Noel Tovey is a legend. He was a principal dancer with Sadlers Wells and had a great stage career, appeared with Judy Garland, Ken Tynan and many others. And that's not to mention his success as a choreographer and director and on radio and TV. It was when invited to write his autobiography in 2000 that he began to come to terms again with his past.The bulk of this show is about earlier days. The horrors of his particular childhood. Being a poor, Aboriginal and gay child in the slums of Melbourne, Australia in the 1930s was a very tough hand to receive in life. Tovey tells it all very calmly and eloquently, starting with abuse at age four, being taken away from a mother deemed unfit, sent to a distant farm where the tyrannical owner abused Tovey and his sister for five years, teenage rent boy time and the danger of naivety in a courtroom where the penalty for sodomy could be death.Noel Tovey shows that he has coped with great dignity with experiences that might destroy many, plus he still has the ability to move with grace and precision, as we see here. When he tells us of the difficulty he still finds in saying the name of his abuser, and what he felt when he eventually returned to Melbourne after 55 years, we can easily believe him.See this show, not simply to be appalled by the cruelty of man to man or to child, but to see how triumphantly a human being can rise above such things, and to experience for an hour yes, Toveys tragic past, but also the grace, fortitude and dignity with which he has made his life and continues to live.Miss this and you miss one of the great and enduring experiences of this years Fringe.
