone Dalek to throw a surprise party for the Doctor which just wanted a hug (awww...).
This was a great way to spend an hour with comedy and geekery aplenty.
Although - it was slightly marred by the Dalek spilling my drink. Did I protest? Of course I bloody didn't!

Always More Room For Comedy

The already packed Melbourne entertainment scene has just been joined by a great new comedy room at The Wilde on Gertrude Street.
Organised by the 'Charmingly Useless'(TM) Neil Sinclair, Comedy Fight Club provides nigh-on two hours of fresh stand-up for the discerning comedy aficionado - or a tonne of laughs for a fiver, if you prefer.
As I have already been labelled a 'comedy whore' by none other than Australia's Honest Conman Nicholas J. Johnson I felt duty-bound to attend this first night.
The upstairs room of The Wilde would make an excellent setting for a Victorian period ghost story with its dark wooden surrounds, eldritch ornamentation, ancient leather upholstered furniture and - bizarrely - iron bars across the windows. As the setting for an evening of new comedy it works perfectly, providing inspiration for lines through its creepy décor and ornamentation.
Any comedy room stands or falls on the strength of the compère. Fortunately, Sinclair had secured the services of a true professional. Lawrence Mooney is a veteran of the Melbourne comedy scene who keeps the crowd laughing and enthusiastic throughout without stealing the thunder of his lesser-known colleagues.
The evening was split into two brackets each featuring an equal number of comedians from places as exotic as Somalia and Adelaide and the laughs never faltered.
The first rule of Comedy Fight Club is - LAUGH YOU BASTARDS! And laugh we most certainly did.
We were treated to eight acts in total, aside from our MC. The two headliners - Tegan Higginbotham and Jimmy James Eaton - both had the audience laughing from the moment each took to the floor.
Tegan's material covered such topics as ageing (c'mon - she's still in her twenties!), trying to be sexy and her love of sports. All delivered with her characteristic bright and perky demeanour.
Eaton's material is very free form and all the more hilarious for it. In amongst his prepared material he happily prowls the space, picking-up various objects and creating some truly bizarre ideas which simultaneously baffle and amuse.
The six less seasoned comedians on the bill each had their bright moments to shine.
For the first bracket Taco started things off and kept the audience laughing throughout his five minutes (ten - nobody stuck to time) with some very polished material.
He was followed by Mo Mann - a South African/Somalian comedian living in Australia - who rattled through his material at breakneck speed leaving the audience dazed and confused yet laughing in his wake.
To round out the first set there was the wonderfully surreal Colin Bronze (Dean Watson) a seemingly quiet, nervous nerd in a tanktop reading surreal lists of - well - stuff.
Following a break for refreshments the second bracket commenced with the delightful Claire Sullivan who gave a short, punchy set touching on break-ups, pick-ups and vomiting on shoes.
She was followed by Angus Hodge whom I had last seen appearing in 'Wolf Creek - The Musical' who mused on the difficulties of maintaining a macho front in the face of shampoo.
Our final young comedian was Tom McMahon whose style foreshadowed that of Eaton whereby he made various observations about the venue, riffing off the decor and positing a hilariously ludicrous scenario for there being bars across all of the first-floor windows.
Comedy Fight-Club has got to a great start and should be well worth a visit during what will be a series of weekly shows.
The after-show orgy organised by Lawrence Mooney was a disappointment, though.

A Coward's Tale

I've never seen the film of 'Brief Encounter' by Noel Coward and was only previously aware of it by reputation, so to find myself engrossed in Kneehigh Theatre's production at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne was a delightful surprise.
This is a story which explores the complex nature of relationships in the very proper society of Britain during the early part of the 20th Century through the interactions of three sets of people.
Alec and Laura meet at the railway station where much of the action occurs after he comes to her rescue when she gets some soot in her eye. Although a mutual attraction is evident from the start, they are each married to other people and resist temptation for as long as they can.
This exploration of the fragility of relationships and how fear of emotional openness and the judgement of society can damage people and repress them is central to the story being told.
Alec and Laura must skulk and sneak about to be with one another and this takes a tremendous toll on both, but Laura in particular.
The other characters involved fair slightly better. The Teashop owner and her potential suitor perform a merry dance about one another (sometimes literally) until eventually succumbing to their obvious feelings for one another and are obviously all the happier at the end.
Whereas the two younger characters of the teashop waitress and chocolate vendor have no such hang-ups and flirt openly with one another. Their relationship moving forward at a greater pace than those of the older people around them.
The production makes excellent use of the space, with the cast dressed as ushers to begin with, greeting the audience upon entry before serenading us all with tunes from the period in which the play is set. Scene changes are quite beautifully executed, making use of projections, model work and sonic cues to indicate transitions.
Indeed a recurring motif is the use of footage and sound of waves crashing on a beach to emphasise the tide of emotions sweeping in over our protagonists in an unexpected an unfamiliar manner.
This is an excellent production which will have the audience laughing, crying and thinking about all those opportunities to take a different path in life. It is playing until October 26th and I highly recommend it.