Adelaide Fringe review 2017: The Package

HALFWAY through this mimed look-back at an old woman’s life shortly before she dies, her younger self pops out of a cardboard box wearing a ginormous pair of cloth breasts that stretch below her waist.

Fringe show The Package is a mimed look-back at an old woman’s life shortly before she dies.

The Package

Theatre, *

Bakehouse Theatre Mainstage, until March 18

A LONG-running, scurrilous UK comic, Viz, has a story called Buster Gonad, the running joke around a young man’s enormous, oversized testicles. Funny if you’re a 13-year-old boy.

Halfway through this mimed look-back at an old woman’s life shortly before she dies, her younger self pops out of a cardboard box wearing a ginormous pair of cloth breasts that stretch below her waist.

The male companion is similarly enhanced, this time with a foot long cloth penis and enormous oversized testicles. Just like Buster.

It’s surreal and crass, but also out of kilter with the smothering morbidity and fairytale creepiness thus far. A hospital labour scene soon after had the lady in front of me thrusting her arms around her children, hopefully across their eyes too.

The three accompanying musicians were pitch perfect, but might have been plying their wares at Auschwitz for all the good it did for the soul.

While well produced and a sell-out crowd – it’s $48 for a family ticket – you just wouldn’t take the kids. Nor indeed anyone you felt any affection for.

Richard Evans