Created and performed by Eadie Testro-Girasole and Tommy Bradford, the queer musical comedy duo is making their Adelaide Fringe Festival debut with Hot Fat Crazy. This bizarre musical sketch comedy is a fictional account of Eadie’s admission to the psych ward full of original numbers, silly sketches, and even puppets.
Dressed in black with their names bedazzled on their backs, Tommy and Eadie set the scene with a talk to diary narration as you’ve never seen before. The pair have fantastic chemistry, and their exaggerated physical comedy sets the tone for a raucous cabaret-comedy. Naming the show as hot is an understatement for how horny it truly is. From anal beads to sex between inpatients, Hot Fat Crazy is randy in absurd ways.
Tommy and Eadie embody multiple hilarious characters including the nurses both named Trish and a homophobic cat, which shows off the performers’ effective use of timing, vigorous movements, and audience interaction. The performers are playful with audience members with pointed looks and treated in part as inpatients or a delusion of Eadie’s. And the puppets make a few appearances to act as the chorus or a minor character.
The music employs multiple genres from Australian hip hop and country to rock and sultry jazz. The traditional musical opening song “Welcome to the Psych Ward” invites the audience into this upbeat and surreal observation of mental distress. Tommy and Eadie’s superb voices blend well together with lovely harmonies and absurd lyrics about body size and competing in group therapy.
There are brief references to self-harm and suicide which doesn’t shy away from the reality of mental illness while keeping the show light and funny. This show does not take an educational approach to mental health care, though it does refer to ongoing concerns like the financial costs and dismissal of mental illness and fat bodies by some medical staff. What the show does offer is an alternative perception of such services by dismantling the stigma and refuting the common narrative of a linear trajectory from crisis point to “healed”. This is not a vulnerable, gentle look at mental illness, it is a brash, shameless insight into mental health crises based on lived experience, which is what makes it so engrossing.
The choreography is dynamic and uses the small stage well, but sitting close does easily show the puppeteers' side of stage (not that this show pretends to maintain such secrecy of the people behind the curtains). There were a couple of hiccups with sound cues and stage entrances for opening night but the performers handled them with humour and ease.
As the winner of the Melbourne Comedy Festival Tour Ready award and multiple Green Room Award nominations, plus an upcoming album release, I urge you to take advantage of the chance to see these rising performers. Four more chances to see Hot Fat Crazy at the Rhino Room.