The third and final update of Adelaide Fringe’s opening weekend from our Performing Arts Editor Richard Watts. Read his review of the South Australian-created queer cabaret show Bite here, and Watts’ thoughts on Garry Starr: Classic Penguins and the classical music meets hard rock meets contemporary dance production Thunderstruck: A Night of Classic Rock, in a follow-up piece, here.
As well as Adelaide Fringe, our regular team of reviewers are hard at work around the country reviewing books, live productions, exhibitions and more every week; their collected reviews can be read here.
Gravity and Other Myths: The Mirror
★★★★1/2
Delayed and disrupted expectations, overt challenges to gender norms and thrilling, highly skilled acrobatics throughout The Mirror’s packed-to-bursting 75-minute running time, aptly demonstrate why Adelaide-founded and based circus company Gravity and Other Myths (GOM) is such an in-demand representative of Australian contemporary circus arts on the global stage.
The company’s technical prowess and commitment is manifestly present in The Mirror, which is both artistically and conceptually ambitious in its exploration of the concept of entertainment in a screen-soaked digital age. Four acrobats stand atop one another’s shoulders, but the effort, communication and trust such skills take is showcased instead of glossed over or concealed – at times even subverted, with the build-up to a routine or ‘ta-dah moment’ called off at the last minute, leaving the audience hungry for more. Bodies are used to build bridges between three-high towers, are tossed around the stage, are controlled, positioned and manipulated – perhaps a reference to the way we sometimes try and shape picture-perfect versions of ourselves for social media?
Indeed, social media’s distortion of our lives is one of the key themes of the production. One especially notable scene depicts the majority of performers clustered about composer, singer and musician Ekrem Eli Phoenix as he uses a selfie-stick and smartphone to take a selfie (projected larger than life on one of several large LED screens positioned at the rear of the stage in one of several Narcissus-style moments throughout the evening), oblivious to the fact that a small moment of exquisite artistry is taking place behind the ensemble’s turned backs.
As in GOM’s 2013 work A Simple Space, there’s a playfulness present in The Mirror (which also continues that older production’s theme of allowing the performers to control key elements of the lighting design themselves, a motif that has reoccured in several GOM shows to date, such as 2019’s Out of Chaos…; here, that concept is evolved considerably through the use of handheld LED light strips framing and illuminating performances, sometimes playfully, at such moments evoking Star Wars’ light sabres).
Read: Does Australian circus have a superpower?
This aspect of the production – its Fringe season marks The Mirror’s South Australian premiere – echoes similar motifs from other GOM shows, such as the use of bodies as a staircase seen in 2021’s The Pulse, though here the person ascending the bodies is Phoenix, and the aforementioned light strips form the bannisters he holds tightly as he ascends.
Australian circus traditions, such as the classic Circus Oz ‘group bike’ sequence, are also referenced; at other times The Mirror is thrillingly, utterly, quintessentially GOM: performers, including Phoenix, are dressed and undressed on stage, men wear lipstick, acrobats ask punters seated in the front row whether they should go topless or wear a shirt for the next routine, lighting changes and quickly opened and closed curtains provide tantalising glimpses of acrobats at play.
Phoenix’s live vocals and beautifully integrated score are an integral part of The Mirror, which begins with him holding a microphone up to a radio and changing the frequency until he finds a track he likes, which is then picked up and amplified by the speakers – as a body hurtles past him and tumbles downstage into darkness. Soon Phoenix is crooning George Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ (from the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess), later he quotes lyrics from songs such as Aqua’s 1997 pop hit ‘Barbie Girl’, saying, “This I know to be true: life in plastic, it’s fantastic,” only to be choked by plastic beads, at which point he adds, “Most of the time”.
The world premiere of The Mirror took place at the Chamäleon Theater, Berlin, in August 2022; the production has subsequently been staged at Sydney Opera House’s Drama Theatre and similar venues. More needs to be done to adapt its presentation for a venue that is not a standard proscenium arch theatre, including Gluttony’s The Octagon. Despite the audience being seated on three sides of the stage, the action is still very much directed and framed forwards, towards the end of the thrust stage, meaning that those who weren’t queuing early – and especially those who arrived late due to previous shows running slightly overtime – are seated to the far back and sides of the venue, and in the process gain the distinct impression they’re missing out on some of the spectacle, or at least that it’s not focused on them.
This flaw aside, The Mirror remains a spectacular, playful and evocative work, simultaneously displaying GOM’s technical prowess in circus arts while continuing to develop the company’s interest in subverting – even occasionally satirising – the artform.
Disclaimer: The writer has been invited to join GOM’s in-development Advisory Board, effectively an artistic subcommittee; the first such meeting has yet to occur.
The Mirror
Gravity and Other Myths
Director: Darcy Grant
Associate Director: Jascha Boyce
Set and Lighting Designer: Matt Adey
Associate Designer: Lachlan Binns
Composer: Ekrem Eli Phoenix
Sound Design: Mik La Vage
Costume Designer: Renate Henschke
Ensemble: Martin Schreiber, Simon McClure, Lisa Goldsworthy, Lewis Rankin, Dylan Phillips, Emily Gare, Jascha Boyce, Lachlan Binns, Maya Tregonning and Ekrem Eli Phoenix
The Octagon at Gluttony – Rymill Park, Adelaide Fringe 2025
Tickets: $28 to $68
Until 23 March 2025
Sawdust
★★★1/2
Sawdust, presented by Grayboy Entertainment, sees traditional circus apparatus – aerial silks, juggling, unicycle riding, rolla bolla and acrobatic handstand canes – utilised in a fun, funny and high-energy production that’s perfect fare for families – young families especially.
From a stunning life-sized baby elephant puppet created by the team at Erth Visual and Physical Inc (with the diminutive, wrinkled pachyderm controlled from within by Kyle Snow, who brings a background in dance and circus to his artful puppeteering, imbuing the character of Sawdust with a greater level of personality than the puppet on its own would convey) to the series of gentle messages that underscore the singing and circus tricks – respectfully exploring a mutual crush, the two boys’ total lack of awareness when talking over young women or taking over their space – ensure that there’s much to enjoy about the production for all ages.
Sequences geared towards a younger audience – baby elephant farts are no less rank than the human equivalent, apparently – provoked squeals of delight from the children seated near this reviewer and, while some of the thematic messages felt unresolved at the production’s conclusion (a dramaturg may be required to fine-tune that aspect of the show), Sawdust definitely still entertains.
After the scene is set with traditional carnivalesque music and the trumpeting of an elephant in the distance, Abbey McPherson’s MC, Magnolia, opens the show with a sweetly voiced and beautifully enunciated cover of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s ‘Pure Imagination’ from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (originally sung by Gene Wilder); other songs covered in the production include 2007’s ‘Secret’ by US duo The Pierces, Australian pop singer Lenka’s ‘The Show’ from 2008 and P!nk’s ‘Funhouse’ (also 2008), the latter sung with gusto by the ensemble.
The steampunk-inspired costume design is striking without being exaggerated, the character of Sawdust is teased, then revealed and gently encouraged to perform rather than bullied or coerced – a thematic element that’s played judiciously and perfectly – and the circus skills and clowning are memorable and highly skilled.
Watching Alex the Madman (Alex Mannering) swallowed up by a giant ballon, for instance, or Rhys the Trickster’s (Rhys Davies) juggling skills – one sequence memorably involving an apple and a live chainsaw – and Gemima Jones’ (Gemma McDonald) aerial silks routine (which provoked gasps from younger audiences members for whom the smoothly performed circus staple was presumably a new experience) ensure that this compact, clever and uplifting production suits its early evening timeslot and 45-minute running time perfectly.
Sawdust
Presented by Grayboy Entertainment
Directed by Melinda Gillies
Additional cirque staging by Kirby Myers
Cast: Abbey McPherson (Magnolia the MC), Kyle Snow (Sawdust the Baby Elephant), Rhys Davies (Rhys the Trickster), Alex Mannering (Alex the Madman) and Gemma McDonald (Gemima Jones)
Umbrella Revolution – Garden of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide Fringe
Tickets: $22 to $36
Until 23rd March 2025
The LadyBoys of Bangkok
★★★
After opening with Jerry Herman’s defiant and celebratory ‘I Am What I Am’ (originally written for the musical La Cage aux Folles and best known as Gloria Gaynor’s international gay anthem from 1983), followed by a voiceover exhorting us to “leave your troubles at the door,” The LadyBoys of Bangkok quickly hits a sour note.
A glamorously dressed young man complete with chada (a tall, pointed, golden traditional headdress) lip-syncs to ‘One Night in Bangkok’, as rapped by Murray Head in the 1984 musical, Chess. In its opening line, the song describes the Thai capital as an ‘Oriental City’, and in the process, instantly conveys the sense that the show we’re about to see is a Westernised, possibly even fetishised version of Thai culture.
As noted in the production’s media release, The LadyBoys of Bangkok was ‘created by the late Phillip Gandey, and Carol Gandey in 1998,’ adding that “Phillip and his highly experienced production team spent two years transforming the show into a dynamic, pulsating, glamorous, professional, exotic cabaret show featuring some of the most glamorous ‘women’ ever to grace the stage”.
It’s this notion of exoticising a traditional culture for a Western gaze that made this production such a difficult one for this reviewer to watch. Despite being a 20th century phenomenon (“Lady Boy shows … first appeared in the coastal resort of Pattaya some 50 years ago to attract curious visitors into the bars and nightclubs,” the media release notes), it’s also important to note that ladyboy culture is a contemporary expression of the well-established tradition of kathoey, Thailand’s ‘third sex’:
“Kathoey have long been accepted by their countrymen as neither men nor women – but occupying a space somewhere between the two genders – the third sex – and is quite consistent with Buddhist and Hindu teachings. But such a notion doesn’t rest comfortably with Western orthodoxy and has no precise counterpart in the west. Even the term transvestite falls far short of the true meaning of kathoey.”
– Dr Richard Totman, The Third Sex: Kathoey: Thailand’s Ladyboys (Souvenir Press, London, 2003).
For this reviewer at least, The LadyBoys of Bangkok was an uncomfortable viewing experience, albeit one warmly received by the majority of the crowd; it’s also been a mainstay of the Edinburgh Fringe for over 25 years, though one squarely aimed at a straight, mainstream audience. “This is not a gay show,” the Lady Boys’ spokesman Tony Wilkie-Millar pointedly told The Guardian’s Alex Needham in 2019.
There’s no denying it’s a slickly produced, glamorous and striking production that successfully balances comedy with gender subversion and gender illusion, and that it includes stylish and well-choreographed performances lip-synched to everything from broadly popular gay anthems (e.g. The Weather Girls’ 1983 hit ‘It’s Raining Men’) balanced out with songs clearly pitched at a younger demographic (such as Rhianna’s 2011 pop hit, ‘We Found Love’). The LadyBoys of Bangkok also features playful, non-threatening moments of audience participation and a classic ‘call and response’ sequence inviting audience members to shout out swear words as part of a particular routine. But for this reviewer at least, the production as a whole rankles; it feels commercialised, sanitised and unfulfilling and was the lowlight of an otherwise exhilarating and exhausting Adelaide Fringe opening weekend.
The LadyBoys of Bangkok
Presented by Gandey World Class Productions
Cast list and creatives’ names not supplied
The Octagon at Gluttony – Rymill Park, Adelaide Fringe
Tickets: $60 to $85
Until Sunday 23 March 2025
The writer visited Adelaide as a guest of Adelaide Fringe.
