As well as being popular entertainer and actor, Alan has written a number of plays. He thinks his
three best are Bottom's
Dream, A Man's Story (performed in some cities as Rape!) and Alf & the Kid
Here are unedited reviews of these plays. Star ratings are out of a possible 5 unless otherwise stated.
Click on the name of a play to see the reviews or scroll down
Edmonton Journal
Imagine you’ve touched perfection, nuzzled ever so briefly with absolute beauty, sipped the blissful intoxicant of unalloyed love. Such is the fate of poor Nick Bottom, haunted by a sweet lunacy lingering from one midsummer’s night, so many years back in the palace woods. Yes Bottom, Shakespeare’s most comic creation, that simple tradesman who for a few fleeting moments bore both a donkey’s countenance and the lovelorn devotion of the faerie queen.
A tough act to follow, to be sure, and that’s the postscript played out in electrifying fashion by Melbourne’s Alan Lovett in his Bottom’s Dream, an early favourite for hot ticket this Fringe.
We find Bottom here, 15 years after the fact, a weaver turned player in a two-bit Elizabethan acting troupe. At first he seems little more than a buffoon given to malaprops and wholly unjustified ambitions. “He never used me to my full sagacity,” he grumbles of one director.
But Lovett fashions his character with a wonderful poignancy. Simple Bottom is attracted to his stage manager, Penelope, but finds himself emotionally immobilized by the foggy memories – “fancities” he calls them – that dog his dreams. He can’t get over the feeling she’s somehow not good enough for him.
Something happened to him, back in those woods, something he cannot shrug off with his oddly braying laugh.
This is a powerful performance, funny and mesmerizing, from a man Fringe faithful may recall as the Aussie poetry-shouter of years past. Lovett was here with Alf and the Kid at the 1996 Fringe and Rape, a year earlier.
Not to be missed.
Richard Helm
Calgary Herald
Charming play mixes literate comedy with pathos
“You’ve seen Shakespeare’s Bottom,” say the ads, “now Alan Lovett wants to show you his!” Well, there’s a cheeky come-on (pun most certainly intended). As it happens, Lovett’s Bottom is definitely worth a peek – his one-man play Bottom’s Dream, that is.
The Australian actor/playwright, visiting Calgary as part of the Plan B festival, has crafted a charming bit of whimsy based on the chief comic character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s a lovely little piece that mixes the literate comedy of Shakespeare in Love with the gentle pathos of The Dresser.
Lovett has us catching up with Nick Bottom, the weaver and amateur actor, many years after his hilarious massacre of the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe before the royal court of Athens. The experience went to his head, convincing him to chuck weaving and make the stage his home. Now a member of a band of roving actors, we find him in his dressing room after a show – a revival of Pyramus and Thisbe, in fact which he’s once again more than keen to play all the parts if need be.
But as he regales us with funny theatrical anecdotes, riddled with his trademark malapropisms, it’s clear something’s troubling him. There’s a blank spot in his prodigious actor’s memory, something that happened to him on that magical midsummer night in the Athenian woods long ago. Every now and again he leaves off to lapse into strange reveries about fairies, their queen Titania and his “translation” into an ass.
Although there’s nothing inaccessible about the play, fans of Shakespeare will get the biggest kick out it. Taking Bottom for what he really is – not an Athenian but an Elizabethan rustic – Lovett has the ham actor cheerfully hobnobbing with the Bard, inspiring the part of the first player in Hamlet and at one point even fearing for his sanity in lines lifted from Lear.
Lovett matches his smart writing with an even finer performance. His endearingly gregarious and befuddled Bottom might have stepped out of one of the better productions of the Dream. At times I found myself thinking of such great old character actors as Ralph Richardson and Alan Webb. It’s easy to see why this show was a hit at the recent Edmonton Fringe.
Martin Morrow
Ottawa Citizen
' Fringe Unhinged' by Janice Kennedy
The heart of the Fringe theatre experience is the unexpected. Having no idea what you’re in for after you’ve paid your money and made your choice – after you’ve browsed through the program and seized on something promising – is half the fun of Fringing. Especially when you come across something wonderful. Some of the most amazing and dynamic theatre lurks in the unlikeliest of places.
But the surprise of the unexpected isn’t the exclusive lot of Fringe audiences. Sometimes it hits the Fringe performer too.
So pity Alan Lovett, then, here for the first time at the Ottawa Fringe Festival all the way from Down Under. Lovett, a veteran Australian actor, has brought to Ottawa an original – and quite ambitious – little one-man show called Bottom’s Dream. An imagined glimpse into the later life of Shakespeare’s “rude mechanical” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the show is a clever tribute to theatre and Shakespeare – and a loving homage to the acting profession.
Set up as a conversational ramble through the stage reminiscences of an over-the-hill, third-rate actor, Bottom’s Dream is pleasantly filled with both humour (especially of the malaprop variety) and sweet poignancy.
Imagine Lovett’s level of disconcertedness, then, in his first Ottawa Fringe experience to find himself staging his show’s début in the Fringe’s only devilishly hard-to-find venue – at noon on a Monday. The show – at the University of Ottawa’s Alumni Theatre, deep in the bowels of the Unicentre – attracted half a dozen people. One-man shows can be particularly excruciating, for both performer and audience, with near-non-existent audiences.
Lovett was generous and/or philosophical in his post-show comments on the appalling size of the audience.
“How many people do you know who go to the theatre at noon on a Monday?”
Lovett, who will be going on to other Canadian Fringes over the summer, winds up his first Ottawa experience today with two shows at 2 and 10:30 p.m. They’re at the theatre in the Unicentre. With only the vaguest of Fringe signs in evidence, just ask directions of a friendly student.
Winnipeg Free Press
Bottom’s Dream is a smart what-if play about the imagined later life of Nick Bottom, the rude woodsman from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Australian actor Alan Lovett takes us backstage for a dressing room look at life after the rude mechanicals perform Pyramus and Thisby (sic) for the Duke of Athens.
The self-important, misguided Bottom reminiscences about being an actor, in his case a spent thespian of questionable talent. In an orange bathrobe and pink slippers the weaver rambles on amiably about a woman who wants to join the company. He scoffs at the idea of, gasp, a woman being on stage, perhaps by herself.
There’s plenty of humour, the sweet kind, generated by Bottom’s many malaprops. When everyone is struck down by illness, he describes it “as an epidermis.”
Bottom also mentions that his friend Master Will has a new play called Hamlet, which he opines has a silly plot and a title needing a change. He suggests expertly Shakespeare stick to history plays.
Lovett is a likable stage presence who performs his one-man show seen at the Ottawa Fringe Festival with ease and conviction. Like the hit movie Shakespeare in Love, the more you know about the bard and the Elizabethan era the more you will enjoy Bottom’s Dream.
Kevin Prokosh
Edmonton Journal
For genuine, sweet magic, savour an hour of Bottom’s Dream.
In Bottom’s Dream, Melbourne’s Alan Lovett spins some gentle, sweet magic, picking up the fortunes of Shakespeare’s most comic creation 15 years after that incident in the palace woods. He’s an aging buffoon in a two-bit theatre company, plagued by misty recollections he can’t quite put his finger on.
Richard Helm
Vue Weekly
Veteran actor Alan Lovett and the Zoom Company from Melbourne, Australia have brought us one of the best shows of this year’s Fringe – Bottom’s Dream. in 1995, the troupe received rave reviews for Rape (A Man's Story), and in 1996 for Alf and the Kid. This year they bring a fresh twist to Shakespeare. Lovett plays the donkey headed Nick Bottom of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who waxes rhapsodic (and blunt) about his acting career and that strange night when he performed at the Duke’s palace. He’s a frank yet humble soul, susceptible to flattery – and completely unprepared fir the attentions of his stage manager Penelope. There’s a reason he rejects Penelope’s advances, even if he doesn’t know it. The strange dreams he has about his time in the forest with Titania, Puck, Peaseblossom and Mustardseed confuse him, but not the audience. According to him, he’s an “intrusive member” of the troupe, admired for his “ineffectual abilities.” Okay, so he’s an ass and he needs a good dictionary, but the joy in Lovett'’ one man show is the way he connects with the audience. The intimacy with the audience comes from Lovett, not from the venue. Lovett’s compelling performance is completely believable, and a joy to behold.
NS
Telus Review (Fringe Website)
This humorous gentle monologue draws the audience into one man’s private world of past glories and love where, ultimately, the line between his memories and present reality begin to blur. All in all, the show is brilliant but gentle. Lovett weaves a spell inch by inch over the audience: we quietly cheer him on as he yearns for the mystery, the unattainable. This play is very well done but make sure it is your style. The night I attended some people expected more of a knee-slapping comedy whereas the show’s dialogue plays words with similar pronunciations and different meanings against one another and, as well, requires close listening to catch all the clever asides and quips. The night I attended, the show’s ending was, with great enjoyment, rehashed and analyzed by members of the audience as they strolled out onto the darkened fringe site. A final and fitting note that Bottom would surely appreciate.
Wedding GuestITV Review
The premise is fun, the performance is not. A very long drawn out monologue filled with malapropisms (which are funny at first), this one left me cold
Judy UnwinCBC Radio Active (Edmonton)
I loved this show. A hoot to watch. Highly recommended.
Eva Marie ClarkSEE Magazine
Bottom’s Dream picks up the life of Nick Bottom 15 years after the events of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bottom, now a professional actor reflecting on his theatre career, is unable to get it on with Penelope. Interlaced with flashbacks, the play works as a whimsical sequel to the classic. While the script is occasionally mired in repetition, Alan Lovett’s brilliant performance makes this show captivating. Spinning tales of the theatre, while giving samples of Bottom’s talent, Lovett ranges from inspired comedy to troubling depth. Oh, and the ending is a shocker to rival The Crying Game.
Kurt SpenrathThe Globe and Mail
In Bottom’s Dream, Australian actor/writer Alan Lovett catches up with Nick Bottom 15 years after the events of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and finds him still haunted by vague memories of that night in the woods. The malaprop-prone weaver has given up his craft for a life on the stage, grumbling happily about his fate as an actor and the love he feels for his stage manager, Penelope. but that love is frustrated by strange dreams of asses’ heads and faerie queens, and by the sense that he was made for – and has experienced – a better, higher love. Lovett turns in a charming performance, playing up Bottom’s buffoonery only to reveal the ache that lingers in the rustic heart.
Chris DafoeThe Edmonton Sun
Bottom’s up!Pity Bottom the Weaver. As you remember in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he was the bumpkin actor who put on Pyramus and Thisbe for the Duke on his wedding night. The court, laughing at the antics of the rude fellows, enjoyed themselves at the players expense, leading the Duke to observe with a laugh, “…very nobly discharged.”
Bottom loved the experience so much, he became an actor. As we begin, Nick Bottom has been part of a tatty touring company for 15 years. A garrulous old thespian, he regales us with comic stories of the troupe and their adventures. A knowledge of the original Midsummer would help here because often the references are very specific and, unless you’ve seen it recently, they may be confusing. But the fact Nick is getting along and rambles is not his problem. Once in an enchanted forest for one magic night, he was husband of Titania, the Queen of the Fairies. The sprite Puck had caused her to fall in love with the first thing she saw when awakening, and the first thing she saw was Bottom wearing an ass’s head. Served by fairies, loved by a queen, it was a night to remember. Except when it was over, he couldn’t remember a thing. But as Nick tells us, he hears voices. The voice of a queen that whispers to him, “Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.” And he can’t shake the feeling that he is better than his situation. Better than Penelope, the company manager who loves him. Writer/performer Alan Lovett creates a well defined, warm and likable person in Nick the Weaver. He goes on a bit, but it’s a real world he gives us and then peoples it with interesting characters. You hope the old guy will confront his voices and find peace and love in his life.
Colin MacleanThe Ubyssey (Vancouver)
Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, ’tis methinks
A concept guaranteed an audience to please
For what nobler endeavor than within
A one-man show the Bard to en sequel
Going whither not, the weaver of the tale himself dared go?It’s probably a good thing Shakespeare didn’t write a sequel to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because it gave Alan Lovett an opportunity to do so. Shakespeare, of course, would never have written a 60 minute soliloquy plugged full of malapropisms that would have made Archie Bunker cringe.
For what it’s worth, Lovett has done a fine job of both scripting and acting in what is essentially a one-man play about the hapless Nick Bottom, the poor weaver who has his head replaced by that of an ass by the mischievous Puck as a reward for his poor acting abilities. In Shakespeare’s play, Puck also blinds the beautiful faerie queen Titania in such a way that she must fall in love with the first living thing she sees (plants excluded) which turns out to be Nick Bottom. Together, they spend a wild night of lovemaking, whence the magic spells are lifted, and Bottom is deprived of all memory of the events he participated in.
Lovett’s play takes off where Shakespeare’s ended. Poor Bottom, who is still convinced he’s a marvelous actor, has vague, fragmentary moments when bits of the aforementioned events are recalled, but alas, like someone abducted by aliens on an X-Files episode, the memories are disjointed, and therefore meaningless to him.
In a very simple setting, Lovett gives us a skillful performance throughout, using a combination of situational nuances, incongruities between Bottom’s view of himself, and the view others have of him, which he naturally misinterprets, along with the frequent (perhaps too frequent) use of malapropisms to create a script that has definite comic potential. His humour tends towards the British, (albeit British à la Benny Hill or the Two Ronnies, as opposed to Monty Python), rather than the American model, which is just fine by me. I have a couple of small quibbles with the play. The use of malapropisms works best when used sparingly. Lovett used it an awful lot, forcing one to focus on the malapropisms rather than the play. Also, I would have liked Nick Bottom to be a bit more multi-dimensional, and thus, more human. There are tragic potentials latent within the idea of Nick Bottom suffering from either real memory loss or False Memory Syndrome (mercifully, Lovett leaves the question open) and Lovett should have explored these. Humour, after all, works best when the tragic potential is exposed and we can genuinely feel for the character involved.
Other than that, go see it. You’ll enjoy it. I did
Andy BarhamThe Georgia Straight
Punsters rejoice: this show’s flimsy premise is malapropped up by plenty of silly wordplay.
Australian actor Alan Lovett revisits Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, focusing on Bottom, the amateur actor who was bequeathed an ass’s head by mischievous fairies and became beloved of the spell-stricken Fairy Queen. Lovett gives us Bottom 15 years after the events in Shakespeare’s version. Bitten by the acting bug, he’s been surviving on “more gristle than meat” in a shoe-string touring company. The company stage manager, Mistress Penelope, is “a fine woman”, but for some reason Bottom can’t seem to “conjugate” their relationship; he’s troubled by dreams of the Fairy Queen’s love. He consoles himself by reminiscing about his acting career: there was the time, for instance, when a playwright presented him with a “not very good” play called Hamlet. Bottom thinks George, Duke of Luxembourg would be a much better title.
That gives you a good idea of the jolly little chuckles on offer here. Lovett’s dotty free- associational style is ultimately justified by a concluding twist, but this good-natured outing doesn’t offer much substance. There’s a reason Bottom was only one cog in a larger Shakespearean wheel: his entertainment value grows thin after a while.
KO
The Vancouver Sun September 13, 1999
You need a hook to sell a Fringe show, and this one’s rather sharp: Master weaver Nick Bottom, transformed into a jackass in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, never recovered from the night of magic wherein Titania, queen of the fairies, did briefly love and dote on him. It’s now 15 years on and Bottom has tossed in weaving to become an actor, no better at that craft than on the midsummer eve when his oddball troupe tried to perform Pyramus and Thisbe.
Still prone to uttering the most outrageous malapropisms, Bottom rambles on after a performance, removing his costume and makeup and wondering why he occasionally breaks into a bray. Alan Lovett brings a sense of sadness to his tired old player and conveys the desperation that marks a man who can’t understand his odd dreams, but problems in the script keep conspiring to diminish its spirit. Frequent interruptions by a recorded voiceover of Dream dialogue, accompanied by an unsubtle shift in lighting, are supposed to remind us of the secret still stuck in Bottom’s brain. But the piece doesn’t build sufficiently beyond that simple conceit, leaving both Bottom and his audience longing for more.
Peter BirnieAudience reviews — Vancouver Sun Fringe Reviews
Very humorous account of Bottom’s new career. Especially funny is his relationship with Penelope, the stage manager. However, the prologue could have been tightened so that those already familiar with Midsummer’s Night Dream (and who isn’t these days) do not have to listen to it all again. In fact much of the Shakespearean quote could have been handled in a less distracting way, over a P.A system, which literally brought the show to a halt.
Kylie StooshnovVery entertaining especially the word play. Substituting a not quite right (but funny) word for another on many occasions. Excellent characterisation of diverse roles.
David YoungExcellent performance by Alan Lovett. He carries the whole show in an hour and it’s never boring. Nice surprise ending. - funny weird, wacky - excellent! Lovett portrays a character of loving memory and hapless love.
Shaw Cable September 25 1999
A clever, engaging and wonderfully acted confection, this ingenious reinvention of one of the characters from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is great fun. Buffs of the Bard will chuckle at the Tom Stoppard-like literary in-joke but you don’t need an English major to get some good laughs from Alan Lovett’s deft portrayal of a likeably daft English working class actor haunted by a dream the details of which he can'’ quite remember. (Hint: It has something to do with an enchanted night in the English woods).
There isn’t a false note to Lovett’s one-man show. It’s a comic delight from start to finish. I’ve already added this to my informal list of all time favorite Fringe plays. Jolly good!
Rick Dennis
Rape! / A Man's Story
Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria BC, Canberra Festival of Contemporary Arts(The play toured Canada under the title of Rape! In Australia, it was advertised under the more conservative title of A Man's Story.)
The Advertiser (Adelaide)
This is a passionate work, written and acted by Alan Lovett, about the way violence suffuses our lives. It's also comedy of a sort and the two parts of the show rest in an uneasy collaboration.
In his program notes, Lovett says that any kind of violence is repugnant and stupid and that he will thump anyone who disagrees. It is that sort of conundrum that is present throughout the play.
His rather sweet and sensitive middle-aged character lives alone, watches Arnold Schwarzenegger on television and reflects on his upbringing, naively revealing his anxiety about his family; his mother with bruises, his sister in tears, his father "flushed and up" after killing a pet cat.
At the same time he idealises a schoolgirl he sees and occasionally follows through the streets.
These ominous overtones are played up beautifully by Lovett reappearing on the other side of the stage from his domestic scene, as a seedy nightclub comedian flashing an astonishing array of jokes in poor taste. Jokes that play on prejudices are supposed to be at the seat of our sense of humour, but these are grim witness to violence and sexism and even the funny ones are difficult to laugh at in this context.
When the rape of the girl is reported on television, a dark suspicion enters the scene and we become the detectives. Did he do it? And who's to blame if he did?
Hard, polished theatre from a very good performer.
Tim Lloyd
The Edmonton Journal
Yeah, right. Like you're keenly interested in seeing a play about rape. Told from the perspective of a lone male in his 50s no less.Well, you are. For veteran actor Alan Lovett does what a victim of rape often can't and really shouldn't have to do.
He sets his sights beyond the anger and the pain and deals with, "Why is this happening to women?" and "What should we do about it?"
Through the dual roles of an essentially decent middle-aged man and an aging stand-up comic in a strip club, Lovett shows us clearly and quietly that rape is not an unsolveable mystery or a plague we can't control.
It's a product of what we all do and say, every day. Robert learned early that men have the power and that violence is their prerogative.
His father the doctor, fooled around on his wife and ruled his family like a despot.
When the family cat became incontinent, his father slaughtered it in the garage.
Fighting and ugly insults were constants in spousal interaction.
Eventually, the sensitive little boy got used to "the way the game was played."
He ingested a steady diet of sanctioned violence and disrespect, on TV, in the schoolyard, in the locker-room.
He learned to look at something else when he didn't like what he saw.
But now, Robert has witnessed something that his gut instinct tells him is too terribly wrong to ignore. He wrestles with his conscience, but those early lessons are hard to deny.
Simply but eloquently, Lovett skirts the rationalizations and addresses the heart of the matter in this fast-paced, direct monologue.
Listening to him, you'll be surprised by how much that's really wrong with the way we speak of women and violence, we tend to blithely accept. Lovett corrects our course.
Helen Metella
The Edmonton Journal
Time to savor best of fest
The six journalists who reviewed for the Journal during the fringe each mentioned their favourite shows and picked their "Critics' Picks" Helen Metella Chose Rape! as her "Pick" and in the article said…"Of the material still in performance, my polished gold recommendations are... Rape!... …See Bob Run's script avoids obvious takes on either the theme or the character. Ditto for Rape! which examines an all too common subject with uncommon perspective. In a quiet, fluid story of two quite different men, Australian Alan Lovett rides the natural current between what we say and do and what happens as a result. Intelligent and smart."
The Edmonton Sun
SUN RATING 12 OUT OF 14
Engaging Portraits
She's a looker: Seven, but with the body of a five-year-old.
Funny eh? Apparently to some of the nearly sold out Saturday performance of Rape!, a new one-man play by Aussie Alan Lovett.
The Comic in Rape! assaults the audience with numerous "jokes" such as above, eliciting odd and uncomfortable responses. Some laugh uproariously; some (like me) are left squirming in our seats.
As the title makes perfectly clear, this is not light entertainment. Lovett's clever crafting challenges his audience to examine the seemingly disconnected elements of apathy, fear and violence.
The brash vulgarity of the Comic is juxtaposed by Robert, a loner who confesses he "likes to watch." Robert enjoys watching violent TV programs ("pretend, surely") as well as " the girlfriend" of his favorite skinzine.
The latter relationship he defends, for, after all, those women "aren't for real … not like you have to take them for a cappuccino afterwards."
Robert's hypocritical rationalisations are compounded by the obsession he has with a young woman he knows only from a distance, but whom he regards as "ethereal." It is the ultimate violation of this ethereal being that reveals Robert as a man confused, crippled and ultimately paralysed by the contradictions of his own emotions.
Through the window to Robert's narrow world, we see the twisted dynamics between men hamstrung by repressed feelings and their inability to connect with women on any but the basest, most brutal grounds.
Lovett's performance is steady and engaging.
He has successfully tackled a difficult subject and the results are interesting and intelligent.
Recommended … if you're prepared for it.
Shirley MaudeWinnipeg Free Press
Alan Lovett's one-man show explores what it's like to grow up male in Western society. It's a disturbing look at how men are socialised to look at women as not-quite-human objects of desire. The drama jumps back and forth between a host at a strip joint and a lonely bachelor's musings on pop culture, his life, and women. Lovett, an Australian performer, is a polished actor who success-fully plays numerous roles, including a three-year-old version of the lead character. The ribaldry of the strip club host - and the audience members who laugh at his sexist and violent jokes - are a chilling reminder of how acceptable sexism can still be. The emotional impact of this drama grows slowly, partly due to the disjointed nature of the play. But the seemingly logical conclusion leaves one with an uneasy feeling of how wrong it is to make men and women grow up this way.
Lara SchroederThe StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Don't see Rape! expecting to be whacked over the head with guilt, angst or anger - the usual weapons of feminist theatre. Instead expect to be engaged and somewhat amused by a skilled story-teller. The guilt comes hours later.
On the surface Rape!, written and performed by Australian Alan Lovett, is about a retired teacher who witnesses a rape. More importantly, the play is about the forces that make men turn women into sex objects.
The teacher watches the violent movies and reads the pornographic magazines we've all seen. He laughs at the same sexist jokes we've all laughed at. Like most of us, he dismisses them all as harmless.
It all stops being funny when the teacher starts following a girl who has become the object of his affections, careful not to learn too much about her personally. (He doesn't want his image of her ruined).
The genius in Rape! is how Lovett makes it impossible to dismiss the connections between sex and violence in the media, sexism at home and everywhere (both subtle and overt) and the obvious horror of the girl's rape.
He leaves us wondering who are the victims. The girl, obviously, but Lovett leaves us thinking about the normal people who are trained from birth to fit certain molds (the loving housewife, the pretty girl, the protective father, the macho adolescent boy) without pointing a damning finger.
Leslie Perreaux
Canadian Broadcasting Commission (Radio - Saskatoon)
"Special Mention" in their Pick of the Fringe (ie the top 6 shows)
"I had expected something very difficult but I got something intelligent, insightful and sensitive"
Susan MacDonald
Times Colonist (Victoria, BC)
Rape! is a skilled, subtle and unusual look at a difficult subject … and it's one of the best shows at the Victoria Fringe Festival. Lovett skilfully portrays a handful of characters, but the most poignant is a pathetic Everyman who experiences mild lust for a school-girl and then accidentally witnesses her rape. He finds himself unable to go to the police … what if they find out he's been following the girl? Given the ongoing maelstrom of feminist rhetoric cloaking this volatile issue. Lovett's Rape! is a rare oasis of thoughtfulness and humanity.
Adrian Chamberlain.THE JENNY REVUE (amateur, Winnipeg)
This is not rape with an exclamation point. It's rape with an ellipsis
This is an intelligent, thoughtful script, and Lovett is a fine actor, showing good range in the character shifts. When I saw him (2nd night), he was a little off form, stumbling over a few moments - like a Toller Cranston, though the rest of his performance was so strong, I forgave the stumbles easily.
Kevin LongfieldAt first I was wondering or not this was the right show. On the stage was a small apartment setup with two curtains. A man between 40 and 55 was standing there meekly reminiscing and intercutting his dialogue with bits of stand-up comedy.
But no, this was definitely the right show and as it moved along, it grew more and more disturbing. Using the stand-up as his counterpoint, the character painted a situation of extraordinary emotional ambiguity. as the character's narrative grew more intense, the stand-up jokes and routines became more grotesque and disturbingly familiar.
Rape! is a very well acted and conceived one-man show. It is worth seeing, although perhaps not if you are overly sensitive about certain things.
Jesse SimonThere are 3 jokes in Rape! that one should not feel guilty about if they chuckle. As for the rest, perhaps you weren't listening too closely.
Rape! is a powerful show because of its simple staging. The audience is drawn to this non- threatening character, but it is the perceived lack of threat that one should be aware of. He echoes the sentiments of many.
Alan Lovett segues neatly from armchair confidante to rude Benny Hill type comedian. The accompaniment of television violence is a nice touch.
As all too often happens, it is the passive observer, reticent to act upon or change events, that women should be cautious of. This is a show well worth attending. One-man shows are difficult to pull off and Lovett does this well.
Rosey GoodmanThis is the worst piece of drivel I have ever sat through. Worse yet, he charged us to see it. If you like Aussie sexist humour, be my guest…but hey, buddy, this is the Nineties.
Sandra McCrea
The Craig (amateur, Victoria, BC)
I was speechless. I tried congratulating Alan Lovett after his Monday show, but I only managed to stutter and shake his outstretched hand.Rape! confronts violence and how we strangers view it. Sometimes we are so detached, we do not realize that those people are human beings too.
Jonathon Parker
Alf & The Kid
Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Vancouver
Winnipeg Free Press
To steal a line from Australian writer/director/actor Alan Lovett, this one-man comedy is f...king great.
The language will make even the most bawdy sailor blush. (The opening words are "F...king bastard!" shouted at the top of Lovett's lungs), but this performance should not be missed.
The play chronicles the exploits of Alf Johnson, a crusty old Australian who finds himself on the street living with a group of runaway children. He is befriended by 13-year-old Jill, and their relationship forms the basis of most of the play.
Lovett is brilliant in his portrayal of Alf and the host of other characters, particularly the Keystone cop who arrests Alf periodically - once after Alf, drunk, pees on his leg.
There is no shortage of lavatory humour in this performance. One of the best scenes comes when Alf is trying to sleep in a men's shelter filled with drunks.
He breaks into a song that is based on the farting of his room-mates. The song, "That F...king Wind" goes to the tune of The Summer Wind. The programme includes an apology to Frank Sinatra.
Doug Nairne
Winnipeg Free Press
Fringe's Top 10 — Number 4. ALF AND THE KID
To steal a line from Australian writer/director/actor Alan Lovett, this one-man comedy is bleeping great.
The language will make even the most bawdy sailor blush. The play chronicles the exploits of Alf Johnson, a crusty old Australian who finds himself on the street living with a group of runaway children. He is befriended by 13-year-old Jill, and their relationship forms the basis of most of the play.
Lovett is brilliant in his portrayal of Alf and the host of other characters, particularly the Keystone cop who arrests Alf periodically - once after Alf, drunk, pees on his leg.
Doug Nairne
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
After a visit in 1993, Australian performer Alan Lovett returns to the Toronto Fringe with a touching little show about homelessness. His Alf is a perpetually cantankerous 52-year-old alcoholic who gets thrown out of his daughter's granny flat because he is so disagreeable. He makes an incompetent if self-righteous street person and is headed for trouble until he is rescued by a 13-year-old runaway called Ginnie. Lovett plays both Alf and the teen-age girl, as well as a social worker and a second street kid. He moves with ease and wit from one part to another; the only awkward moments here are two songs rather oddly inserted into the action. The show contains a lot of practical detail about street life but is softly amusing and touching rather than gritty or depressing. Alf is the strongest character and one leaves the piece wishing he were developed further.
K.T. (Kate Taylor)
The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Alf's mouth is so crusty, his voice so bad and his behaviour so ugly that he's funny.
In last year's Rape, Alan Lovett took a dramatic stab at examining the forces that turn men into sex objects.
Lovett took a decidedly different turn in this year's Fringe with Alf and the Kid, a somewhat lighter (and a heck of a lot funnier) look at a homeless man and his relationships with his family, the world and especially a young street girl.
Lovett is much more in his element playing a crusty old man who is constantly getting into trouble.
He is a likable curmudgeon, and everyone is cheering for him to get it together and somehow maintain his free spirit.
Alf and The Kid is full of chuckles, but it still gets a strong point across about two vastly different people who are misunderstood by those around them. -
Leslie Perreaux
Edmonton Journal
On with the (one-man) show… Joey Tremblay and Alan Lovett take on the Fringe singlehandedly
In Alf and the Kid (Stage 10), Australia's Alan Lovett populates the stage with a bad-tempered 50-year-old outcast and a circumscribed world that includes a 13-year-old street kid, a Sally Ann hostel worker, a hapless cop.
Alf is one of those guys, fundamentally decent, whose essential prickliness is uncompromising. Everything rubs him the wrong way; he's a man with a rash, psychically speaking. "Bastard!" he hollers, working himself into a scatological lather. He steals clothing from laundry lines, and the hostel store where it's free. He drinks. He defies the ordinances against urinating in public. With his daughter and son-in-law he delivers himself of loud, obnoxious views on child-rearing. It is not therefore beyond the realm of the plausible that he ends up homeless, dispossessed by his kids who can't put up with his wilfulness.
In this script however, and in Lovett's performance, Alf remains a theoretical proposition. The piece consists of a string of little set-pieces (Alf in the hostel, Alf at home, cop reporting an Alf escapade). And, very oddly and awkwardly, these are interrupted twice for musical numbers in which Lovett, as Alf and as the street kid, performs classic songs - The Summer Wind, Something to Talk About - with new, jokey words. If these are fantasy sequences, they are unsuccessful. If not, they are stunningly misjudged.
Lovett is a likeable presence onstage, no question. But his play never takes on a form that would give dramatic momentum to his ideas, interestingly unsentimental as they are about a homeless older man and his dispossessed young companion. It's as if the actor were demonstrating a proposition rather than becoming characters. And it never stops seeming like skits.
Liz NichollsSee Magazine
Fringe Unhinged: best of the best — (9) Alf and the Kid
Alf's like Crankshaft of the funny pages, except he drinks too much, swears in front of the kids and torments the cat. The family throws the live-in 50-year-old grandfather out.
Australian Alan Lovett's research for this one-actor piece must have been painstaking. He brings the homeless Alf to life. Efforts as shelter-worker and police officer are commendable, but best of all are portrayals of two skater teenagers who take him into their trashy, condoms-on-the-floor, showerless room to teach him about the street.
Lovett, who wrote the piece, even includes a hilarious song about being kept awake by the snores and the farts in a Salvation Army shelter. -
Stew Slater
Edmonton Sun Friday
Alf too unlikable
By Colin MacLean, Express WriterAlf is an angry, foul-mouthed street person.
He's been thrown out by his family for his bellicose manner and pithy language and, at 53, he's on the street. And ill-equipped to be there.
He screams at the police, tries to steal clothes from the hostel - where they are given away free anyway - and generally drives anyone who could help away. After causing a disturbance, he's even given the heave-ho from the hostel.
On the street, he is befriended by an abused 13-year-old runaway. A strange bond develops between the child who sees him as a surrogate father and the man who needs her to help him navigate a world where he is lost.
Aussie comedian and storyteller Alan Lovett returns to the Fringe this year with a heartfelt story from the streets of Melbourne. He obviously connects with his material and although no actor, he gives a sincere reading.
But he doesn't really connect with his audience. The performance stays mostly on the stage and doesn't reach across into the seats. Street people are everywhere and they deserve our attention, but Alf is such an unlovable old curmudgeon that it's hard to relate to him. He gets drunk, pees on a constable's uniform and then throws up on the station charge sheet. Alf tries to sneak into a swimming pool and gets caught when the cart he is standing on rolls away. Alf steals a woman's panties from a clothes line and wears them because he hasn't got anything else. All this is more ho-hum than ho! ho!
I think Lovett sees Alf as a feisty embodiment of the unquenchable Aussie spirit, but with his bluster and hatred, his abusive, foul language screamed out at you, he is not someone you want to spend a lot of time with.
Terminal City (Vancouver)
"Alf & The Kid" is about Alf, a fifty-two year old alcoholic… but that shouldn't fool you into thinking it's a serious piece. More along the lines of funny character sketches with asides on the condition of street life. To Alf, everyone is a "fuckin' bastard!" When kicked out of his son's granny flat, Alf relies on the streets for survival. Alan Lovett plays Alf, along with all the other characters. There is "the copper," a bumbling streetbeat cop with an officious looking notebook. There is the worker from The Gill, a hostel for homeless men. The strongest characters were Wilf and Gilly, two young street kids who take pity on Alf and invite him to their squat. Wilf, a toque-wearing skateboard-riding street lad, humours Gilly who wants to help Alf, and loves his swearing vernacular. Wilf fights for survival while searching for fun and prankster tricks along the way. Gilly, a rather sweet and insecure young woman, leaves home when her father starts molesting her. It's either the streets or sexual abuse: at least on the streets she can survive on her own terms. She takes pity on Alf, the only person who has ever needed her and the only man who doesn't try to touch her. Since Wilf and Gilly live on their wits, and Alf lacks wits, he causes all kinds of mayhem. There are some lovely moments with these three strongly drawn characters. What chopped up the vignettes was the heavy use of black-outs. While some served to divide character changes, too many caused transitions to seem choppy and distracting. One of the most odd moments comes when Alf breaks into song, singing The Summer Wind, odd but with funny revamped lyrics it added a surreal quality to the moment.
