Adelaide Fringe: Places, People!

Bridie Connell’s one hour play is a light-hearted look at the world of the stage, show biz and more so the seeking out of one’s own celebrity.

It’s a great idea for a Fringe… and in many ways mirrors the struggle of the independent artist giving it a go.

Connell – the writer and performer of the work gives it a good go herself – presenting a diverse range of characters all attached to the thespian world in their own individual way.

We see the high school girl striving for NIDA, taxi driver involved in an amateur theatre group, Bronx-accented ditsy (and very dated) starlet, bitchy stage mother, old school showgirl diva and an ocker lad heading for tinsel-town and lots of babes.

Some characters fare better than others. Bridie has comic punch and the ability to switch characters, and so this show works… almost.

What’s lacking is a strong through line – we need more. A thread to pull a link between them all, some type of realisation or underlying theme would stitch the isolated characters together.

As an actor Connell uses a caricature approach, but it’s not really enough to sustain the sixty minutes.

I was hoping for some depth, for a moment or two of some more human sides, but they didn’t come along. Even the funniest of comic actors give us glimpses of the real.

This is a fitting Fringe piece and I’m sure many will relate to it, and with some more fleshing out it may very well continue on.