Chicken: It’s A Poultry Life ~ Adelaide Fringe 2025 Review

[THEATRE & PHYSICAL THEATRE/Solo Show ~  IRE ~ AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE] The Yurt at the Courtyard of Curiosities, Wed 26 Feb, 2025. Kudos to Eva O’Connor for taking this all the way. I can only imagine how O’Connor and long-time collaborator Hildegard Ryan arrived at this one-bird show. Something along the lines of ‘they’re such a chicken’, oh wait what if… Months later here I am in The Yurt at the Courtyard of Curiosities watching a sequin-breasted, foam-feathered bird peak and preach. Awesome, and totally Fringe. A moment must be given to the chicken costume: the chicken-buttock shapewear, polyester underbelly, the sofa upholstery trim used as roster comb! The real star of course is Eva O’Conor who is a mainstay of the Edinburgh Fringe and an undeniably excellent performer. The hilarious ketamine fuelled dance breaks, and a truly impressive amount of chicken puns were delivered completely straight faced. Unrelenting and melodramatic she inflicts incredibly bird-esque beady eye contact on the audience, circling round and round twitching her wings recounting a familiar rags to riches story, Don the Rooster’s rise from rural Ireland to Hollywood fame and then ruin (in this case a very veterinarian ketamine addiction). The whole performance occupies a space which I will call ‘Is this a metaphor or a joke?’ The real fun of this show happens afterwards; was he really a chicken or was that all in his head?  Did this take place in an alternate reality where some fowl are saved from their rotisserie fate and made into avian celebs? Is it a criticism of birth-right privileges, misogyny, otherness, useless celebrity, meaningless sex? The final quarter of the show took on a markedly more political tone as our rooster encounters a sort of chicken liberation movement. O’Conor recounts police violence at bird protests, undocumented deaths, chicken genocide at egg factories, stories which sound analogous to contemporary political movements. For me, Chicken hit the not-so-sweet spot between taking the piss and earnest analogy. 3 stars Lilah Shapiro Chicken continues at The Yurt at the Courtyard of Curiosities from 8pm until Sun 9 Mar. Book at FringeTIX on 1300 621 255 or adelaidefringe.com.au. Click HERE to purchase your tickets. #ADLFringe #ClotheslineMag