Words by Eric Page
Ventriloquist/clown, Lachlan Werner, presents a delightful, daft and debauched hour of occult decadence. Altar boy Lachy is a poof, sweet innocent, shy and apparently a virgin. Brew is a small, sassy, swearing, squishy witch, and she has decided to sacrifice him. To help with his self-esteem.
Werner, is fun, engaging and totally daft, he unnerves the audience just enough to shift them out of their safe places, but not enough to be uncomfortable. His teasing is both brutal and clearly signalled, it’s like being tickled, you know what’s coming, but are helpless to stop it – and like a good tickle it brings out laughter.
The measure of a good ventriloquist and puppeteer is: do you believe the puppet is a character all its own, with a life, violation and – most importantly – its own voice? It’s an emphatic yes with the rather delightful witch, ‘Brew’, who accompanies Lachy onto stage.
A rather twee but delightful set up of apparently crushingly shy altar boy and his older Witch friend, who is both empowering and embarrassing him at every given moment, allows us to feel for awkward Lachy and also enjoy the emotional torment of this sassy, forthright, brutally blunt sidekick Witch, although the Witch, for most of the first part of the show is the lead character, allowing our lovely sweet shy ‘poof’ to be an ironic straight guy.
Layer on layer in this show, it’s full of meta deconstructive queerness, a sharp mind has been applied to this apparent slapstick, movement, throw away lines, casual interaction all crafted with sophisticated insight, but does it show? Only when Werner wants it to, otherwise the uber-camp confection iced with layers of rainbow irony is so sweet as to seduce. This is well crafted fun made to seem effortless, improvised, intimate. You can’t help but love this foul-mouthed Witch, just hoping she doesn’t turn her wicked gimlet eye on you next. She don’t suffer no fools gladly does Brew!
We are led by the pair of them into the ritual, allowing Brew and Lachy to roam the up for it audience and rope us into chanting. There’s some super teases going on here and it’s lovely to be held carefully and deftly by a performer who can blend the audience subtly into one thing and then get them to add to the show. Werner is a crafty kid, it’s been a while since I’ve seen an audience get tickled into shape with such aplomb. Lovely.
The narrative is pretty tight for most of the show, the inevitable happens and Lachy is possessed by an Evil Daemon, and we witness the battle for control of his monstrous body of destruction. This is wonderfully camp, funny and demented, you’ll need to go along and watch how this pans out.
The Spiegeltent Bosco is the perfect festival venue, and the show, part of the Weird Weekend (but isn’t that the whole fringe??) is certainly worth checking out.
For a show about demonic possession it’s utterly sweet, and seriously funny, with enough self-aware meta one-liners to let us know there’s a sharp serious mind at work here, ensuing our collective experience and unequivocal queer affirmation is daft but meaningful. An excited, happy audience left blinking into the late streaming sunshine seriously entertained.
More on this show from Lachlan Werner here
For more tickets for Weird Weekend or the rest of the Fringe, CLICK HERE
