By Lachlan Williams:

Pulling off a full-length show about Bob Dylan that uses not a single Bob Dylan song was always going to be a challenge, but the team behind The Chronic Ills of Robert Zimmerman have pulled it off masterfully.

Bob Dylan, whether you’re a fan or not, is one of the towering artistic figures of the twentieth century, and writing a stage play based around the man and his music comes with inherent pitfalls – sycophancy and fandom, pastiche and needless tall poppy lopping among them.

From the opening, however, Di Fonzo’s surreal, slippery, brilliantly funny show avoids all of them. Matt Ralph’s Dylan epitomises the effortless cool that the folk singer embodied in his early career. He throws out Di Fonzo’s wordplay as though he doesn’t care whether the audience gets it or not, and this works brilliantly.

We’re guided in the manner of a talking blues through Dylan’s life. It’s a hallucinogenic, madcap history that weaves John Lennon, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez and a hip, Yiddish Abe Lincoln into a weird tapestry of counterculture lore held together with threads from Dylan’s songs, interviews and life.

A real strength of the production is that it doesn’t attempt to stick closely to Dylan’s actual life story, or to an accurate history. At those points where Dylan’s life story becomes boring (like, I dunno, the 80s) we simply go somewhere else.

When Dylan explains to us how bad some of his bad work is, the show avoids the kind of hero-worship to which it could fall prey. It also allows us to laugh out loud at Tarantula, Slow Train Coming and other less luminous works in the galaxy of his creative output.

Simon Rippingale is the unnoticed hero of the show. His upright bass and ukulele soundtrack keep a herbal beat going behind the on-stage happenings, and provide exactly the kind of atmosphere that the play that rescued the damiana (stage weed) industry needs.

On a similarly musical note, Munro’s turns as Joan Baez and Emmy-Lou Harris are masterful. Apart from having a powerful voice, she’s an astute mimic and excellent comedienne.

There’s a touch of Bekettian symmetry to some of the scenes – at one point Ralph, playing Dylan, plays the role of Woody Guthrie, while Lenore Munroe, who’s played a host of characters, steps into the role of Dylan.

Whether the play is going to be as entertaining for those who aren’t as familiar with (or don’t like) Dylan’s music is debateable. It’s a question I’m not really qualified to answer, since my first words was in fact “glissendorf”, and I was raised on a diet of Dylan, the Dead and Ry Cooder. Certainly there are in-jokes, misplaced and misspoken lyrics and snippets from interviews (including the brilliantly awkward Stolkholm 1966 exchange) that will fly over the head of even the most ardent fan. But the energy, jouissance, and verve with which the cast attack the play is infectious, and there are enough non-Dylan jokes to keep those without the sensibility to appreciate Dylan’s music and lyrics entertained.

You leave the theatre having enjoyed yourself a hell of a lot. If there are flaws with the performance – the occasional slipping accent, mistimed punchline or fluffed chord – they don’t stay with you after the curtain call.

The show might not make any huge revelations about Dylan as either a person or an icon. Certainly there are many ways in which the show is a pastiche or homage, but it is anything but vacant. Like Dylan himself, the impression that Chronic Ills leaves you with is one of mystery, rebellion, elusiveness and an ebullient structured anarchy.

The show was a hit at the Adelaide Fringe, and travels to Byron Bay next. It deserves all its successes, and many future ones.

The Chronic Ills of Robert Zimmerman: AKA Bob Dylan (a lie) – a theatrical talking blues and glissendorf

$29 Full, $21 Concession, $35 Beer, Laksa and Show (plus BF) $17 Preview and Cheap Tuesday, $25 Beer, Laksa and Show (plus BF)

TRS/Bicycle User Group

Old Fitzroy Theatre

8pm Tue-Fri, 5pm Sun

To April 30

Tickets available through moshtix

Reviewer bio: Lachlan Williams is a Sydney-based writer and comedian. He’s not bad once you get to know him. -williams.lachlan@gmail.com

Tags: australian arts review, bob dylan show, independent arts review, independent theatre review, Lachlan Williams, old fitzroy theatre, the chronic ills of robert zimmerman, trs bicycle user group