Review: ADELAIDE FRINGE 2020: AUDIO BOOK – LIVE at Laneway Garden Stage, Mixed Creative

Reviewed by Christine Pyman, Friday 28th February 2020.

Audio Book - LIVE, presented by Waterline Theatre, is an evening of storytelling from Dr. Eddy Knight's book, A Short Walk to the Sea, short stories based Port Adelaide. He gained a PhD in Creative Writing with this book as his project. Presented in the Laneway Garden Stage area of Mixed Creative, a repurposed atmospheric area lit with minimal lighting and serviced by a bar, this event created an almost secretive congregation of patrons of poetry, spoken word, and storytelling.

These stories showcase Knight's love of language, used to take us deep within the narrative of the individuals of this area. Utilising clever storytelling, we are taken ever deeper into intensely personal lives, sometimes surprising in their beauty, sometimes making us shift our skirts back with fastidiousness, and other times made almost to cry with compassion. This is powerful work, this getting under the skin of others, and Knight achieves it perfectly.

For the performance event, three actors were chosen to deliver stories from the book, with Knight reading the final story for the evening. Firstly, Mirror Man, read by Patrick Frost, who will be familiar to attendees of State Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company, and Melbourne Theatre Company, tells of an incident in the life of a local businessman, with humour and a surreal twist.

Justene Knight read to us The Emasculation of Anthony, with its very Australian working-class realities. Lizzy Falklands performance of the title work was of a standard that would be expected of a founder of Brink Productions, amongst multiple other theatre experiences, and made her audience uncomfortable in the extreme.

Eddy Knight finished the evening with a more everyday story, which still had uncomfortable undertones. All of these stories and performances had the power to linger in the mind of the viewer, causing a rethinking of others' realities, and intensifying the experience of the personal.

There are only two more performances, on Saturday 7th and Friday 13th March at 7:30pm, but book quickly as space is limited.

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