Adelaide Fringe review 2018: Flesh & Bone
HAD Shakespeare written a season of EastEnders for Netflix, with Gordon Ramsay as dialogue coach, it might go a little like the ribald, raucous revelry of young London company Unpolished Theatre’s impressive debut Flesh & Bone.
Theatre
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Flesh & Bone
Theatre
Rating: ****
The Studio, Holden Street Theatres
Until March 18
HAD Shakespeare written a season of EastEnders for Netflix, with Gordon Ramsay as dialogue coach, it might go a little like the ribald, raucous revelry of young London company Unpolished Theatre’s impressive debut Flesh & Bone.
Ugly characters are elevated to heroic status and mundane daily survival become the stuff of epic quests, with monologues befitting the Machiavellian motives and inner turmoil of twisted kings and betrayed princes.
It’s Bard to the bone, as this “assemblage of geezers and birds’’ mashes up ye olde English with colourful Cockney rhyming slang to explore the male mythos.
As ne’er-do-well Tel and his missus Kel, company co-founders Elliot Warren and Olivia Brady are the main protagonists, trapped in working class warfare as their housing estate tower block faces demolition in the name of gentrification.
Their unusual, forced family unit also includes Tel’s brother Reiss (Michael Jinks), whose tough exterior masks his sexual orientation, and Granddad (Nick T. Frost), whose sleazy pastimes get a little too close for comfort.
Thrown into the mix is a drug-dealing neighbour Jamal (Alessandro Babalola), whose streetwise demeanour and jaw-dropping physique also disguise a shameful secret, which is milked for much laughter.
Ebullient energy, exaggerated characters and rapid pacing are mixed with deliberately incongruous music, physical comedy and in-yer-face attitude to create a compelling, highly stylised drama.
As the cast members themselves chant: Come and have a go … if you think you’re hard enough!
Borders by Henry Naylor
FOR lightning to strike three times in succession is a rare thing indeed, but UK writer Henry Naylor follows his previous Fringe hits Echoes and Angel with another extraordinarily powerful chapter in his exploration of the Middle East.
Love Letters to the Public Transport System
IF you’re not in love with Molly Taylor by the end of this show — or at least with her view of the hitherto unsung romantic role that public transport plays in bringing people together — you’d better check that you still have a pulse.