HIGH PONY
It’s onerous to not love the form of queer enthusiastic weirdness that musical comedy duo Sam and Mel carry to the stage. From their energetic opening nine-minute, quasi Deliver it On-style attractive cheerleading quantity about social netball (the ‘gayest straight sport’) and with netball bibs adorning the again of stage like bunting, I believed the present can be all about netball. And, look, as a former GK/GD, for this I used to be there (when you want). However no, the duo disappear offstage and Mel returns in a The place’s Wally crimson and white candy-striped jumper, beanie and glasses, singing a ballad about by no means feeling really seen.
HIGH PONY is a correctly bananas musical comedy cabaret, that includes unique songs akin to ‘Lesbians don’t get the Ick and That’s Science!’ (full with merch), a tune a couple of pair of eshays discovering their true calling as a florist and ballet dancer, and a tune about how infants needs to be cancelled (as a result of what do they do, actually?).
Mel O’Brien and Sam Andrew had been nominated for the Golden Gibbo for his or her earlier present Shit-Wrecked! on the 2022 Melbourne Worldwide Comedy Pageant and are clearly amassing a crowd of devoted followers, judging by their packed opening evening of HIGH PONY on the Trades Corridor Widespread Rooms. Their comedy is recent, ridiculous and so they harmonise. What’s to not like?
HIGH PONY
★★★★1/2
HIGH PONY can be acting at Trades Corridor till 22 October 2023.
LOOPS
NZ-based Firm Hiraeth took the basic form required for aerial rope, a loop, and turned it into a posh circus-based efficiency – a looped double aerial work that grew to become more and more anxiety-inducing with every repetition.
And it was all set to a stay carried out soundscape that included know-how and included cassette tapes, a reel-to-reel, laptop computer and looping desk. It was unique and transferring, a piece in pressure between its sense of existential bleakness and its poetic magnificence.
LOOPS
★★★★1/2
Created and carried out by Benny Lennings, Leanne Jenkins and Fran Muir
Directed by: Brynne Tasker-Poland
LOOPS was carried out at Gasworks Arts Park from 5-7 October 2023.
Black Widow
Isabel Knight is Arachne. A femme fatale, Black Widow spider, wearing spandex onesie with two pairs of lengthy finger-nailed arms hanging over her shoulders, she searches for real love as a killer badass black magnificence susceptible to consuming her love pursuits.
Knight’s highly effective pipes are greatest suited to the wealthy lows and belting highs of the jazzy numbers she twists into her cabaret quest (Chicago’s ‘All That Jazz’, Etta James’ basic ‘A Sunday Type of Love’ and ‘One thing’s Received a Maintain On Me’ and Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’), and her playful lyricism makes for plenty of laughs (an viewers participation quantity turns AC/DC’s ‘TNT’ into her self-proclaimed favorite acronym, ‘DTF’).
It’s saucy, horny and salacious and, with refined comedian and efficiency chops, Knight is a secure (4) pair of arms – pulling off a dangerous denouement gear shift and navigating a good emotional flip by means of an a capella ballad. Knight is a good expertise and Black Widow is cabaret well-worth being caught by.
Black Widow
★★★★
Black Widow can be carried out at The Butterfly Membership, Melbourne till 15 October 2023.
De-tours of Melbourne
De-Excursions of Melbourne has three strolling excursions on provide throughout Melbourne Fringe, together with a rom-com and a scary tales tour. For this evaluate, I went on the thriller tour.
That is no atypical sightseeing tour, however a mysterious journey that asks us to resolve a puzzle about Melbourne, stopping by locations which will lead a curious particular person to marvel: what’s behind that wall or over that fence?
Your information is the very charming and kooky French detective, Seraphine (Jenna Schroder), who friends over her red-rimmed glasses at her tour friends, wrapped in her shiny crimson coat and donkey-print scarf, main the way in which by way of again alleys and over cobblestones, baguette in raised hand.
Learn: Efficiency critiques: The Hotline, Poet No.7 and Zaffé, Melbourne Fringe Pageant
Schroder as Seraphine has sufficient charisma to hold the present and all its absurdity, and her comedian improv abilities make for plenty of surprising laughs. The construction maybe may very well be refined to permit every element of the puzzle to have a extra coherent place within the general thriller, which can result in a extra satisfying general “a-ha!” payoff.
De-Excursions of Melbourne
★★★
Seraphine’s De-Excursions of Melbourne run 6-11 October, 17 (7.30pm) and 21 (7.30pm), Sunanda and Angela’s excursions on 12-13, 18-20 October and the scary tales tour on 17 October (7:40pm), 19 and 21 (6.30pm).