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Posted: 2021-10-14 03:28:06

What seems at first to be a sardonic satire on share-housing slowly transforms into an allegory of an artist’s precarious mental health.

Nevile’s nightmare “housemates” sport names like Overthink, Cold Sweat and Not Good Enough. They eat all her bikkies without asking, leave passive-aggressive Sticky Notes on the fridge, and have no plans to vacate.

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Anyone who has ever lived in a share house or been dragged down by their own gnawing insecurities will recognise and admire the way Nevile converts bitter experience into whimsical, consistently clever art. And unlike last year, she is totally in the zone with digital delivery.

Many artists in lockdown have resorted to playful experimentation with screen technique. Horror flick aficionados may enjoy the bloody escapades in Body Horror (★★★), created by students from the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance under the direction of queer theatre maestro Stephen Nicolazzo.

The show straddles dance, physical theatre and spoken word. It revels in visceral horror tropes: from the initial close-up of a bobbing, glistening uvula to a spasmodic contemporary dance that recalls the Japanese horror classic Ring, the performers delve into the human body as a source of discomfort, danger and death.

Lou Wall.

Lou Wall.

Expect vampiric lieder and gore-spattered athletics contests, blood-soaked ballet lessons and some frenetic physical theatre pieces that resemble avant-garde music videos.

Sebastian Whitaker’s music does double time creating an unsettling atmosphere, and if the text-based work is the weakest link (passing references to patriarchy and the male gaze come across as glib virtue-signalling rather than critique, for instance), there’s plenty of the precise and stylised physical performance that has become Nicolazzo’s trademark.

There are many other digital on-demand offerings worth checking out. Recommendations include Green Room Award-winner Lou Wall in That One Time I Joined The Illuminati, a comedy show based on their real-life attempt to join a centuries-old secret society, and What Rhymes With Orange? – a neatly constructed two-hander that portrays, with humour and claustrophobic drama, the wheels falling off an intimate relationship.

And Fringe might have saved some of the best ’til last. The weekend promises two entertaining premieres – Streaming Seamen! The Digital Sea-Shanty Spectacular will take on the latest TikTok craze, with the brains trust behind the Shania Choir gathering a community chorus to adapt pop songs into a jaunty, nautical ones; and the People of Cabaret will edge their art form closer to the stage with the variety performance, We Are Here!

It will be quite an adjustment, returning to busy foyers and packed auditoriums, especially if you’ve reached the “wearing your pyjamas to the shops without shame” phase of lockdown. This year’s Fringe is a good way for arts lovers to enliven the last days of lockdown, and to mentally prepare as we ease ourselves back into live performance.

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