Reviews

Fringe shows can have such variety in performance, but most involve taking a seat and looking at a performing space in front of you. Not so with this experience at Adelaide Fringe, which returns after last year’s sell-out shows with new stories. This venue is a large tent-like structure, entered through a gap in the wall, to sit (or rather lie) on one of tens of bean bags, looking up to the dome above them. Projected to this dome are immersive stories, from undersea life in a reef to a video experience accompanying the music of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

“It’s been a bit of an odd morning, sir,” says young Wesley, trying to make sense of Mr Lupine’s unusual interview techniques. The not quite 20-year-old man is uncomfortable in his late-father’s suit, his mother guiding the naïve man to apply for an apprenticeship to the local portrait artist. Wesley is not long back from the war, encouraged to bury its horrors in his mind – but Lupine has other ideas.

Honour was first performed at the CUB Malthouse in 1995, yet the events Joanna Murray-Smith depicts with such insight could just as well have happened last week.  Perhaps a wife with a successful career of her own would not so willingly give it up to nurture and support her now famous husband’s – but psychologically the truth of that persists.  Whose career takes precedence even today?

What is truth, and what is reality? Created by Australian company Gravity & Other Myths, The Mirror is circus acrobatics with guts, an exciting 70 minutes of songs, audio-visuals, and talented athletes, all throwing bodies in the air with no safety nets.