Fringe Music & Cabaret
Rob Adams
Mysterious Moments of Magic
C Nova
FIVE STARS
Torte e Morte: Songs of Cake and Death
Assembly George Square
FOUR STARS
Lord of the Strings
C scala
THREE STARS
THERE must be a rational explanation behind John Henry Blackwood’s feats. Getting his audience to make a packet of jammy dodgers disappear was the easy part. How to explain, though, the brand new playing card that went through a shredder only to reappear, aged by a hundred or so years, in an index file under Thursday’s date where no such file had been a few moments earlier?
Time travel plays a big part in the act of this self-styled Victorian gentleman with a handle on tech both high and low. The routine that bookends the show involves a phone call to a number that, we’re assured, contains the dialling code for a date long past and a conversation that elicits a number, a name and a key word. This is all filmed and the details written down and entrusted to a randomly selected witness for a later revelation that drew almost uniform “no ways” from the audience.
Blackwood is as gently amusing as he is persuasively plausible. Without wishing to give too much away, there’s a sketch with a miniature plunger, called Cynthia, that defies logic and earns Cynthia repeated bows. Another one involves an improvised slot machine and some disappearing coins that return with interest. A brilliantly accomplished and engrossing hour that could do wonders for sales of advanced magic sets this Christmas.
ANYA Anastasia doesn’t, she insists, do burlesque. It’s a tease, literally, because before long she’s divesting herself of Marie Antoinette’s 18th century fashion statement while playing a variation of The Stripper on a very 21st century keyboard in Torte e Morte: Songs of Cake and Death.
There’s a little bit more of the latter than the former as, accompanied by a spot-on drummer and a singing assistant who certainly earns her fee, Anastasia shares her many talents generously. One minute she becomes a hip-hop skeleton, the next she’s singing wittily to her almost flamenco-like ukulele playing or slipping in and out of costumes as an irreverent Aussie Grim Reaper and a no holds barred – verbally at least - talking head.
Dull moments are few, although the public address gag falls a bit flat and Anastasia’s clambering over the front row seems more obligatory than provocative. There’s also a lovely little bonus cameo for her drummer in turning a bodhran into a mini, torch-lit theatre for a kind of Punch & Judy Show - with scythe instead of whacking stick.
MATTHEW Fagan is indeed a lord of the strings. He sits surrounded by guitars, a banjo and a ukulele and as his guitar challenge goes on to illustrate, there’s almost no song or instrumental that anyone cares to request that he can’t instantly recall and work into a medley. An effects unit also allows him to create very authentic Hammond organ, sitar and – appropriately for an Australian – didgeridoo sounds, so before you can say “Stax Records” he’s playing Green Onions like Booker T.
All very impressive and good fun from a musician who has toured and jammed with Billy Connolly and has the stories to prove it. His ten-string guitar sounds especially attractive but a tendency for over-elaboration in his arrangements and a presentation style that can become quite grating could use a little tempering.
All shows end August 29.
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