[fringe] a severe case of garlic poisoning

[reverancepavane]

Today I went to see the final performance of Stoke Mandeville – Astronaut and Gentleman being put on in the Union Cinema by the Adelaide University Fringe Club. The play, written by Nikolas Lloyd and Fraser Charlton, was apparently originally performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, and was the inaugural production of the AUFC. The show starred Matthew Taylor, as the redoubtable and very British Stoke Mandeville, Agent of the Ministry, crashing his Steam-Powered Astral Conveyor in our world thanks to the machinations of fiendish French agents (by substituting their horrid French metre for a good old English yard). There he mistakes, James Moffatt, playing the wimpish Graham Pennyworth, as his fellow agent from the Ministry, Carstairs MacDonald. Rescuing "Carstairs" by hitting him on the back of the head and shoving him in the newly repaired conveyor, Stoke Mandeville heads for Mars and to foil the evil French... The performance was fine, although the Union Cinema was probably not the best venue for staging a play (there was no Proscenium to speak of), but apparently the Adelaide University Theatre Guild was being tetchy about the Union hiring out the Little Theatre. It did disappoint me that there was a marvellous white backdrop on which nobody thought of projecting backing scenes using a digital projector. Instead the audience had to rely on fairly hushed sound cues, and overt appearances of the narrators (of which there was a few), to note the change of scenes. Still, despite these limitations the cast performed magnificently, particularly Matthew in his role as Stoke Mandeville (especially once James (as Graham) started asserting himself more). Almost definitely worth seeing what they come up with next year.