Edinburgh 2022: Clare Bartholomew Guest Blog

Guest Blog: Australian company Salvador Dinosaur bring wonderously absurd new theatrical comedy to the Fringe

Clare Bartholomew discusses the years of development behind this physical comedy full of unexpected farce

Actor Clare Bartholomew who plays 'Barb' in The Anniversary blogs for Broadway World about premiering the play in Edinburgh, her favourite routines to perform and the processes behind developing a theatrical comedy show with hardly any dialogue.

Daniel [Tobias, who plays 'Jim'] and I have been making cabaret shows together for over 15 years, but my background before meeting Dan, was in physical comedy, so our inspiration for The Anniversary being largely non-verbal was a return to my roots. Also, it just felt like the right time for both of us to say less and do more and we really wanted to create a show that was accessible for non-English speaking audiences.

It was a challenge to take out text, but it's been so much fun exploring physical comedy solutions to tell a story. We enjoyed making it a strict rule that The Anniversary's two characters', Jim & Barb could only say each other's names and the names of their pets; Fluffy the rabbit and Tiddles the cat. And we discovered that how and when you say these names becomes really important when you take away all other words.

The Anniversary was developed over a few years. It was originally supposed to open in 2020 at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Just prior to that we had been over in LA doing some trial shows at The Lyrics Hyperion which our friend Phil Burgers ran, it was a great space to experiment and try out new work and we also went to Denver to collaborate with our friends The Handsome Little Devils and trial the show in their warehouse. Then the pandemic hit and we scurried home, our season cancelled. With a year to think about the show, we rewrote it entirely for 2021.

We experienced another lockdown at the start of our 2021 season, and again we had another year to think about the show, experiment and re-write until we finally premiered the 2022 version. So, whilst it was frustrating having so many delays, in retrospect it gave us so much time to think about every aspect of Jim & Barb's world and create a show that we enjoyed performing and one that was extremely satisfying for audiences. We worked with dramaturg and story coach Josh Samuels to finely tune all the scenes and set up the plot in great detail so we knew the motivation in every scene for our characters, what they wanted and why. Then when we began re-rehearsing earlier this year it was so much easier to get to the funny stuff because we had all our story - plot ducks in a row.

Our director Peter Houghton has directed and written quite a few comedy farces, so we were in great hands exploring the genre. Of course, it wouldn't be a farce without multiple entrances and exits. The set is a forced perspective hallway with doorways leading off from both sides to create six entrances and exits. Having this framework throughout our rehearsals was like having a theatrical playground to run amuck within. Our set designer Bron Batten covered all the room's entryways and our hallway with different coloured fabrics to create unique atmospheres for each space, so the set is really colourful and playful. We also worked with composer and sound designer Steph O'Hara whose background includes performing live scores with band The Blue Grassy Knoll for Buster Keaton films. He was the perfect person to compose the score for a live physical comedy, every moment is heightened by his music punctuating each action and driving the emotional qualities, it's almost like having a third performer with us every night.

My two most favourite scenes in the show are extremely fun to perform. One is where Barb accidently keeps refilling her daily pill cup from a medication dosette box because she is distracted by sounds from Jim on the toilet (he's constipated). Barb ends up taking five times the amount of pills and ends up at a rave party in the hallway (by herself)! My other is when I am operating a magpie puppet which keeps attacking Jim on his way to the shops. Magpies are famous for swooping on people and attacking them (here in Melbourne) and Jim has to keep coming up with ingenious ways to keep the magpie away from him. After the last few years, we really wanted to create something deeply funny and full of belly laughs. For Dan and I it has felt like a personal mission to spread some joy.

The Anniversary, Pleasance Dome (King Dome), 12:00pm, 3-28 August (not 10, 17 or 24)

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