Dionysus | Tom Oliver Productions
What kind of show has us singing along to a gospel song one moment and gawking at a hyper realistic stiff plastic cock in the next? A fringe-festival renegade cabaret, that’s what!
Emceed by the inimitable Mario Queen of the Circus, Wynnum Fringe’s Dionysus Cabaret was one weird ride. The audience was crammed into a long church hall that seated people all the way to the back of the room. This posed a challenge for the performers to extend and include those at the very back and they achieved this by frequenting the aisles and planting themselves among the audience. Mario built us up with a polished juggling act performed to the beat of Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ and promised the night would only go up from there. But the night sort of went sideways first… before finishing with a bang.
There was folk music, poetry, sketch comedy and circus. The audience was invited into a singalong and was hesitant to start, but raring for a good chuckle as the night went on. When some acts left the audience dry, Mario was there to bridge the gap and raise us up again for the next performer with golden one-liners such as, “It’s so great to be a part of the last Wynnum Fringe”.
Midway through the show, two old British men in suits and thick moustaches emerged from back of the space, moving in time and sculling schooners of beer. When Alan and Alan of Cocoloco reached the stage they unleashed an extremely-adults only act of slapstick, urophagia and epic schoolboy toilet-humour, where they managed to find probably fifty ways to say penis including ‘beef pole’, ‘monstrous chopper’, and my personal favourite ‘glistening fuck pole’. Responses ranged from uncomfortable laughter to whipcrack cackles to one patron exclaiming ‘oh Jesus’ in disdain. It was downright vulgar and they delighted in the fact. It was an absolute joy to watch audience squirm and scoff.
Melon the Human followed with a watertight act of object manipulation. His mastery of Eight-ring interwoven with feats of flexibility was mesmerising. Leon Cain topped off the show with a hilarious short act where he danced to the theme from Dirty Dancing with a blow-up doll. He brought the house down without saying a word, employing excellent physical comedy and dramatic pause. I found myself laughing and calling out in fear for his character.
When the house lights went up, I glimpsed the guy next to me wiping tears out of his eyes from laughter. Dionysus, the god of theatre and madness, would be proud.
