Adelaide Fringe: KRAKEN

Trygve Wakenshaw’s new solo show is unusual, amusing and at times quite wonderful. He seems to not take anything too seriously during his laid back, physical and mesmerising presentation but his act is highly polished.

His mostly silent, stand-up comedy/theatre/dance/mime piece begins with him as a puppet stretching on his strings; breaking away from the dragging hold and getting naked and then getting dressed again before us innocently and naturally and in perfect synch with his measured, elastic, stretching body action.

He then hurts his foot, lunges along, prances like a total nerd and kills a horse and cooks it and eats it…yep! And then he rips out his own inners and cooks them too – before passing them around for the audience to taste.

[pull_left]What the hell is this crazy guy going to do next? (That’s what I thought, a few times)[/pull_left]

He plays like a child with a paper boat with the front row and crawls amongst them, lays on them, sprinkles them with water and confronts a few some here and there too. It’s direct and full on; and funny to (some of) the audience.

What the hell is this crazy guy going to do next? (That’s what I thought, a few times).

There’s a geeky, current youth culture edge to this show, and a good chunk of the young crowd in intimate audience watching were into the humour – big time! To be honest the hilarity passed over me a bit, although not always. That said, this unique show didn’t at all leave me out. It fascinated and entertained me much of the time.

This a very physical gig: juggling, hoola-hooping, balancing, contorting and acrobatics; and Wakenshaw is great with his body and the expressions, sounds and odd words, that help to drive it all along.

To try to fully define this show into any genre is difficult; and it is that which is clever about this peculiar (kind of hip) and sometimes very cute performance.  Cool Fringe show, actually.