Monday, March 8, 2010

The Garden of Unearthly Delights

The Garden has sprung into existence for the last few Adelaide Fringe Festivals. For a few weeks a year it transforms Rundle Park in a magic world of tents performers and events. This year it is bigger than ever, taking up most of the park.

The Marmaduke family attended Frank Woodley's latest show "Bewilderbeast" in the Spiegel Tent last night. Your reviewer is confused about Spiegeltents this year. There seems to be two in Adelaide. One is in Elder Park for the Adelaide Festival and one is in the Garden of Unearthly Delights for the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Perhaps the Elder Park one is the famous Spiegeltent and the other is the infamous Spiegeltent. Perhaps one should be Spiegel II or the Doppelspiegeltent. Nevertheless, the tent in the Garden is very impressive. It is plush, comfortable and finished with stained glass and mirrors.

Frank Woodley is a genius. He has always been a master of mime and physical theatre as he demonstrated with his drunken golfer skit. In Bewilderbeast he also showed his talents as a stand-up comedian and a comedy musician. Unlike more brash comedians he has a shy, modest persona but bumbles through his comedy with great timing and humour. His guitar work was fairly free-form and at times his strumming and voice seemed unsynchronised. This enabled him to deliver some very funny lines without being constrained by rhythm or melody.

The hot chocolate after the show came from "Coffee Branch" which was one of the many food stalls in the Garden. The Coffee Branch was serving fair trade coffee and chocolate. It provided a creamy and tasty hot chocolate. Your reviewer had the large cup for $5.00. It was finished with light colour froth with a semi circle of chocolate powder on top and was served in a paper cup.

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