Fringe Music and Cabaret

Rob Adams

JunNk

Just the Tonic at the Community Project

three stars

Victoria Jeffrey: Dancing with Jack

SpaceTriplex

three stars

The Sanctuary of the Minds

C nova

two stars

THROW nothing away, you never know when it might come in useful. Wise words passed down by many a granny and a maxim taken to heart by JunNk, for whom plastic tubing saved from landfill becomes an essential part of their ensemble sound.

On an array of pots, buckets and bottles and with tight harmony vocals the quartet recreates a range of hits from yesteryear including Harold Faltermeyer’s Axel F, Wimoweh, Hey Jude, and a Michael Jackson medley. It’s skilfully done and presented with the energy and mischief of a boy band made up of audience bating, dancing and gleefully prancing Artful Dodgers, although you might feel that after half an hour you’ve seen what it is that they do.

The beer bottle pipe organ is a nice touch, though, and their hand selected victims aren’t put through any great trauma. Be prepared to clap along – a lot – and admire some cleverly choreographed drumstick work and didgeridoo impressions in a show that’s full-on and dynamic if not without its irritations.

Ends Sunday.

THINGS are not going well when we join Victoria Jeffrey in Dancing with Jack. Her boyfriend of twelve years has traded her in for a younger model. Her acting work has dried up and she’s dressed as a chicken undertaking market research without much enthusiasm or joy in stopping passers-by. Over the next fifty minutes she lays her life out: the hopeless dates, the spats with her mother, a consultation with a doctor whose prescribing methods might warrant some attention from the health authorities, and the mistimed visit to her ex and his next that ends in some rather sad voyeurism.

Songs – one a cheeky Girl from Ipanema variation, one a rueful blues and another a more rocking affair – add both levity and poignancy and there are some good lines among the bitter observations, although her new nickname for the man who dumped her, Richard, might escape from your lips before it does Jeffrey’s.

Jack? He’s her invisible friend, a coping strategy who’s on hand to see her through the arrival of a new, younger lover and a mirthful engagement as a none too convinced sex aids saleswoman until, as the show nears its end, she doesn’t need him any more because life has picked up and a comedy engagement in New Yok awaits. A diverting piece that might work better when there’s more of an audience for Jeffrey to bounce off than there were on the afternoon I caught it.

Ends tomorrow.

THE Sanctuary of the Minds is the sort of Fringe show that people used to recommend to friends due to the oddball factor rather than on merit. In a room that quickly becomes claustrophobic two screens are showing computer generated, jump-cut images of everything from the Loch Ness Monster to ecology messages to bitcoins while the veejay mixes in music and live vocals of a sort.

It’s more bloke in his shed than professional quality and things take a turn for the spooky when our host, an unlikely candidate for hip veejay of the year, to be fair, dons a series of spectacles that light up and flash while roaring into a microphone and grooving away determinedly in his seat. Some people formed an escape committee. They didn’t miss terribly much.

Ends Monday.