Reviews

Thirty years since he first performed at the Adelaide Fringe, Hung Le returns, triumphantly! Hung’s Fringe career started in those early, halcyon Fringe days at the Lion Arts Precinct, performing with Red Faces winners “The Como String Quartet”. The Quartet (with five members) had a meteoric rise to fame going from Hey, Hey It’s Saturday to performing comedy festivals across the globe, including a gig with The Muppets in London and supporting Weird Al Yankovic at the mammoth Montreal Comedy Festival, Just for Laughs.

First appearing on Broadway in the 1980’s, Into the Woods follows a Baker and his wife, who wish to have a child; Cinderella, who wished to attend the King’s Festival; and Jack, who wishes his cow would give milk. The would-be parents learn that their trouble is due to a witch’s curse, which they set off to break. They succeed but then suffer the consequences. This contrast between the hopes and dreams of Act 1, and the happenings of Act 2 was brought to the audience through good singing and some very good acting.

The once-married couple haven’t seen each other for thirty years, until they meet in Athens, both old and mellowed. They discuss the past, offering differing interpretations on events that shaped their lives many years before.

The Greek mythology of this couple is more than 2,500 years old – Euripides’ play was first performed in 431BC – and there have been scores of interpretations and translations since. Loucas Loizou’s story is a kind of sequel: a retrospective of the events, softened a little by time.

When they said it was an immersive theatrical experience, they were not making it up. Just minutes after stepping into the century old terrace in Sydney’s Kings Cross you are part of the action.

The intimate audience of forty lean at a bar, squeeze up and down stairs, sit on leather lounges, and are ushered into different rooms, never sure where the action will take place.