[In]Security
A cabaret created and performed with Kelly Drummond Cawthon and Michael Fortesque.
Produced by Second Echo Ensemble.
Helen Swain 15/6/23
The best thing about inSECURITy is that it is fabulous and local. All of these artists are well known for their generous and ground-breaking work in community theatre and theatre in education, but here their personal performance talents shine. Who knew Michael Fortescue was a first class raconteur as well as a world class double bass player, that Kelly Drummond Cawthon and Paul Roberts could sing torch and opera as well as dance? We are unsurprised by Amanda Hodder and her utterly superb piano accompaniment but in this show she has the audience eating out of her hand.
This joyous quartet keeps a delicate and refined aesthetic with hilarious times of bathos and pathos. Audience participation is because the crowd watching simply can’t keep out of it as they clamour for more. If you want torch, gravelly blues, pop, slinking cat walks, plaintive folk, physical theatre, Bach concertos, burlesque and much more, then this is the cabaret for you. Apart from the very significant talent of all performers there is such an atmosphere of generosity in this clever parody of all things that it is unsurprising that it was voted number one in the Adelaide fringe. If you haven't already seen it, BE THERE! Last chance Wednesday 21st June.
Ryk Goddard 15/6/23
“Completely brilliant. So Beautiful and vulnerable. A total treasure”
Cary Littleford 5/7/23 “Fantastic!.. So challenging. Such a mixture of terror and delight”
Steve Young 14/6/23 “Wonderful – the music, the singing - superb”
Roz Wren 14/6/23“Oh my goodness. So so good! Thank you. Thank you!”
Stephanie Jack, Blaise Gazra 14/6/23 “We’re obsessed with Dr Paul”
Sandy 5/7/23 “This is me. This is what its like to be me - lets look at what it is to be a performer and lets do it now! With a performance! And the style was raw, not raw. Pure! It was the essence of what entertainment is – singing, dancing, a bit ribald - and the audience were kept in a place of tension – not absorbed or lost in the watching but involved, never passive consumers. The structure was inside outside/a theatre piece about a theatre piece/youre watching a show but also thinking about the artists. I loved the Hedley performance. Just a really beautiful exploration of sexuality and a lightness of that. It felt very healthy – something effortlessly offered, nothing fetishistic or turgid or tortured about the sexuality, and the eros, just this really clean pure thing that is personal and about relating. As well as being about beauty and desire. I loved that there was cake in the show a lot. How great to include Macarthurs Park such a bizarre song! Its really nice to hear it”
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“Disorder II” at The Burrow Theatre Melbourne. June 2019
Peter Fraser
an impressive range of performance styles and materials - dance, rehearsed and improvised components, storytelling, poetry, music, ritual, drawn together via an ‘uninflected’ everyday body and personality. Paul discloses, and makes more conversational, the connections between performers, performer and audience, performer and technicians; similarly, his dance tries not to stray too far from the mundane while drawing on abstract, balletic, character-based and gestural elements
The combination of, and complicite between Paul and Montz Matsumoto is wonderful and Paul has an open, genuinely enquiring, friendly presence that holds the piece together. Paul also has years of clown and street performance experience that enables him to meet people very directly as ‘audience’, person or friend. He is engagingly honest in discussing his life and honoring his connections with family. He is ideally equipped to explore the possibilities for the simple, non-virtuosic body, and presence, in performance.
I believe this project is important in the domain of performance and I think Paul is ideally equipped with the experience, courage, imagination and respect for his fellow embodied-beings to explore and perform the next stage
Michael Hurwood
on “Disorder II” at The Burrow Theatre Melbourne. June 2019
For me Disorder provided a mesmerizing display of endless fluidity that seemed to tap into the energy of a raging waterfall but executed with masterfulness of a Zen like warrior. Paul draws you into a joyous interplay between cultures that is fused with a deep resonating, haunting and at times playful live soudtrack.