The Adelaide Fringe Festival has returned to my City for 2017 and it's a great time to be around such vibrancy and good nature which this renowned festival instills in the community. Of the many Adelaide Fringe shows I've been looking forward to this year, the chance to see Alice Fraser on stage again, was at the top of my list.
I wrote about Alice last year, having caught her 2016 show "The Resistance" and become a regular listener of her podcast "Tea With Alice". Alice is at once an engaging personality who thinks deeply across a wide range of subjects and she quick witted - both in conversation and in the art of constructing a narrative replete with guerrilla comedic observations. As a performer therefore, Alice Fraser ticks all the boxes that one should tick in deciding who to see.
So, fresh from her run with the critically acclaimed "The Resistance" which she toured extensively throughout 2016, Alice Fraser has returned to this year's Fringe with her new one woman show "Empire".
Described as a reliably silly, unpredictably meaningful, narratively unorthodox, artful comedy show, Alice takes the stage with a more theatrical presence this time around. She proceeds to take her audience on a hour long journey through a frenetic and eclectic thought landscape where notions of traditional comedy are challenged by whimsical story telling, biting satire and heart warming, life affirming observations.
The subject matter Alice has chosen for "Empire" offers equal measure of comedy but, as she did with The Resistance, Alice has infused her narrative with moments of poignant insight that stop you short. They invite you to see facets of humanity in a way that you may not have considered before.
Audiences are sometimes brought into the fold to participate in a way that involves everyone in her performance. While it is at once hilarious to witness, Alice's way lends an intimacy that uplifts and that is rare for performance story telling of this kind.
As I left the venue, I witnessed the smiles of the audience and the babble of their conversation as they dissected the show and the meanings in it and I'm sure that those conversations went on long afterwards. It takes a considerable talent to achieve something so thought provoking.
Alice Fraser will be performing "Empire" at The Producer's Hotel throughout the Fringe until March 12th before taking it on the road to Melbourne, then Sydney, then Europe thereafter.
Book your tickets for Alice Fraser's "Empire" in Adelaide here.
Book your tickets for "Empire" in Melbourne here.
Book your tickets for "Empire" in Sydney here.
Visit Alice Fraser here.
Tweet with Alice Fraser here.
DFA.
The past 24 hours - give or take - have seen an outpouring of grief at the sudden death of actor and comedian Robin Williams. Celebrated, much loved, kinetic, hilarious, legendary - all are terms that have been associated with countless tributes that have poured in from around the world. He was an actor of a generation, a pop culture icon (?), a figure of inspiration.
These are all fair assessments of a man who has entertained for nearly 40 years or more. His accolades are deserved - his legacy cemented. But there has emerged, for me at least, another picture of Robin Williams that, while not detracting from my view of him overall, serves to humanize him to a level that is worth exploring.
Last night, I downloaded a podcast from comedian Marc Maron. It was an interview that Maron recorded with Williams back in 2010, book ended with some up to the minute thoughts from Maron about the actor's death. In the roughly hour long interview, Maron and Williams discussed the latter's early career, his comedic beginnings, his successes on stage and on screen and the material rewards that stemmed from that.
They also canvassed the excesses of Hollywood in the 1980's, the vices that flowed to people like Williams as a result of success - the cocaine addiction and alcoholism and the mental illness. A fact that I certainly wasn't aware of before now was Williams was present the night John Belushi died. It was an enlightening and, admittedly, a sometimes disturbing insight into the perilous nature of success and excess that is not often talked about - though Williams has, in more recent interviews, been willing to discuss these in more detail. He didn't shy away from talking about the destructive nature of it all and how it shaped him.
The other alternate view of Williams came to me this morning via the comedy talk show Keith & The Girl. In it, host Keith Malley was quite forthcoming in criticizing the overwhelming expressions of grief on social media which he believed had gone way over the top in terms of a collective outpouring of emotion. He also broached - actually, he launched head on into - the subject of charges against Robin Williams that he was a joke thief. This, too was something that I was aware of in the past, though I wasn't prepared to give much credence to it. You always wish to see those you admire in the best possible light.
Without pointing towards specific charges or allegations - you can Google this for yourself - the internet does throw up a number of articles that tackle Williams' apparent joke thievery which cast the actor in a different light.
Malley's passionate argument around the faux grief and emotion poured into social media extended into his anger at certain comedians, whom he knows personally, who have pointedly criticized Williams in the past for joke thievery - yet they were in their on Twitter, on Facebook or wherever they could find a soap box, mourning, lamenting and telling the world how much of an inspiration Robin Williams was to them.
There is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that Williams did in fact engage in a level of joke thievery. It's disappointing and saddening. But, in any posthumous examination of a person, particularly a figure as revered as Robin Williams, I think it's a necessary component of that examination.
I'll continue to watch his movies and admire him as a performance artist of incredible energy and talent. But, I will add these alternative view points to my own impression of the man that Robin Williams was...
Because, at the end of his day, Robin Williams was human...
DFA.
