It’s a busy time for many of our wonderful Dungeon Crawlers and other comedy friends, and we hope you’ll check out what they’re up to!

This week in Adelaide Karin Muiznieks appears in the Cabaret Fringe Festival with a showcase of her songs from the last five years. We’ve often described Karin as a musical genius, and if you need proof, check out On Reflection at La Bohème from tonight until Saturday. And fret not if you’re in Melbourne; in July, after appearing in Dungeon Crawl and the Deathly Philosopher Prince’s Goblet of Azkaban, Karin and co-cabaret-conspirator Louise Joy McCrae have two shows in the Melbourne Cabaret Festival -World War Wonderful (fresh from its rebirth with a new cast in the Adelaide Fringe) and Filthy Secrets.

In Sydney tomorrow night, Lou Sanz begins a run of Not Suitable For Children at TAP Gallery. While Lou is yet to appear in a Shaolin Punk production, we’ve supported much of her work, including The Skirt Network and her previous solo shows; we’d recommend checking her out if you like your comedy dark and smoky.

Also tonight, wherever you are, you can tune into ABC1 for the premiere of Lawrence Leung‘s new show Unbelievable. Watch as Lawrence explores the world of psychics, aliens, magic and…well, lots of stuff we do in Dungeon Crawl, really. Tune in 9:30 PM Wednesdays for the next few weeks.

Finally (for now) you can catch Tripod – including crawlers Scott “Scod” Edgar and Steven “Gatesy” Gates – doing a regular spot in Melbourne on Sundays this month at the Toff in Town. Unfortunately the ticketing links are all for specific Sundays, but you can find ‘em via the Toff’s shows page.

Watch this space as I unveil our final line-up for Dungeon Crawl and the Deathly Philosopher Prince’s Goblet of Azkaban later this week – plus, if we’re lucky, some great news about Dungeon Crawl for those who don’t live in Melbourne…

 

Not only did we not all ascend to Heaven a couple of weeks ago (or get left behind to suffer unimaginable torment, which is ostensibly the fate of those who play D&D), but the last Dungeon Crawl also coincided with the opening of The Rapture, a new comedy show about being transported to another dimension by supernatural forces.

So of course, that’s what happened to our party of adventurers, as captured on film by intrepid chronicler Rob Young.

While travelling through a wood, our adventurers – barbarian bibliophile Conan the Librarian (Jimmy James Eaton), Gingantulor the part-giant with low self-esteem (Brenna Courtney-Glazebrook), sexually ambiguous hands-on healer Ivana Tuchyorbodi (Karin Muiznieks) and singing wandering man of the forest Tim Bombadildo (Casey Bennetto) – come across an old man struggling to move a large rock. Promised a vague reward of “half of double of two” to help him, Gingantulor easily moves the rock – and traps the party inside a portal to another dimension! The old man has had his soul stolen, and will release the party – and hand over their reward – when they retrieve it for him.

After falling for a length of time long enough to be hilarious, but not quite long enough to be irritating, the party encounter a two-headed dog (half-played by Jess Hutchinson), cousin of Cerberus, guarding a doorway into the realm beyond. Deciding it’s too dangerous to fight, Gigantulor banishes it with the mystic phrase “Who wants a ride in the car?”

Beyond the door lies a vast expanse of nothing, a realm shaped by the will and desire of those who enter it. The party wish for a sign, and one promptly arrives, reading “Green Room”, and pointing to a small green door. Behind the door lies a small wooden-panelled room – occupied by a Beholder! The creature seems not to see too well, but manages to paralyse Bombadildo. Ivana sumons her familiars – a pair of hipsters – to save him, but the spell doesn’t quite work as planned; while Tim is freed, Ivana can no longer contact the familiars. Gigantulor and Conan manage to destroy the Beholder with the help of their companions.

There is a wooden door leading out of the room, and Tim draws on his connection with the forest from which it came to commune with it. It creaks out “fear”, but the party don’t hear it quite right and charge on through – into a realm where they must face their own darkest fears.

Tim is confronted by the horror of non-rhyming words, like “orange” and “purple”, but Conan supplies the works of Dr Seuss and his companions teach him to make up words for rhymes. Ivana faces the disapproving glares of her conservative Christian parents, but Tim drives them off through the power of bad Christian rock. Gingantulor is taunted about her size by tiny Lilliputians, until Conan helps her squash them flat. Conan is driven mad by books that won’t stay on their correct shelves, but Ivana manages to use her connection to hipsters to summon an iPad, where the electronic books can be automatically sorted.

Having passed through this harrowing ordeal, the party finally find themselves face to…well, sort of face with The Collector, a tiny undead creature who speaks through a giant of a man under his control. The Collector intends to add the adventurers to his collection of souls, but Gigantulor tries to appeal to the giant to throw off his oppressor, succeeding by seducing him one semi-giant to another.

The former slave throws off The Collector, and hands the party a locket containing the old man’s soul. Gingantulor unleashes her special “stiletto” move and smashes it open, returning them all to the forest and the old man, where they collect their reward – which they eventually negotiate up to a small bag of gold each.

@easybee))
 

Here’s the belated recap of our Star Wars tribute from May the 4th. Enjoy this retelling, and the fantastic photos taken by resident Dungeon Crawl chronicler, Rob Young.

It is a dark time for the Rebellion; the Empire is busily crafting new weapons technology to give them the edge in the civil war. Desperate for information about these weapons, the rebels hire a group of mercenaries: Park Slope, the hipster Twi’lek bounty hunter (Clem Bastow); Oscar the Garbage Droid (Adam McKenzie); Aamer, a Jedi Academy drop-out (Aamer Rahman); and Benjamin Salivaface, a Gamorrean guard with dreams of singing on Tatooine’s Got Talent (Scott Edgar). In the settlement of Mos Def on Tattooine they meet their rebel contact, who gives them a mission to steal the plans of a new Imperial weapon: some kind of armoured, all-terrain attack vehicle, code-named “Death Puppy”.  They travel to the Mercury Lounge cantina, where they find a drunken Imperial officer who is working on the project. As they approach him, he calls in a stormtrooper, but they manage to force him to surrender and the officer gives up his key (a sonic scrwdriver) to the Imperial stronghold where the plans are held.

The team fly in Park Slope’s single-speed starship, the SS Animal Collective, to the planet Thereiam. Rather than be stealthy, they land on the top of the Imperial compound, and soon run into a wookiee slave employed as a security guard. Luckily Park Slope speaks wookiee and persuades him to switch sides. Benjamin sings and distracts the staff at the compound, allowing them all to sneak inside.

The team fall into a garbage compactor and are menaced by a strange one-eyed creature before finding the computer where the plans are held. They are menaced by the Sith Lord Darth Diablo, and manage to convince Aamer to take him on in a duel, though Park Slope’s headtails are blown off during the battle before Diablo is defeated. As they seize the plans, Oscar reveals that he is also a bounty hunter, and plans to kill the others and sell the plans himself. Aamer finally manages to successfully use the force to push Oscar into his own garbage bin. Our surviving heroes return to Tattooine to collect their reward.

© 2012 Shaolin Punk Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha