By Mikayla van Loon
The wildly outrageous and best bits of the Adelaide Fringe Festival will be arriving on the Yarra Ranges’ doorstep next week as Gluttony on Tour sets up at Croydon Park.
With acts of singing, dancing, acrobatics, circus and more, there’s truly something for everyone to experience each night.
Kicking off on Wednesday 6 April, performers like Stewart Reeve, Prinnie Stevens and Minnie Andrews will take to the stage in their respective shows Rebel, Ladies Night and Shake It, each different in their own right but guaranteed to entertain.
Celebrate women’s empowerment as Prinnie joins the stage with Paulini and Faskia to sing some of the classics from Destiny’s Child and Donna Summer just to name a few.
“It’s everything you love about women and women empowerment. It’s all up tempo, so it’s all party stuff and is set up for girls to come out and have a great time,” Prinnie said.
“This show is going through the ages of girl groups and female empowerment songs and celebrating all three of us as individuals, and then just celebrating everyone in the audience and all the stages of where they’re at.”
Rebel, Stewart said, is a “glam rock circus tribute show to David Bowie” that aims to amaze with all the weird, wonderful and unique aspects piled into the performance.
“The people in the band, who play the live music, are also doing all of the acts on stage so we have this really unique crossover,” he said.
“We’ve got aerial acts, we’ve got bottle walking, there’s hula hoops, there’s all sorts of crazy stuff going on all this time while I’m just signing.”
Showing off her singing voice in Shake It is Minnie where she is joined by acrobats, clowns and burlesque dancers in an hour long performance.
While getting back on any stage after two years of no performances is a relief for these three artists, they all said it was even more incredible to be bringing the festival to the suburbs rather than the city.
“Both Paulini and myself, we’re both Islanders, she’s Fijian, and I’m Tongan and so we make it our business to get out to the communities and do that stuff. That’s where we grew up. So for us it’s like going home,” Prinnie said.
“To me, especially in the pandemic everybody has continued to want to stay local and I think not everybody travels to the city anymore for shows.”
For Stewart who said he has probably squeezed two years worth of work into a couple of months, he has really noticed the regional or more suburban areas embracing theatre and festivals like Gluttony on Tour.
But getting to perform in Croydon is even more special for Minnie having grown up in The Basin.
“I lived there for 20 years or something like that and I’m so excited to be doing something so close to my hometown because I’ve done shows all over Australia but I’ve never done anything this close to home before,” she said.
“My older sister, she’s bringing all her friends who I grew up with, all of my friends are coming so it’s super exciting to me in that sense.”
Minnie said coming to see any of the shows won’t disappoint, as all of the performers are world class, with Steve adding that it caters to everyone’s tastes, from children to adults it’s very inclusive.
“We just want everyone to have a good time. We’ve had the worst couple years, all of us. So this is the best time to come and let your hair down and laugh at us and that’s what we want. We just want you to forget all your troubles for an hour and sit with us and just have the best time,” Minnie said.
