FRINGEWORLD: Snake/Bad Adam (4 stars)

by

Review by Amanda Lancaster.

Welcome to the Garden of Eden where the serpent slithers its way gently  into the minds of the unsuspecting; as does Dosh Luckwell’s cunning two piece performance – penetrating the deepest recesses of his audience’s imaginations.

With a beautifully executed prelude in the performance Snake, Luckwell not only embodies the movement of said serpent but also its ideologies, it’s a metaphor demonstrated in movement and dance. Slithering and writhing sensuously across the stage, the audience is drawn along into an overture of man’s basest animal inclinations.

The hunger, the want, the need for answers and for truth in whatever form. In  this case the Apple. Circling in upon his prey, each layer is shed.

Peeled back, stripped bare, naked and vulnerable the flesh of both now lay bare before us. Man and truth exposed to the sinking of  teeth, finding its centre. And it is here – drawn into the most intimate of cores – that the audience realises Luckwell has been playing with temptation all along.

If the first half of this performance can be described as the seduction of the senses and imagination, then the second part Bad Adam is definitely the brash, debasement of the psuedo-psychological norms attached to modern ideas about sexuality an its exploration.

Bad Adam serves as the depiction of physiological and psychological immersion and surrender of self into the realm of pleasure, obsession, experimentation, and all things considered sinful.

Luckwell’s poetry driven performance as Adam snakes into the audience’s mind coiling tightly around everything you think you know and understand about sex and love. The flagrant pornographic nature of some of the imagery mixed with pop styled prose leads the audience into a biting demonstration of how some of the uglier ideas about sexual inquiry and promiscuity, especially of the male/male persuasion, have the ability to both validate and degrade the self.

These  two pieces together make a wonderful duet, the undertones of each snaking in and out of each other with both explorative and exploitative slipperiness, creating a tension that at time is almost palpable.

When: 27th – 30th January 2016 (9pm)

Where: The Blue Room Theatre Studio

Tickets: From $20

Info: Duration 50mins, suitablitiy 18+

Links: Fringeworld- https://fringeworld.com.au/program/event/50105681-e2d7-4f97-a049-3cc30c208d97/

Blue Room- http://blueroom.org.au/events/snakebad-adam/