Necessity spawns innovation and frustration as Melbourne Fringe kicks off

The opening weekend could make you grit your teeth, but there were also glimpses of necessity as the mother of invention.

Among the more innovative, tech-savvy work was REVISIT.exe, a digital rewiring of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Visit created (with director Marcel Dorney) by students from Monash University’s Centre for Theatre and Performance.

Durrenmatt’s play hinges on an immoral choice made for financial gain, and this nimble and interesting experiment adopted a self-reflexive form. It proved, among other things, a sharp rebuke to the university’s recent decision to disestablish its theatre school, which will deprive Melbourne of an industry-engaged hub of theatrical education.

Paradise Lost at the Melbourne Fringe.

Technical difficulties were all too common. Shows that demonstrated technical mastery stood out, among them The Bloomshed’s Paradise Lost – an hour-long radio play with superior sound effects and design – which reframed Milton’s poem as zany capitalist satire.