By Cameron Woodhead, Nadia Bailey and Mikey Cahill
This wrap of shows around Melbourne includes the surreal beauty of Slava’s Snowshow, a powerhouse performance by the original Wiggles and Wind in the Willows performed in the park.
THEATRE
Slava’s Snowshow ★★★★
Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse, until January 8
Don’t book tickets to Slava’s Snowshow expecting a laugh-a-minute comedy. It’s not that kind of performance. A flowering of imagination from the mind of Russian-born, France-based performer and creator Slava Polunin, the Snowshow is something both gentler and more surreal – 100 minutes of dreamlike exploration through a world where logic and reason have no call to intrude.
Slava’s Snowshow has returned to Australia, with its tour kicking off at the Arts Centre in Melbourne.Credit: Simon Schluter
Our hero is Assissiaï, a Chaplin-like figure in a baggy yellow jumpsuit who wanders through a world in which a bed-frame can become a boat, a chair can become a horse, and an encounter with a jacket and hat on a hatstand can become a deeply moving love story.
He is something of a holy fool – sometimes brooding and tragic, sometimes filled with childlike delight (this character, originally played by Polunin himself, is now performed by one of his proteges). Then there is the chorus: a chaotic band of rustics in long green coats, jester-like hats and comically oversized shoes, who take to the stage like Leunig characters come to life.
Slava’s Snowshow takes the audience to a dreamlike world free of logic and reason.Credit: Simon Schluter
The show has no dialogue, no overarching story. Rather, it is a series of delightfully oddball scenes that range between simple acts of physical comedy to extraordinarily realised set-pieces. One minute you’re giggling over a classic suitcase gag, the next you’re watching mysterious, winged figures drift across the stage like something out of a dream. Every moment is tightly choreographed: there is not a dramatically oversized gesture or poignantly dejected shuffle that hasn’t been honed for its comic potential.
Polunin understands that clowning should be more than slapstick and sight gags, and that lyricism, poetry and pathos are as important to comedy as pantomime and buffoonery. He knows the comedic potential of a scene involving a very tall man and a very short man, and that there are few things funnier than a person falling off a chair. He is not above doing the occasional bit about urination (this joke proves especially popular with younger members of the audience). He understands that perhaps foolishness is the only proper response to these foolish times we live in.
Slava’s Snowshow has been playing in theatres across the world for nearly 30 years. This makes sense. The show’s longevity is testament to its near-universal appeal – a tenderly tragicomic strain of clowning that brings Polunin’s visions of love, loneliness, discovery and wonder to poignant, animated life.
Reviewed by Nadia Bailey
MUSIC
The OG Wiggles – Falls Festival ★★★★
Sidney Myer Music Bowl
Falls Festival has a knack for booking nostalgia acts just as they’re having another moment in the mainstream, making the daggy edgy. See Daryl Braithwaite (2017) and John Farnham (2019).
The OG Wiggles delight audiences at Falls Downtown.Credit: Joe Armao
After a two-year COVID-induced absence, Falls returned in a new home: Sidney Myer Music Bowl, rebranded as Falls Downtown. This year’s misty-eyed act, designed to remind us all of simpler times, was Australia’s most successful kids’ entertainers.
Dubbed The OG Wiggles, Anthony Field, Murray Cook, Greg Page and Jeff Fatt dusted off their respective skivvies and fronted up for an astoundingly well-received mid-afternoon set on day one of the three-day festival.
As a 44-year-old, I (mercifully) missed the first incarnation of The Wiggles and have both enjoyed and endured bringing two daughters up with the help of the evolving ensemble.
Personal taste aside, their wildly colourful and decidedly rock’n’roll show caused unbridled joy. Beginning with Fruit Salad and tearing through Wake Up Jeff! (which ended with Fatt faux-complaining: “But I’m trying to sleep!”) and Hot Potato, they brought out Dorothy and Captain Feathersword, the latter doing breakdancing without cracking a rib while the crowd went ballistic.
The Wiggles rocked the first day of the Falls Festival at Sidney Myer Music Bowl.Credit: Joe Armao
Still riding high on their zeitgeisty triple j Like a Version cover of Tame Impala’s Elephant, they stacked the second half of the set with four covers: The Chats’ Pub Feed, Elephant, The Rattlin’ Bog and even interpolated some of Lil Nas X’s hit Old Town Road (surely a no-no?) then segued into Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car.
Reviewed by Mikey Cahill
THEATRE
The Wind in the Willows ★★★
Australian Shakespeare Company, Royal Botanic Gardens, until January 29
The Wind in the Willows has been a school holiday tradition for as long as I can remember. One of the first shows I was taken to see as a boy, it’s been going for 37 summers now and remains tried-and-true family entertainment – a panto-like tribute to Kenneth Grahame’s children’s classic with plenty of charm and colour and song, and a fine excuse for a picnic down at the Royal Botanic Gardens.
Paul Morris (Weasel), Ryan Hawke (Toad) and Maverick Newman (Badger) in The Wind in the WillowsCredit: Ben Fon
The show has evolved over the years to keep adults and young children amused simultaneously. At its core, it’s geared to delight kids, and the story’s talking animals come to life in full greasepaint and vibrant costume, with outsized performances and the occasional streak of improvised mischief thrown in.
One device that departs from the book is the appearance of a Head Chief Rabbit (Callum O’Malley) – a sort of compere slash Pied Piper responsible for songs with actions, a spot of audience participation, and corralling little rabbits between the show’s two locations. He’s accompanied by a Weasel antagonist (Paul Morris), played with the raffish charisma of a young Johnny Depp and the itchiest trigger-finger ever to fire a water pistol.
The Wind in teh Willows performed at tCredit: Ben Fon
The first act is performed lakeside and introduces the intrepid band of river-bankers – Ratty (Jono Freedman), Mole (Christina Wells), Badger (Luke Lennox), and Otter (Wolfgang Reed) – with a smattering of song and high-spirited comedy. The second repairs to Toad Hall, home to the lovably reckless Mr. Toad (Hamish Johnson), condensing the plot of the novel into an action-packed forty minutes that culminates in a full-scale siege of Toad Hall – complete with a pitched puppet battle on the ramparts – to reclaim it from weasel invasion.
COVID has resulted in a slightly streamlined version of The Wind in the Willows that jettisons the odd bonus feature. Past audiences might remember a sequence that led kids off into the Gardens (“the Wild Wood”) en masse to search for a missing otter, for instance, but the show loses nothing of its rambunctious spirit or sense of fun from the pruning, and indeed, fine-tuning proceedings to shorter attention spans is probably wise.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
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