This year’s festival has kicked off, with almost 500 shows on offer across Melbourne and greater Victoria. Here, our writers take a closer look. See all 4 stories .
The Melbourne Fringe has kicked off! Here you can find a collection of reviews covering performances by some of the 2500 artists in the festival this year. THEATRE Black Comedy in 1988 ★★★★ Pending Producton, St Martins – Irene Mitchell Studio, until October 6 Black Comedy in 1988 is on at St Martins until October 6. Credit: Yuan Lu It’s 1988 somewhere in China and Chen Xiaoye (Yuan Lu) has more than a few skeletons in the closet.
An aspiring painter drunk on the nascent capitalism post-Cultural Revolution, he and his girlfriend Manman (Wenjing Guo) have dishonestly borrowed some expensive furniture from his neighbour Kelvin’s (Hengzhi Fang) flat to impress an art collector, the distinguished and enigmatic Professor Tian (Angel Xiao). When the power fails, Kelvin returns early, and there are also sudden visitations from Manman’s father (Philip Zhang), another neighbour (also played by Angel Xiao) and Xiaoye’s ex-girlfriend (Sirui Wang). In one fell swoop, chaos ensues.
This is Black Comedy in 1988 , Pending Production’s debut play. Based on Peter Shaffer’s 1965 one-act farce Black Comedy , light and dark are transposed – when the stage is lit, the characters are in darkness and vice versa. Re-adapted into Mandarin (with English surtitles), this version reframes the original with distinct .