Entertainment

   

Ugly Duckling

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Ugly Duckling is a brand new cabaret that tickles your funny bone and leaves you scratching for more. Written and directed by the multi-award winning international cabaret artiste Spanky, featuring Karla Hillam as the dramatic, dazzling Ducky, and the multi-faceted Andrew Kroenert, Ugly Duckling takes a wicked and wild spin on a Hans Christian Anderson classic and bejazzles and botoxes it up to be a #instafabulous production. 

We follow our hero’s tail of her search for acceptance in all sorts of strange places. After being adopted Madonna style in to rich family, the Swaanzz, Ducky can’t quite keep up with her older step sisters, Dijon on Minon Swaanzz, who are models, dancers, Instagram celebrities and owners of a new brand of fragrance. Ducky’s step father gives her the nip-tuck-bedazzle-vajazzle, but still she can’t fit in, and her search for Swandom continues. There’s romance, there’s witty one liners, there’s some pop-classics, and of course, a fairy godmother … which leads, like every fairytale, to a quacky ending.

Karla Hillam as Ducky was the most attractive Ugly Duckling I have ever seen. Hillam’s energy spilled into the audience like sparkles. She adopted a Scottish accent, which was dorky and endearing, but often distracting. I was sitting in the second row and I missed much of the clever detail in the story. Still, the almost full house was smiling and laughing the whole way through. She looked amazing, in a skin coloured leotard with diamantes, a fantastic feathered bustle and hilarious webbed feet heels congratulations to the costume team and sorry I couldn’t find their names for a mention. Hillam maintained character throughout, I felt that she could go further, uglier, and use more physicality with those hilarious flippered feet.  Her talent is huge and commitment strong, and she played many different characters — Dolly Parton being a favourite. Fringe festivals are a fantastic platform for new work such as these, and I’m sure that with more stage time it will become her own and she will be the story, not just tell the story.

Musical Director Andrew Kronert was completely on the ball, accompanying on the piano, guitar, vocals and playing the dreamboat, Patrick (a roofer.) The songs — originals and covers — were for me hit and miss.  Taylor Swift’s ‘You Belong with Me’ was the kind of magical that gives you goosebumps. I wished all were like this however as others were maybe a bit out of Hillam’s range (when it’s in, it melts in your ears like honey) or lacking narratively. I loved her rendition of Sara Barielles’ ‘Gravity’ and it was placed perfectly in the show. Writer and director Spanky has given an old fairytale a delightful modern ruffle, with dashes of hilarious pop culture references, and that oh so close to home theme of loss of innocence. Combined with the stunning costumes and Daniel Barca’s lighting, aesthetically this show is top notch.

A flock of talented industry professionals have paddled their tails off to make a Peking performance. Get yourself along, to this twisted take on a tall tale — it’s soft as down and a pretty decent quack up.

Ugly Duckling — It’s a Hairy Tale 
The Butterfly Club, Carson Place, off Little Collins Street
Till Sunday, 24 September 2017
thebutterflyclub.com/show/ugly-duckling


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