On the Fringe

There you have it!  Without the challenge to keep me on track, there's no way I'm going to continue daily entries.  But I'll plod along and update this blog at my own pace, which is just fine :)

We have been immersing ourselves in the Adelaide Fringe experience since opening weekend mid-Feb.  This is what Wikipedia has to say about the Fringe festival:

The Adelaide Fringe is the largest annual arts festival in the Southern Hemisphere, held in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. For 24 days and nights during February and March, the annual festival features more than 4,000 artists from around Australia and the world, featuring world premieres, hit shows and new artists. Over 900 events are staged in pop-up venues in parks, warehouses, lane-ways and disused buildings as well as established venues such as theatres, hotels, art galleries and cafes.
The festival includes contemporary work in art forms including cabaret, comedy, circus and physical theatre, dance, film, theatre, puppetry, music, visual art and design. Adelaide Fringe begins with free opening night celebrations, including a street parade through the city centre and parties at various venues. Street theatre artists from all over the world participate in four days and four nights of events as part of The Adelaide Fringe Street Theatre Festival.^[1] In a period in Adelaide's calendar referred to by locals as 'Mad March', the Adelaide Fringe is accompanied by WOMADelaide, a world music festival and the Adelaide Festival.

We started off with the opening night parade, which was a bit of a disappointment since it was so crowded that we could barely see any of the actual parade.  We put in the effort, though!

Our first official Fringe event was a comedy show which we attended with our friend Leanne who came through Adelaide before heading back to Canada for good after three years studying and working in Australia.  The comedian is apparently well known in Australia - Tom Gleeson.  The show was okay but not something I would recommend to others.  Just kind of generic comedy.

The second performance we went to was called "Wolf Creek: The Musical".  Wolf Creek is a famous Australian horror movie (which I've never seen - I hate horror movies) about a group of backpackers who are captured and murdered by a serial killer.  The musical was delightfully camp-y, purposely low budget, and not afraid to make fun of itself.  We laughed through the whole thing.

Jeremy and I next found ourselves at the 'Fawlty Towers' restaurant, being served by Basil & Sybil Fawlty and Manuel.  The mishaps began before we were even seated at our table.  Lots of funny wordplay and misunderstandings, for example "Put the bread on the table" had Manuel piling rolls of bread directly on our table instead of serving the rolls onto our plates.  Dentures were found in two guests bowls of soup (not ours!)  The comedy of errors continued through the meal and was quite entertaining.

The girls from my book club decided to have a Fringe outing as well.  With the endless array of options, we had no idea what to choose, so we decided that a couple of the girls who work in the city would go to the box office at lunch time on the day we were heading out and see what shows were on for half price.  This led to us attending something called 'Pajama Party' which was a comedy show described as "a show about friendship, imagination and flanellette pants. Perfect for those who are young at heart, middle aged at heart or bitter beyond their years.  Sarah Jones (ventriloquist) and Nicholas Johnson (magician) have jumbled their ideas together and are proud to present this halfbaked pie of loveliness, like a cat bringing a sad present to your door."  It was...interesting...I think we were all glad that it had only cost $10!  We ventured over to Elder Park after the show to see the opening concert for the Adelaide Festival (yet another of the festive events occurring at this time of year!)  A band called 'Kid Creole and the Coconuts' was playing an eclectic mix of South American/Latin/Caribbean inspired tunes and this was capped off by fireworks.

Finally, last night Jeremy and I went to a concert entitled "Through Place, Space and Time".  Grace (my boss) is part of this orchestra/choir group and had invited us to the performance. They performed several well known songs and did a fabulous job. We met several members of Grace's large Italian family who all seemed to know who I was and greeted us warmly.  We couldn't stick around to chat though, because our friends Jody and Matt were visiting us from Melbourne and we needed to get back to our guests.  We left Matt and Jody wandering around the 'Garden of Unearthly Delights', which is where a lot of the Fringe magic takes place.

Another popular venue which is new to the Fringe this year is called the 'Royal Croquet Club'.  It's basically a huge pop up bar with live musical shows, drinks, and food stalls as well as a few random tents with different shows that you can pay to go see.  It's the place in Adelaide to see and be seen!  We stopped by with Jody and Matt Friday night and Jeremy kept running into people he knew from work and we also saw Mandy, an OT from my work, and her husband Steve.

So to sum it all up, Adelaide has been buzzing for the last few weeks and we have been in the thick of it.  There is one more week left of Fringe, and I'm sure we'll find another excuse to visit the Garden of Unearthly Delights before it's packed up again till next year!