Appropriate Kissing For All Occasions review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Lithuanian Club

Intimacy can come in many forms: from a long, sensuous kiss to the brief contact of hands. They can unleash a flood of emotions and raise many questions to the meaning of such an action. David Finnigan and Isab Martinez's Appropriate Kissing for All Occasions is presented as two short works in which the art of kissing and desire are explored. 

The first piece, of which the show is named from, introduces us to Toni Stevenson-Smith (Christina McLachlan), a sex therapist and intimacy coach who is here to enlighten us on the perfect kiss. Toni takes us through a variety of kisses, including the first kiss, how to kiss in public and the farewell kiss. Teaching a group of people how to kiss is difficult without someone to kiss, so with some help from some volunteers in the audience (strictly by volunteering), Toni rates and critiques each kisser with the hope of them using her words of wisdom in the future.

This dissection of kissing explores how much meaning and power kissing has in our culture. Throughout the lecture, Toni's own cracks begin to surface as she deals with the aftermath of her own lip-locking experiences. McLachlan does a great job in presenting the duality of a cool, calm and collected professional while expressing the rejection, anger and sadness that has resulted from the simple act of kissing.

2.0 | Contact - Melbourne Fringe Festival review

Presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, The Human Project's 2.0 | Contact, is an exploration on what touch can be and mean to humans and how life could be without it. A highly physical experimental piece, it incorporates martial arts, dancing and some wrestling moments as an "outsider" dissects and analyses the state of physical touching.

With injury befalling one of the performers, the show has had to be restructured to work around the three remaining cast (Rosie Osmond, Ashton Sly and Joseph Lai) and you wouldn't be able to tell as the performance is seamless and feels like it has been just the three of them rehearsing all this time. This is a highly demanding show - both physically and mentally - but the training and effort the three have put in in getting this piece together is evident. With its minimalist set, staging and costumes there is nothing for the performers to hide behind and their every move and word is what has all of our attention.