By the pricking of my thumbs and the tingling of my toes I know Fringe is here: bizarre posters, oddly dressed people wandering the streets, and unexpected venues springing to strange life in our old Victorian Gothic heritage city. Once more Dunedin has a near sell-out crowd for the traditional Showcase in the glorious Regent Theatre, supplemented by strange goings-on in a vintage bus and Firebugs in the Octagon.   

Again it is a peculiar, eclectic collection of around 28 items: just a sample of the 70-odd on offer over the next ten days from over 300 artists. Some acts are more obviously promotional than others, but all are striving to tempt the audience along to their individual shows. As a programme, it is a shade discombobulating, but it does have the advantage of a new crew scrambling onstage before there’s time to be bored with the last. 

We are eased into the evening with song, first from The Reinvention of Us, who check out the audience disparagingly for dating options, to my pleasure rhyming dorky with stalky, then the enchanting Slutty Ladies whose show, which they assure us will not be verbatim, is a literal picnic in the McDougall’s garden.

Throughout the evening, including interval, we are entertained by accomplished musicians from Elan Vital, Hiliako Iaheto, Dark Side of the Moon, Amped@Fringe, and the lively Rockabilly Ball.

Amazing Fringe Director and minor miracle worker Josh Thomas has of necessity a good few thank-yous to the sponsors to get through, but the audience good-naturedly applauds, and indeed where would we be without them? Our beloved Mayor Dave Cull is conjured up to tell us what Fringe means to Otepoti, praise its celebration of diversity and innovation, and assure us that the days when it was perceived as quirky but amateur are long gone. 

The show’s hosts are established national entertainer Ben Hurley and Dunedin’s own extraordinary Kahu Mackenzie. Ben’s comparatively low-key arrival on stage is totally eclipsed by the grand parade that is Kahu: costume and head dress utterly over the top, impersonating the goddess Hera, flanked by masked figures, a lively band, and bare-chested Adonises in gold loincloths; altogether somewhat reminiscent of Cleopatra in full perfumed sail down the Nile to stun Mark Anthony. 

Certainly impressive, and only the first of her magnificent manifestations, which will culminate in an enormous red crinoline capable of producing glasses of bubbly rosé.  Ben Hurley seems genuinely flummoxed by the gorgeous Kahu, though he is swift to reply, when she purringly enquires whether one flower-smothered gown attracts him: “Well, if I were a bee, I’d be all over you!” 

Straight theatre being somewhat challenging to mount on the Regent stage in bite-sized chunks, there is quite a reliance on stand-up comedy, always popular in Dunedin. Some acts are a little thrown together, some of the material I have heard before, some have not done their local homework and there are some ill-conceived (and not well-received) references to 9/11, but clearly each comic has an appeal for a different section of the audience, who respond with shrieks of laughter to their favourites.

For myself, I like the way the Best of Scottish Comedy duo have adapted their jokes to NZ and Dunedin in particular, enjoy the style of singer Jason Henderson in There’s Nothing on TV, and am quite charmed by the disarmingly gentle reflections of Brad Zimmerman’s Looking at Myself. I note the sympathy for That Indian Guy (“Horny Hindu One Billion and Eight”) and am touched to observe how many women are really moved by Lana Schwarcz in Lovely Lady Lump (“Spoiler alert – I survived!”).

The classier side of the Festival is represented by Sophie Morris’s pure singing in All Good Poems Wear Classical Shoes, and Swaroopa Unni’s exquisite Indian dance in Sringaram-Dance of Love, which should be even lovelier in the Fortune Theatre Studio, as here some of the delicate silhouetted hand gestures are obscured by the narrow frame of the makeshift set. 

Lurking on the lunatic fringe of Fringe is Entering The New World, an audio adventure that appears to combine colonial and commercial exploitation, an intriguingly original concept that will doubtless be clearer in its declared venue: any New World supermarket.  Also pretty radical is Bollards: The Comedy of Hyper-Industrialisation, which is a fascinating mix of photographs of, well, bollards, with pithy commentary and poetry, and finally there’s Tales of the Tabletop, which looks completely mad, usually a good thing.

Best of all, for sheer ridiculous entertainment, combined with a pleasurable shock factor (what Fringe is all about as far as I’m concerned) there’s the ludicrous parody of aging rockers from Mr Glad’s Plastic Confessional Variete Show, and Lehrer’s wicked ‘Masochism Tango’ performed by A Sanctimonious Celebration of Drag & S&M with dashing cross-gender costume and thrillingly daring dancing. 

So now it’s up to Dunedinites to make the most of the exhilarating opportunities Fringe offers. Forget sleep and seize the chance of creating your own Masochism Tango with any or all of a possible 70 wild partners! 

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