To Schapelle And Back

A true-blue Aussie is our Schapelle Corby, sentenced to twenty years for smuggling 4.2kg of marijuana in her boogie board bag. The new comedy show by Alex Hines To Schapelle And Back, in all its crazy mayhem, is a fuzzy expose about the tacky Australian Media and their piranha-like tactics for a news story, while raising issues around trauma.

Alex Hines takes us back to the noughties when Corby was regular headline news. Hines is, at the time, a teenage schoolgirl and on her birthday. Her mum breaks the news that her father has disappeared while boogie boarding. Hines, unable to deal with her loss, develops an obsession with Schapelle, for “uncanny” reasons.

Schapelle could almost be Hines’ identical twin sister; she embraces her blue eyed, brunette doppelganger and takes us on weird illuminati inspired journey, where spooky things happen. She first appears walking through the audience dressed in a black cloak, after a weird “dawn of the ages” preamble on the TV monitor.

Hines gyrates like a pole dancer in a strip club. She has her Corby story unfold while she tackles her personal demons. The show is under directed by Susan Strafford, and jokes were lost in the confusion. It needs tightening up and maybe some tasteless images of Shane Warne (RIP) in heaven omitted. That said, Phar Lap is hilarious, providing more than enough comedy regarding dead Australian icons. This show does get messy and sometimes loses its bitey satirical charm.

This is a very fringe show and Hines is a Fringe Award winner - she is multi-talented and an engaging performer.

Flora Georgiou

Photographer: Guillym Davenport