MacsTravel Blog

Festival events take pace in theatres and venues across the city but there is a concentration of activity in the laneways of the CBD, some of which are closed to cars and filled in with patios. These places are jammed with people.

The two primary locations are located outside: “Gluttony” and “The Garden of Unearthly Delights.” Both locations are fenced in and full of temporary open air theatres, giant tents and dozens and dozens of food and beverage vendors.

Our first Fringe show was Thursday night after our terrific meal at Golden Boy. We saw the musical Choir of Man, essentially the story of one evening at a British Pub featuring covers of familiar pop songs. Great fun with some audience participation. To set the atmosphere you can go on stage as you enter the theatre and have a pint pulled by a fella who turns out to be one of the main performers. We had a great time.

Two nights later we were back at the Fringe. We started with dinner at the Cathedral Hotel, a classic Adelaide pub. Graham filled us in on the origins of use of the “hotel” in the name of the various locals. Historically only hotels could legally sell liquor, so aspiring publicans opened hotels with one or two rooms in order to serve. Actual hotels are also referred to as bars. To summarize: bars are hotels and also pubs and pubs can be hotels and bars while bars can be pubs but not hotels. Clear?

For dinner most of us ordered a chicken schnitty. Or parmie. No sense of wasting time pronouncing the additional letters in schnitzel or parmesan.

Saturday night at the Fringe was an absolutely beautiful summer night. “Jumper” cool. We saw two shows: Amos Gill, a Croatian-Australian comedian who was hilarious and Massaoke, which is essentially a live band playing familiar and fun music from the last forty years while lyrics are projected on the screen for the audience to sing along to. Mass Karaoke essentially. They must have done forty songs in two hours: high energy, hugely talented and great fun. We sang along to songs that were part of the soundscape at university in the 80’s. A late night and a great night.