Vaudeville
“If these walls could talk… they wouldn’t need to put on plays.” So says the caretaker at the historic Vaudeville Theatre, an establishment with over a hundred years of grim history, but which unfortunately wasn’t supposed to be open tonight, the theatre dark for the foreseeable future.
Expected or not, since there is an audience he relents to entertain them himself with his knowledge of the venue and those who have performed at the Vaudeville, where to say some of the acts have died on stage is not just a turn of phrase…
First was the magician Eustace Allcott, magician and ventriloquist, the sherpa of shazam, a man who boozled the bams of the crowds, but whose hostile relationship with his stage dummy Mr Nibbles and rivalry with knife thrower the Great Verlando ended up with one dead cutlery chucker and a double cross waiting to happen…
Then there was the ambitious but superstitious actor Oliver Travers, target of the venomous attentions of the critic Eleanor Klein as he performs his one man Hamlet (based on Macbeth), his three theatrical agents (two of whom speak in rhyming couplets, the third, not so much) offering suggestions which his twisted mind interpreted with bloody intent…
Finally there was Kelly Maguire, who wished to be the best ballet dancer in the county, but whose mysterious coach had his own plans for her rise to prominence…
Created and performed by Tom Neenan, with all the myriad characters spilling from his mind across the small stage, who is the killer, who is the victim? While not as structured as the extended narrative of his brilliant science fiction thriller The Andromeda Paradox, Neenan himself is as wonderful as ever, spinning new characters out of single lines and milking every line for maximum comic effect, in this show playing with the absurdity of the conceits of stagecraft.
With canny use of sound and his minimal props, the audience are as much a part of the show and always in on the joke as their host – or are they? While at first it may seem apparent how the cards will play out, Neenan is playing with a stacked deck from the outset and has more than one ace hidden up his sleeve, perhaps to surprise and delight, perhaps to horrify.
Vaudeville continues until August 28th at Underbelly Med Quad
