Battlers & Dreamers

The Sydney Fringe Festival gets off to a strong start with this clever parody of 80s Aussie Soaps. You have to love the 80s: it’s the decade that just keeps giving when it comes to source material for comedy. And so we have Battlers & Dreamers, which joyfully lampoons Neighbours, Home and Away, Sons and Daughters, and anything else that was cringe-tastic on TV back then. In the show’s many sights is the overhyped wedding of Neighbours’ characters Scott and Charlene (played by Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue before they discovered something resembling talent) – Remember that? It was bigger than ABBA landing on the moon.

Pam (Angeline Neville) and Geoff Grundy (Lynden Jones) run a small but respectable establishment in the ’burbs. Their daughter Charmayne (Lauren Pegus) falls for Shane (Phillipe Klause), a young man with “a past”. Charmayne’s wheel-chair crippled friend Danni (Jacqueline Marriott) has an impact on the lovers. There’s also greedy developer Clinton Hardcastle (Harley Connor), town busybody Lesley Wrangler (Kim Taylor), Shane’s best mate Dwayne (Ben Crisp), dancing policeman Constable Hardy (Joel Thomas) and Dancing-Girl-With-No-Name (Rebecca Wewege).

These ten are great to watch, always in character and in over-the-top strained accent. Angeline Neville channels Paula Duncan, Lynden Jones shows what Alf Stewart could be like if Alf was nice.  Kim Taylor does a great Mrs Mangels-with-sex-appeal. Ben Crisp has a hard job – but does it brilliantly- playing straight man to Phillipe Krause’s on-point bad boy-cum-white rapper. Our Kylie could take some acting tips from the shrieking budgie created by Lauren Pegus (who still manages to be sweet and beautiful). Harley Connor makes for a delicious villain and Joel Thomas manages to be funny as the policeman just by playing his character straight. Even Dancer Rebecca Wewege gets her moment to shine in a late bit. And Jacqueline Marriott’s Danni is worth the price of admission alone.

How they were able to perform on that small and ramshackle set is a miracle, and in this regard the show feels like it evolved from pub-theatre (the good kind) instead of staged workshops. The venue is not a proper theatre but a nightclub, but we forgive such things as this is the Fringe, not the Sydney Theatre Company.

The parody hits its target beautifully. The show not only sends up Aussie soaps but also nearly every other soap written. This is done by loading the story with plot devices that are the staple of soap opera: a wedding, a bomb, convenient amnesia, adultery, implausible-but-convenient last-minute explanations, people acting out-of-character for no good reason other than to serve the plot. There’s even a character that lands in a coma only to awaken being played by a totally new actor (of different gender).

The show also mercilessly parodies the 80s: the fashion, the overwrought acting, the overwrought makeup, the even more overwrought hair, the ridiculous stares, and a mullet-from-Hell that deserves its own credit. The music is played on a small Casiotone keyboard that spits out the tinniest of 80s strings and keyboard sounds. The programme has fuzzy pictures and is spelled “program”. For Exit Music we get Craig McLachlan and “Check 1,2” playing Mona. You non-80s kids can google that last one.

I didn’t have any laugh-out-loud moments, though many in the audience did. However, I chuckled often and when I wasn’t doing that I wore a big wry smile the whole way through. More importantly I. Was. Hooked. Seriously, I couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next and whether or not Shane and Charmayne would actually wed.

However… (uh-oh), the show is not really a musical. It’s more like a “play with songs”, and the songs themselves are too few and far in between. The weakest thing for me was the singing – it sounded like a local club’s karaoke night. I’m not sure if this was intended to be part of the parody, as we know that when many soap stars tried a singing career in real-life they had to be heavily auto-tuned in order to sound halfway decent. It sounded as though most of the cast had the potential to hold a tune, but there seemed to be no vocal coaching or reinforcement. Despite this, the goodwill from the cast’s performance made this aspect forgivable.

If the show wants to call itself a musical then it needs a lot more work. I felt it worked just right as a play with pleasant and effective backing music and scene-change filler. I felt the few songs in the show could be cut without losing impact, except the Encore song, which wonderfully lampoons We Are The World, with key change. The scene where Charmayne auditions for a talent scout would still be funny were he to sign her without hearing her sing at all, or if she sings a cappella but badly, followed by some meta-quote about “it worked for Kylie.”

At just over an hour the show doesn’t outstay its welcome. I would like to have seen an Act 2 where for example one or more characters could come into big money. It would give the show scope to parody glitzy US soaps like Dallas and Dynasty (or even those local trainwrecks Chances and Pacific Drive), even with accent-makeovers. And what about kids? Funny how many people get married in soaps but they’re not the ones who ever become parents.

This show could be the highlight of the festival, and hopefully BAD will get a long and healthy life beyond the Fringe-festival circuit.

A lot of quick and easy fun.

Peter Novakovich

Photos by Sirmai Arts Marketing