It's a Wonderful Knife: Christmas Dundee | review by Stephen Theaker

December 2024, and Paul Hogan, star of the Crocodile Dundee trilogy (yes, there was a third one), is despondent, grumpy and lonely. And that's even before his extremely aggressive agent phones to say that Burt, his crocodile co-star, has died, and Hogan is expected to attend the funeral. He starts to wish he had never been born.

Meanwhile, in some kind of animal heaven, the animal actors who played Lassie, Jaws and Babe see what's going on and feel the need to intervene. So Burt the crocodile is returned to Earth in flamboyant human form, to take Paul Hogan back in time, to see how different the world would have been without him.

In this alternate reality, Crocodile Dundee starred Arnold Schwarzenegger instead. The film flopped so hard it ruined Linda Kozlowski's career – we hear her (as played by Thea Jo Wolfe) sing about her misery – and worse that that, it led to all-out war between Australia and Austria, as we learn when Burt (Oliver Cartwright) takes Hogan to the devastated future.

This fantastical musical was performed in a small theatre with a great deal of enthusiasm by a lively cast, who navigated a multilevel stage very well, especially during the song and dance numbers – the highlight of which was a eurodance number whose chorus was Schwarzenegger's shout from Predator: "Get to the chopper!"

It might be the simplicity of that song that made it work so well. The lyrics of other songs were difficult to make out, except in quieter numbers, and I wondered whether it might have been better performed without the help of amplification, in such a small venue. But then they were more traditional musical-style songs anyway, and I'm not really a fan of that genre.

The show had a few other problems for me. For one thing, the premise makes no sense. If Arnold Schwarzenegger had starred in Crocodile Dundee it would have been hilarious. The man was constitutionally incapable of making a bad movie in the 1980s. I should forgive it that – it's not as if this is trying to be a serious alternate history! – but it was on my mind throughout.

The other big problem, apart from a bit too much shouting and shrieking, is that Paul Hogan is a comedian and the Paul Hogan character in this doesn't get to be funny. It could have been any random Australian grump. Weird, when the Schwarzenegger character (played by Tom Kiteley) did get to be funny. Couldn't help thinking they should have built the musical around that character instead.

To be positive, the rather long conclusion, where Hogan thinks about his relationships and his life, had one audience member in tears. (I was too, but only because the theatrical fog caught in my throat.) The cast members who played multiple characters made each of them totally distinct. And Will Usherwood-Bliss as Hugh Jackman was memorable, fighting future Austria with his boomerang claws. **

It's a Wonderful Knife: Christmas Dundee is playing at the Old Joint Stock Threatre, Birmingham, for the rest of December. Tickets available.

Into the Unknown: a Journey Through Science Fiction, curated by Patrick Gyger (Barbican) | review by Stephen Theaker

This exhibition, billed as “the genre-defining exhibition of art, design, film & literature”, began running at the Barbican on 3 June 2017 (the day the TQF co-editors and their families attended), and would remain open until 1 September 2017. It was announced in 2016, and I had been looking forward to it ever since, but in the event it was, despite some remarkable exhibits, a bit of a disappointment. Part of that can perhaps be laid at the tickets, which promised three parts, but only the first was the exhibition proper, and there wasn’t very much of it.

Eastercon 2017: Innominate | review by Stephen Theaker

I only attended for two days of this four-day convention, Saturday and Monday. It took place in Birmingham in April 2017, at a hotel close to the NEC, near enough for me to travel to in an hour or so on public transport, so I had bought a full membership fairly early on without knowing whether I would be free or not. My daughter and I attended on Saturday. I bought her a one-day ticket at a very reasonable rate. She was interested in attending a talk on manga and anime, and a session on painting alien worlds, and enjoyed them both. We also watched the BSFA awards, which were good, convivial fun, and then the first episode of Doctor Who season ten, which was shown on three huge screens in the main events room.

My daughter enjoyed herself enough to recommend the event to my younger daughter, my wife, and the two children of my co-editor, so they all came with us on the Monday. Upon arriving we had the nice surprise of discovering that my older daughter’s painting from the Saturday session had won a prize in the children’s art show, which got the day off to a great start. It was a banner day too for my younger daughter, who for the very first time in her life, after being asked for her name, had someone recognise it and say, “Oh, like Telzey Amberdon.”

That day we attended hair-braiding and journal decoration sessions, which were interesting, even for those of us without hair or journals (the hair I lost long ago; the journal I gave away to a little girl who didn’t have her own). Between the two workshops we attended the closing ceremony, which must have been an odd experience for the four members of our group who had only arrived an hour and a half before.

Not staying at the hotel overnight, only attending a couple of panels, not being there for the full four days, and not really talking to anyone in the bar, I suppose most people would say I didn’t properly get stuck into the convention, but I’d still say it was my favourite convention experience yet. A few years ago I said to an occasional TQF contributor that I didn’t really like conventions. He told me that perhaps I had been going to the wrong ones, and after this weekend I think he may have been right.

On the surface this convention was almost completely indistinguishable from the last one I attended in York (my favourite convention before this one), but a few small and significant differences emerged over the couple of days. The strand of events for children was one. (If we’d realised there was a Lego Minifigure event on Sunday we’d have gone on that day too.) It also seemed to have more fans as opposed to career-orientated writers (something at least one writer has grumbled about). And we didn’t hear anyone bellowing across the convention rooms like territorial wildebeests.

Course, my experience of other cons is probably coloured to some extent that I went there to present various reports to the AGMs, and watch the awards I’d administered play out, appear on panels a couple of times, and one time be the secretary and treasurer for the whole bleeding thing, whereas Eastercon was pure relaxation, nothing to do except listen to clever people talk about things (Aliette de Bodard was a standout contributor to both panels I attended) or watch the children get on with fun and creative activities.

Best of all, there were plenty of places to sit when nothing was happening. Sofas everywhere, a quiet room, a fan lounge; it really contrasted well with all the times I’ve been at conventions and struggled to find somewhere to sit and read my new books. There was no goody bag, and no convention souvenir book, two things some attendees of other cons care very deeply about, but I wasn’t at all bothered by their absence. The daily newsletters about convention occurrences were great fun.

If Eastercon returns to Birmingham we’ll definitely go again, and I think we enjoyed it enough that we could even be tempted a bit further afield. ****