Sticky Beak

Sticky Beak is an absolutely delightful show that has you laughing out loud within seconds of its start.  On your typical suburban street – marked out here by no more than a corrugated iron fence, a white picket face and a crumbling brick fence propped up by milk crates – life goes on – and it is brought to life by four wonderful performers. 

These performers have no physical resemblance whatsoever to the characters they create and yet those characters are instantly recognisable.  When Jessie Ngaio comes on stage as a dog (amongst other creatures), we know at once that this is a dog.  A dog we will learn is called Psycho.  When Psycho crouches for a relieving crap on the footpath – right outside that white picket fence – we guess that sooner or later someone will step in it.  What we don’t guess is that that someone will smear the crap on the fence and so continue a nice little plot line.  Like any really good comedy, little plot strands are set in place and picked up later.  That is, the audience is left to add up 2 + 2 and enjoys the payoffs even more.

Patrick Dwyer, who is quite tall, needs only to add a scarf to become Jana, genteel mother of recalcitrant teen Sarah (Kimberly Twiner) – but without the scarf Dwyer is the harassed dad, Hayden, next door – and also Danny another dog.  Laura Trenerry is a narky old lady but also Lucas, an adventurous toddler, and – quite startling - William, Jena’s nasty bullying husband.  Twiner’s teen Sarah can also be uselessly winsome and flirtatious when she runs into totally inarticulate Hot Jared (Jessie Ngaio).  But Twiner is also Kelly, Hayden’s insouciant partner who calls everyone ‘babe’…  And so on. 

Two things make this show as wonderful and as funny and as true as it is.  The first is the supreme physical skills with which these performers put these creatures on stage.  The second is the acute, detailed observation of these denizens of a typical suburban street and the way they interact.  Not always harmoniously.  Sticky Beak isn’t exactly satirical, but it is certainly alert to the foibles, malice and frustrations of its characters in the Bouffon mode that Twiner loves so well.

Kimberly Twiner and director Lily Fish – a superb mime artist in her own right – are devoted to physical comedy.  They have gathered together another three subtle but crystal-clear exponents of the art.  Amongst the Fringe offerings, Sticky Beak is probably unique.  It’s not ‘about’ anything deep and meaningful, but it is so funny, so beautifully done that you will leave the theatre smiling and happier than when you took your seat.  Don’t miss it.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Tom Noble Creative.