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Fourth Wheel Theatre
Everything I know about this organisation is from this article by Steve Grant in the Fremantle Herald of 24 November 2023.
CRINGINGLY GOOD PANTO
A bit of fun that led to a global ‘hit’ and created something of a tradition in South Fremantle is back next month.
Fourth Wheel Theatre was created by South Freo locals Tim McGrath and Helen Crompton who put together podcasts in the style of old radio plays during the Covid shut-down, but since 2020 they’ve also produced an annual Christmas pantomime.
Their next production is Baking Bad on December 10, a production Mr McGrath says “re-imagines the ‘great British bake-off’ and Breaking Bad with references to local cultural icons”.
Beaconsfield resident Fiona Wheeler plays the Fairy Godmother, and while she’s perhaps not Fourth Wheel’s most gushing critic (“cringingly bad”), she reckons it’s been a hoot since she joined four years ago.
“What we do is not really learn our lines, it’s all just read off a script and Tim has recorded all the sound effects,” she said.
The pantos are so grass roots, Baking Bad is showing at “the bike stand, 400 South Terrace”.
Ms Wheeler says she first met Mr McGrath when she volunteered to be a rickshaw driver for the Cycling Without Age branch he ran in Fremantle, and was taken by his dry humour.
She joined in with the podcasts and says they do have something of a global following: “We’ve got three listeners in Botswana.”
Mr McGrath said creating the podcasts during Covid had its challenges.
“During lockdown actors recorded their parts separately and the plays were spliced together in a technique referred to as ‘Frankenstein’ production,” he said.
“Now we record them together.
Other pantos Fourth Wheel had staged include Hark the Feral, What a Waste, and A Corner Pocket Carol.
They also have a series of lighthearted podcasts available at fifthhorseman.buzzsprout.com
References and Links
As above.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 24 November, 2023 and hosted at freotopia.org/organisations/fourthwheeltheatre.html (it was last updated on 24 November, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.