The Purple Rabbit, Strut & Fret
The Rechabite, 26 January 2023

Fringe World is more than the shows. It’s about happy crowds swamping the streets of Northbridge, spilling out of pubs, bars and eateries, rushing from show to show, the celebratory vibe of the thing. 

But celebration was missing on the night of the January 26 holiday. So were crowds in the bars and restaurants, many of which were dark and empty. 

Whether it’s because of commercial decisions or something more sinister, it made the walk to The Rechabite for Strut & Fret’s latest production, the trickery and smuttery of The Purple Rabbit, a strange experience. 

So is the show.

After a beginning that promised an hallucinatory experience (Jefferson Airplane’s acid anthem “White Rabbit”, played good and loud) the five performers – all-round trickster and MC Dom Chambers, the fingerer Vincent Kuo, the dirty mind reader Harper Jones, the fire eater Angie Sylvia and the beatboxer Gale – ran through their acts in fifth gear to the delight of the crowd. (Quite a few of them were at a hen’s night, many wearing supplied purple ears, all out for a good time, for all the world like a 21^st Century version of a naughty night out at the old Dirty Dicks up on Newcastle Street). 

It’s all raucous, randy fun, as Chambers pours beers out of empty paper bags and boots, Sylvia sets fire to her nipple tassels, Gale (impressively) revives what must by now be the ancient art of beatboxing and Jones demonstrates how accurately an audience member can reproduce the colours of her butt ring. Stay classy, Perth. 

Then there was Kuo’s rapid-fire Rubik’s Cube act, which started out impressively enough as he disentangled the infernal boxes with ease (because he’s Asian, he declared), but became more and more manufactured as he went along. Entertaining, for sure. But magical? Yeah, nah. 

And that was the thing with The Purple Rabbit. As a magic show it was all gift wrapping around precious little gift. A set of pretty standard tricks performed more for laughs than amazement. Magic without the magic. 

As I walked away from Fringe World, through the now almost completely deserted cultural centre, a young man appeared out of the shadows carrying an enormous limestone block that he threw down and smashed to pieces against a garden border in a storm of obscenities near the new museum. 

Happy Australia Day, everyone. 

The Purple Rabbit is at The Rechabite until 5 February 2023

Pictured top: The Purple Rabbit’s magic tricks generate more laughs than amazement. Photo: Smoke Photography