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Fringe 2006 Reviews (49)
Breasts and Burgers
Richard Franklin Productions
Smirnoff Underbelly
**
This adaptation of Apollinaire's Les Mamelles de Tiresias is
a massive foray into the surreal and absurd. Featuring an updated plot
set in modern day and revolving around big business and the foreign
policy of the USA, it still manages to retain much of the original work.
That being in a fictionalised Zanzibar, a woman called Thérèse
spontaneously becomes a man and then dresses her husband as a woman,
in doing so transforms him into one.
The trouble with this performance was that in taking an early 20th
century play and trying to modernise the references innate to that time
into some form of capitalist big business adversary, the point has rather
been lost. Seeing as the original play was meant as a message to post-War
France to be fruitful and multiply, converting it into an anti-Bush
world economy message is only slightly less absurd than the play was
originally meant to be.
Graeme Strachan
The Unattended
By Daniel Maier
Gilded Balloon Teviot
****
Daniel Maier's play is set in the security control room of a Newcastle
shopping centre at night where Jack and Bob are keeping an eye on the
security monitors and waiting for the new security guard Nat to appear.
When he eventually does, he is very late and does not seem, at least
to Jack, to be very suitable for the job. Just as Jack's protests are
coming to a head and he is about to throw Nat out, an unattended bag
appears on the security monitor that becomes their main focus from then
on. Is it a bomb? Is it the proceeds of the robbery they have just read
about in the newspaper? Should they involve the police?
This is a nicely written play with lots of tension, laughs and food
for thought. There is certainly a touch of Priestley's An Inspector
Calls about the way the eloquent stranger persuades all the other
characters to reveal things about themselves, and perhaps in other ways
too. Dave Johns is excellent as head security man Jack, Peter G Reed
creates a wonderful character as the gormless Bob who often has more
intelligent things to say than his superior and Brendan Patricks is
laid back and persuasive with a commanding presence as the mysterious
stranger Nat.
It is a pity that there were so many empty seats when I went, as this
show is far better written and performed and much funnier than certain
star vehicles on the Fringe that are selling out larger venues.
David Chadderton
Brendon Burns -Sober Not
Clean
Brendon Burns
Pleasance Dome
*****
Part three of the now legendry Burnsy Vs Brendon Trilogy had
high expectations. Would this end in an explosion of trademark Burns
comedy or tip him over the edge into a pit of insanity? Or maybe a bit
of both?
After a month in The Priory, Brendon Burns returns from rehab to wrap
up this war that's been raging between his feuding personalities Burnsy
& Brendon. He tried to put an end to it in parts 1 & 2, so can
he really do it? Talking through his rehab stint, pain and sex addictions
and getting friendly with horses, can he end it all? Will there be a
winner?
Well, there is a true winner, and that is Brendon Burns for producing
one of the most hilarious shows I've even seen. Burns is pure comedy
dynamite: when this man explodes he will make you laugh so hard you
may want to die just to stop the pain of laughing so hard! He has been
compared many times to greats like Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks, but it's
time to put Burns up there with them as a great himself, every year
for ten years he has ripped up the festival with his own style of comedy,
his one true voice. Burns has a voice that needs to be heard by all
- let's keep giving him a place to be heard for a long time to come!
Simply the best comedy talent out there, with a show so unique and
well crafted proving there is only one Brendon Burns. If you can only
see one, then why not go see the best?
Wayne Miller
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