Cabaret Festival reviews: Mama Alto, Paul Capsis, Geraldine Quinn, Roscoe James Irwin, How I won RocKwiz
Read the Advertiser’s reviews of shows including Mama Alto, Paul Capsis, Geraldine Quinn, Roscoe James Irwin and how Nathan Davies won RocKwiz.
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Mama Alto – Follies Girl
Space Theatre
June 23
Billed as being “classic vaudeville meets contemporary queer glamour”, Follies Girl is all that and more.
Opening with a reworking of Hello Dolly, which included the line “Holy crap, fellas, find me an empty lap …”, the show doesn’t miss a beat.
Describing herself as a “gender transcendent diva” Mama Alto knows how to work a crowd, frequently stepping off stage to mingle.
She also knows how to work ostrich feather fans, do a cheeky costume change and hasn’t just mastered the art of singing sitting down; Mama Alto can sing after being dunked into a giant tea cup, which would have to put even more strain on that all-important vocalist’s posture.
The giant tea cup is Mama Alto’s answer to Dita Von Teese’s martini glass and she somehow makes it just as sexy.
With a repertoire ranging from Vera Lynn’s (When You’re Up to Your Neck in Hot Water) Be Like the Kettle and Sing, to a Marilyn Monroe medley – in which she does a feminist deconstruction of Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend without taking away any of its showgirl sparkle – Mama Alto is brilliant.
Her vocals are simply sublime when she sings standards such as Moon River, which was worth the admission price alone.
Anna Vlach
Geraldine Quinn – Broad
Banquet Room
June 23 and 24
The fabulous Geraldine Quinn always wanted to be on the stage. With a great voice and heaps of presence, she could have been Annie. But she’d rather be Miss Hannagan.
You see, she’s a “broad” who likes to eat and drink and laugh out loud.
Broad is a riot from start to finish. Before she’s even on stage, a hypnotic introduction reminds us that Quinn, “touching, intelligent and weirdly sexy”, is an award-winning artist, available for hire, and (by the way) an excellent voice-over artist.
She bursts onto the stage, in a drag-designed and constructed number – “the sequins of our people!” – that doesn’t cover a lot (“It used to be full length”).
The original songs are perfectly constructed, and played with good-natured aplomb by Cameron Thomas, and travel well-trodden paths – ambition, auditions, getting by (especially during the pandemic) and getting on.
A funny number about the internet, and bonus points for getting the word “hydroxychloroquine” into a song. And a fall-down-and-roll-around-laughing ditty she wrote for Casey Bennetto’s celebrated Swinging Bella Christmas – a popular annual tradition in Melbourne which, it occurs to me, ought to tour to Adelaide – almost nothing of which is printable but broadly concerns the manger and a lot of testosterone.
Then there’s her standout stand-up. Quinn can tell a tall tale with the best, brilliantly timed, laugh-out-loud funny, and she’s well able to handle any crowd.
A quick change into a breathtaking leotard that’s smoking, if not actually on fire, flames emanating provocatively from the nether regions. This broad will do what she wants.
It’s kaftans, turbans and comfortable shoes for her. She’s earned it. And you’re stuck with her “till she’s chucked in a casket”!
Which hopefully will be no time soon.
Peter Burdon
Roscoe James Irwin – Lost in a Dream: The Musical Life of Chet Baker
Dunstan Playhouse
June 23
Could it be that Roscoe James Irwin is Chet Baker reincarnated?
It’s impossible, given that Irwin, of The Cat Empire fame, was born in 1982; six years before the legendary American jazz trumpeter and vocalist died.
But if you didn’t know that, you’d be forgiven for thinking as much.
For one hour, Irwin, who hails from Melbourne, becomes Baker; as one audience member noted, he is “as close as you would get to seeing Baker”.
Stepping out on stage, he even had the look of the “James Dean of Jazz”.
With similar physical features to Baker in his youth, and wearing an understated Hawaiian shirt, he was the West Coast “Prince of Cool”.
Physical similarities aside, Irwin is a brilliant trumpeter and flugelhorn player, who is able to emulate his hero’s mellow vocal style – and its underlying fragility.
Also an arranger/composer, Irwin’s call to add a string section was a masterstroke; violinist Julian Ferraretto’s solo during My Funny Valentine was a lavish lament and one of several transcendental moments in the show.
Almost every number a Baker fan could wish to hear was there including It’s Always You, Someone To Watch Over Me, Let’s Get Lost, I Fall In Love Too Easily and more; Irwin pausing every now and then to reflect on Baker’s life and legacy.
It’s not the first time Irwin has brought this show to Adelaide and it should not be the last. This time around it was one night only, but judging by the full house – and its response to the hauntingly dreamy performance – one night is not enough.
Anna Vlach
Paul Capsis and Francis Greep – Dry My Tears
Dunstan Playhouse
June 23
Cabaret royalty hit the Playhouse stage as Paul Capsis gave the Adelaide premiere of Dry My Tears, and he had the packed house hanging on every tender word.
The territory traversed is familiar, to Capsis and to his fans, but to hear it up so close and personal, a stripped-back acoustic set with just a voice and a piano – the excellent Francis Greep – was a rare treat indeed.
“Willkommen!” he cried, then it was back 40 years to the Alabama Song from Weill’s Mahagonny with its extraordinary (and to Capsis, effortless) changes of key and tempo, and a stiletto-sharp Mack the Knife.
Fast forward to 1978 with William Bolcom’s brilliant George from the Cabaret Songs collection. Poor old George, killed with a knife baked in a pie and buried in a “coffin which was white/because George was a virgin”.
Dietrich and Nina Simone classics, a Victorian parlour song, and Elton John. Is there no one Capsis cannot make his own? There was Mylène Farmer’s Je t’aime mélancolie, I think heard only once before in the Cabaret Festival.
He shares a funny story of his first New York appearance, many years ago, when he was reviewed as “the poor man’s Alan Cummings.” His response: I Don’t Care Much, which Cummings made his own on Broadway.
We’re only halfway through, and the delights keep rolling on. Melody Gardot’s Worrisome Heart came with a spot of flamenco, and tucked away in this cabaret roll-call was a terrific little song gifted to Capsis from Hilary Bell.
The songs were linked with a delightful patter, and please, oh please, let there be a reality TV show that deposits a clutch of cabaret icons on Kangaroo Island. Dry My Tears is vintage Paul Capsis, anywhere, anytime.
Peter Burdon
thndo – The Reintroduction
Banquet Room
June 22
A full house for a one-off concert by thndo – the Zimbabwean-born Australia-based singer Thando Sikwila – really needs no introduction, let alone a reintroduction, she having been around for a good decade now.
That said, her appearance last year on The Voice certainly marked a transition in an already stellar career.
Backed by a tight three-piece band and singer Michaela Jayde, her generous 80 minute set included popular classics – again, hearkening to The Voice, her sensational audition with I’m Every Woman – through to her own music, including plenty of teasers from a forthcoming album.
The standards were a choice group, tending towards silky smooth jazz (Whatever Lola Wants and Jill Scott’s cheeky Celibacy Blues) through soft rock and some really distinctive arrangements, like a slowed-down take on Hoobastank’s The Reason.
There was a powerhouse performance of I Am Changing, a song she’s made her own, from her appearance in the Australian run of Tony-Award winning musical Dreamgirls.
A quick change from sequins into slinky black and it was on to her own music. From the back catalogue, there were pieces like Gone from her first EP through to Gag Order from her 2022 release Life In Colour.
The new music is very wide-ranging in its styles, showing how comfortable she is from laid-back lounge to Broadway belters.
An adoring audience would have stayed all night if they’d had the chance. Even if she never really left, thndo’s back with a vengeance.
Peter Burdon
Rizo – Prizmatism
Banquet Room
June 21 to 24
New York’s Rizo unleashes a virtual blitzkrieg of kabarett – a “lightning war” in which you never know where she’s going to strike next, only that it won’t be in the same place twice.
Accompanied by a five-piece band and a hatstand laden with quick-change costumes, she enters to a groove built around what sounds like the bassline from Papa Was A Rolling Stone … except she proclaims that “a girl-child is coming”.
Rizo emerges as a 1920s Art Deco goddess, swathed in white feathers, with silver gloves and her flowing red locks adorned by a jewelled headpiece…
“My quill is dry” she declares with equal measures of rasp and rapture in the smooth, slinky and saucy tune Ink Dip.
Within minutes, she has the audience shimmying, declaring its love and shouting “huzzah”, all before cocktail hour on a Wednesday evening that also just happens to be the eve of the winter solstice.
She is simultaneously playing maiden, mother and crone, and casts her witchy spell with the soul sound and tongue-twisting lyrics of Queen Bee from A Star Is Born … the Barbra Streisand version of course, Rizo says, showing off her not-dissimilar Jewish profile.
Rizo’s turns of phrase and twisted metaphors are as outrageously funny as her singing voice is dynamically diverse.
She’s a rock rebel hitting the heights as she sings about shadows, then transforms into a “gothic raven muppet” – or is it a car wash? – with the help of a new cloak to slow dance with the audience on The Carpenters’ Close to You.
A glittering, comical striptease later becomes a purely practical one as Rizo transforms again.
She’s a jazz chanteuse on a cruise ship who takes Cole Porter into uncharted waters. She’s the spooky, almost vaudevillian Ghost of the Chateau Marmont. She speaks from her heart of the toll the pandemic took on performer’s sense of self-esteem, and comes out the other side covered in mirrors that reflect her many selves.
Rizo is more than a performer: She’s an unadulterated, visceral, life-altering experience.
Patrick McDonald
Nancy Denis – M’ap Boulé
Banquet Room
June 21 and 22
M’ap Boulé means “I’m on fire” in Haitian Creole, the first language of Nancy Denis, born of Haitian parents with an Australian upbringing.
Over the years, she’s come to appreciate the power and dignity of Haitian culture. They are a warrior people, and their home the world’s first black-led republic from the time of its independence from France as long ago as 1804.
Inspired by her history, and informed by her own identity as a black, queer, Haitian Australian, Denis uses her considerable gifts as a multidisciplinary artist to delve into the challenges of migration and resettlement, as well as the deeper emotional territory of making a home, and belonging, in a community that often doesn’t understand – or outright rejects – what it is to be different.
The music, much of it the work of the late and much-lamented Carl St Jacques, is an eclectic mix, and makes for terrific atmosphere. As you enter the theatre, intriguing sounds are emanating from the darkened stage, where innovator Mick Stuart presides at the polymba, an instrument of his own invention, haunting and remote, while Victoria Pritchard bows a saw.
The songs tell a story, of pride in her ancestry, and the importance of respecting it. Haiti’s syncretic religious traditions are a significant undercurrent (there is a saying that goes “70% Catholic, 30% Protestant, and 100% Vodou”), as is authenticity and honesty – and so, coming out.
A frequent theme, if not quite a refrain, is the reminder that “Life is hard, but it is also beautiful.”
There are costumes galore, tap shoes, dance routines, an altar-call for pubic hair (you read that right), and some might fine rap from Kween G.
M’ap Boulé is an invitation to cast off your cares, to be found, embraced, and healed. That’ll do nicely.
Peter Burdon
An Evening with Ursula Yovich
Dunstan Playhouse
June 22
Writer, director and actor Ursula Yovich is one of the most original and acclaimed First Nations voices on both the Australian stage and screen – but her musical passions seem to lie firmly rooted in the African-American gospel, soul, jazz and blues traditions.
With a four-piece band led by her sometimes songwriting collaborator and now Midnight Oil bass player Adam Ventura, Yovich often evoked the spirit of a young Aretha Franklin or Ella Fitzgerald while simultaneously exuding a distinctive vocal quality which makes its own mark.
Classic and original tunes are interspersed with Yovich’s spoken word passages, poems and prose which – like her song selections – often reference slavery, racism and freedom. Chains become a recurring lyrical device, whether the song is about life or love.
This 75-minute performance focused on the songs and felt like a truncated version of Yovich’s show, which from previous accounts usually includes more storytelling about her family and upbringing.
That said, the songs and vocal performances were mesmerising.
Highlights included a haunting, melancholy tune from Yovich’s stage musical Barbara and the Camp Dogs, the funky bassline of her “black magic song” about obsession, and the romanticised view of relationships in her ballad Remember.
There was a more up-tempo touch of ’80s-style pop on That’s No Way To Love, but Yovich really hit her straps – and her raw and gritty vocal heights – with her blues cover of Donny Hathaway’s I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know. The audience’s feeling was mutual.
Patrick McDonald
RocKwiz Salutes Adelaide
Festival Theatre
June 17
RocKwiz, that beloved celebration of music nerdism, rolled into the Festival Centre to pay tribute to all things Adelaide on Saturday night.
It’s one of the great stories of Australian rock’n’roll, how our little city at the bottom of the country has for so long punched above its weight.
From The Twilights, Zoot and Masters Apprentices, to Cold Chisel and The Angels, to Sia and The Hilltop Hoods Adelaide has, and always will, matter.
And what a tribute it was, with a full house being treated to a truly entertaining show.
I should know because, full disclosure, I somehow found myself as a contestant.
I’m blaming a work colleague and my wife, both of whom encouraged me to put my hand up when MC Brian Nankervis started roaming the foyer with a megaphone calling for suckers to have a crack.
I got through foyer round, then the onstage round, before somehow finding myself in the main event. The fact that I knew that Winter In America was a 1976 hit for Doug Ashdown and that Battlesick was the debut album for The Mark of Cain finally came in handy (I knew it would one day).
RocKwiz works so wonderfully well for a number of reasons.
Firstly, there’s host Julia Zemiro. Witty, charismatic and wickedly funny she pushes the show along at a cracking pace, bouncing off Nankervis in his role as scorekeeper, umpire, ringmaster and fount of all rock knowledge.
Both Zemiro and Nankervis are genuine music fans, and the fact that they’re having fun shines through.
Then there’s the always impeccable guest list.
Singer and entertainer David Campbell sang a great version of Paul Kelly’s Adelaide before taking his spot at the contestant’s desk next to TV star and cabaret icon Anne Wills, who entertained as only Willsy can.
The fact that Campbell also happens to be the son of Jimmy Barnes gave him the jump on a few Cold Chisel-themed questions.
Melbourne singer-songwriter Jess Hitchcock was next, delivering an incredible cover of Chandelier – a huge hit for Adelaide’s own Sia – before taking her spot behind the buzzer.
John Schumann was the third musical guest, regaling the crowd with a reworked version of Redgum’s One More Boring Night In Adelaide before swapping out with Hitchcock for some buzzer time.
He strapped on his guitar again later in the show to sing what must truly be one of the more important songs ever recorded in this country – 1983’s Vietnam War anthem I Was Only 19. Forty years on, it can still move people to tears.
RocKwiz’s house band is always on point, and Saturday night was no exception with guitarist Olivia Bartley, better known as Olympia, delivering an incredible version of the Masters Apprentices hit Because I Love You.
The finale saw Campbell and Hitchcock belt out Chisel’s Saturday Night before being joined by Schumann to close with The Angels’ No Secrets.
Of course within in all of this is a quiz, a quiz that my team won, 175 to 150!
After a shaky middle period we came home with a wet sail to take out the first prize, which according to Nankervis is “a two-week camping holiday at Port Noarlunga with no power, no Wi-Fi and no tent”. Not sure if we’ll actually claim it.
RocKwiz works so well because it truly celebrates rock fandom, acknowledging just how important rock’n’roll and pop music are to people’s lives.
Music matters, and RocKwiz acknowledges and salutes that wonderful fact. Rock on.
Nathan Davies
Robyn Archer – An Australian Songbook
Dunstan Playhouse
June 17 and 18
What a marvel this is. It has heart, it has guts and it has Robyn Archer.
Her great Australian songbook would never include AC/DC or the Angels. This is her vision splendid, her politics, her music, her love of this country and its thousands of years of song.
Her backing trio represent generations of migrants. George Butrumlis, accordion, sings in Greek. Enio Pozzebon, piano, sings in Italian and Archer and banjo virtuoso Cameron Goodall are the children of assorted Celts and Germans.
Every song has a story. She kicks off with one of her own songs from 1988, declaring that she is not now nor ever could be Crocodile Dundee or Bazza Mackenzie or Germaine Greer.
The only Australian she can be is the one she is. She is an untiring, unstoppable force for a more inclusive and caring country.
She reveres the songs and stories of indigenous Australia, especially the songs of the women.
She speaks of the Uluru statement and is fervent in support of the upcoming referendum, to the vociferous response of the audience.
There are lectern moments, but so much of the show is energy, commitment and joy.
Much of the audience shares her knowledge of Adelaide in the 1970s, its feminist consciousness and the cultural and political flowering.
She mentions poet Michael Dransfield, dead at 24, and The Lamentable Reign of Charles the Last, the 1976 opera by Tim Robertson and George Dreyfus. She throws in her Menstruation Blues and the recent menopause variant.
She’s clear that we don’t need Nashville if we’ve got Tamworth. Insect On the Windscreen of My Heart, is a great break-up ballad. Then they all get their yodel on with a classic Joy McKean number, The Gymkhana Yodel.
Archer’s voice is a strong as ever, her wit as sharp and her sense of humour subversive.
It’s in the genes. From her mother she learned the anonymous poem about the dogs meeting and why they sniff each other on encounter, very funny, slightly rude and Aussie to the core.
The support she gets from her hand-picked trio is outstanding and the love, joy and respect from her audience is a power in itself.
The encore name checks 31 Australian places and then adds Adelaide to round it up to 32. Welcome home Robyn. Don’t leave it so long next time. Bring those blokes.
They’re bonza.
Ewart Shaw
Reuben Kaye – enGORGEd
Dunstan Playhouse
June 16 and 17
The last six months have been a wild ride for the force of nature (though he’d surely prefer to be thought of as a creation of man) Reuben Kaye.
A chance quip – one he’s been using for years in his wildly successful shows – saw him excoriated in the press.
No fewer than 47 withering reports in mastheads associated with this organ alone served to give him the best free publicity he’s ever enjoyed. A wild ride, maybe, but also a triumph. Alas, report 48 will break the chain, for enGORGEd gets a rave.
Give Kaye an inch, metaphorical or literal, and he’ll take a mile. Give him an 18-piece band – The Afterthoughts – and he’ll make it a symphony. With long-time MD Shannon Whitelock at the piano, the show’s a musical triumph.
Kaye’s renowned ability to mine the catalogue for just the right song was much on show. I Am A Photograph from French singer songwriter Amanda Lear, woman – maybe trans woman – of mystery, confidante of Dalí, and Aerosmith’s controversial Dude (Looks Like a Lady), for example, seguing brilliantly into Whitney Houston’s Queen of the Night.
There was the compelling When I Fall Asleep It Will Be Forever from recording and performance artist Directorsound (Nicholas Palmer) and, for something completely different, If I Ruled The World as Tony Bennett never imagined it would sound. By way of encore, Will You Love Me Tomorrow from the Shirelles.
And in-between? Well, it was vintage. Kaye’s devastating wit (and wisdom) is the stuff of legend.
He goes too far, until your sides ache, then he goes further. If you’re a homophobe, or a hypocrite, or cruel, or uncaring, move on. He’s a self-proclaimed people’s princess, spreading his angry, filthy art without fear or favour, and long may he reign.
Peter Burdon
Libby O’Donovan and Michelle Nicolle – More Than a Melody
Banquet Room
June 16 and 17
As its title suggests, this show was about more than melodies: It was all about harmonies.
Libby O’Donovan and Michelle Nicolle individually possess voices which have seen them compete for the nation’s top jazz awards … a friendly rivalry which makes for some funny exchanges on stage.
Together, their voices weave in such a way that they almost become one, simultaneously producing complementary notes.
Add in another Wangaratta Jazz Festival award winner, Lauren Henderson, and Catherine Mackenroth on backing/harmony vocals, and you have an ethereal combination which elevates everything from classical to pop music beyond the stratosphere.
They open with a medley of swing classics – Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, Chattanooga Choo-Choo, In The Mood – then race through 500 years of “western European classical music” from Music Alone Shall Live, via the Merry Month of May and Hallelujah Chorus, to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in German and O Fortuna in Latin.
Next up, all those 1960s girl group classics (along with some from the ’70s and even the ’90s) which prominently feature the word “Baby”.
Much of the music may be religious but nothing is sacred: Celine Dion’s tragic Titanic ballad is transformed into a joyous 1950s doo-wop ditty, Miley Cyrus’s Flowers are given a jazz arrangement, and Henderson adds some “Scooby-doo action” to the melody of Bye Bye Blackbird.
Nicolle’s scat singing takes the standard Autumn Leaves into extraordinary new territory, while O’Donovan also brings her knack for comedy patter to the fore.
Another closing medley mashes together pretty much any pop tune from the past 70 years that featured anything even remotely resembling vocal harmonies.
With superb accompaniment by Mark Ferguson on piano and Bonnie Aué on double bass, this program took the meaning of “something for everyone” to a whole new level.
Patrick McDonald
Mark Nadler Hootenanny
Banquet Room
June 16 and 17
Riding the crest of a wave after a triumphant return to the Cabaret Festival with the Australian premiere of his show The Old Razzle Dazzle, New York cabaret legend Mark Nadler was back on familiar ground with another edition of his immensely popular Hootenanny variety nights.
The atmosphere was electric, no little thanks to an adoring crowd, anxious to make up for lost time.
Any night with Nadler is an experience, invariably an exhausting one, all at top speed with the volume turned up to the max, and this was no different. From the opening bars of Let The Good Times Roll, to Dream A Little Dream Of Me as the clock struck twelve, this was vintage Nadler.
Nadler spoke affectionately of his adopted home-away-from-home, and part of the joy of this show, especially after a long absence – nine years, can you believe it? – was catching up. Catching up on news, and catching up with friends, a number of whom joined him on stage to strut their stuff.
The wonderful Queenie van de Zandt had the audience in stitches with an outrageous song that might have been a music hall classic, except for a final line to remember. They did a great duet in Suddenly, Seymour from Little Shop Of Horrors.
Among Nadler’s many solo numbers, one of the best – which had its genesis at a Cabaret Festival many years ago – was his hysterical one-person rendition of Cell Block Tango. A little later on, he reminded us that he can tap, too!
The guests kept coming. Local cabaret stalwart Catherine Campbell relived an early masterclass memory with a luscious performance of Sara Lee. Virginia Gay was The Shady Dame From Seville, and then it was a free-for-all, with David Campbell plucked from the audience, and a whole lot of audience participation in Summer Nights (”wella, wella, wella, huh”).Campbell reminded us of his serious cabaret chops in a stylish duet of Saint Louis Blues.
The piano bravely withstood Nadler’s stupendous assaults, with a frequently approximate left hand keeping the beat pounding along. Some occasional restraint wouldn’t hurt, as he’s a terrific pianist, as several of the set pieces amply demonstrated. But no one cared. They clapped until it hurt.
Peter Burdon
An Evening Without Kate Bush
Space Theatre
June 15 to 17
By “not” doing a copycat act and, instead, celebrating pop legend Kate Bush’s long absence from the stage and the enduring passion of her fans, fellow UK performance artist Sarah-Louise Young has in fact created the most original, thrilling, moving, hilarious and magnificently authentic tribute imaginable.
An Evening Without Kate Bush is exactly the sort of show the star herself might conceive to fill the void in her followers’ hearts.
From the moment it opens, it feels as if we are in the presence of Bush, as a shadowy figure strikes iconic poses beneath a transparent black veil, her face illuminated only by a flashing red light as she produces every note and intonation of And Dream Of Sheep with pinpoint accuracy.
“Welcome to the show,” the performer says. “She’s not here.”
From there, Young weaves the story of Bush’s life and career like a fairytale precis, but more importantly gets the Fish People – as her fans are known – in the audience to share their own passion which is interwoven with moments recounted by followers around the world.
It’s not about her … it’s about us.
Within minutes, the crowd is literally howling to the Hounds of Love. Moments later, we hear how one of the first Bush tribute artists – now retired – has bequeathed Young her original wig which, along with a flowing cape, is used to take us through a hysterical step-by-step catalogue of the star’s signature moves, all while singing her hit Wow.
Babooshka is delivered as an actual Russian grandmother (no metal warrior bikini in sight), giant eyes blink and hold the audience with their gaze in Army Dreamers, a cleaning lady hears Bush soundchecking for 2014’s Hammersmith Apollo shows – and then her mop takes over for Young’s own school assembly performance of James and the Cold Gun.
There are moments of extraordinary beauty and emotion as audience members recreate memories and Young works through Bush’s biggest hits, interspersing her own mesmerising vocals with narrative which gives added context and emotional depth.
The almost inevitable finale is a physical spectacular which leaves Young panting for breath … but wait, there’s more, even if the audience has to help to hit those vocal “heights”.
For an evening which was supposedly “without” Kate Bush, her spirit was palpable in every single, breathtaking, cloudbusting moment. We were enraptured in the presence of not one, but two creative masterminds.
Patrick McDonald
Adelaide Tonight – Bob Downe and Willsy
Space Theatre
June 15 to 18
Throughout the 1960s, and well into the ’70s, practically every television set in town was tuned, four nights a week, to Adelaide Tonight.
The famed Ernie Sigley is perhaps the best remembered of its many comperes, but what a roll-call it was: Lionel Williams, Kevin Crease, Ian Fairweather, Roger Cardwell … and then there was Anne Wills.
Fast forward a couple of generations and our parents’ grandchildren are lining up to re-live the glory days. As we enter the theatre, a video reel – all hail arts-archivist extraordinaire Brenton Whittle – reminds us of the commercials that punctuated these enormously popular variety shows, from Bert and Pattie’s recipes for Safcol tuna – did anyone actually eat the tuna and banana salad? – to Willsy trilling a jingle for Ken Eustice Datsun.
Enter Bob Downe, costume run up by mother Ida from a Butterick pattern, a near perfect compere for such quintessential campery, and Willsy (a sniff shy of 80, and going on strong) still the perfect offsider.
The joy of the variety show is its very unpredictability. You’re reliant on the talent available from night to night. A comedian one night, an opera singer the next, a juggler, perhaps, or a magician. A bit of this, a bit of that. With a cabaret festival happening all around you, the world’s your oyster.
Willsy’s sister Sue joined in for Among My Souvenirs, one of the many songs the Wills Sisters sang for the troops in Vietnam. A video of their performances all those years ago was a treasure. Comedian Fabien Clark is still trotting out some material that this reviewer, at least, has heard a few too many times in recent years, but had a few new ears in the full house.
Pastel Vespa is worth seeing any time, and her take on When Doves Cry was an early highlight. She teamed up with Bob for a delicious rendition of Paperback Writer in the style of Sérgio Mendes and Brasil ’66.
More archival footage featured Willsy in Noel Coward’s Let’s Do It from the very first day of the Festival Theatre, 50 years ago this month. Then it was the sensation of the night, Willsy’s performance (channelling Madeline Kahn, black négligée and all) of Lili Von Shtupp’s I’m Tired from the Mel Brooks classic Blazing Saddles. Ignore the ushers and take photographs!
Could anything top it? Probably not, but Hans (with his accordion) gave it a red hot crack with a medley of Australian classics in the style of the German polka. A rousing chorus of the Turtles’ Happy Together summed the show up perfectly.
An excellent band including Bob’s long-time MD Bev Kennedy and locals Sam Leske and more provide a solid, swinging backing for a golden hour of fun.
Peter Burdon
Mark Nadler – The Old Razzle Dazzle
Banquet Room
June 15
He’s back in Nadelaide and the Nadelads and Nadeladies are seismic with delight. Mark Nadler is the consummate cabaret artist.
We have embraced him as our own and he hugs us back. His wit is scalpel sharp, both healing and harming, cutting through the flim and the flam to the meat and bone of life.
The show is all lies: Sweet lies, like if you wish upon a star, and poignant lies, the lies of handsome men. His wistful song about adultery and deception, Guess Who I Saw Today, is unforgettable.
Cabaret is always political. He tells hard truths about contemporary America. Financial corruption can be found in the contents of a Little Tin Box from the 1950s musical about a New York mayor, Fiorello.
He returns to the roots in 1930s Berlin with Want To Buy Some Illusions, from Friedrich Hollander, and then quotes Hitler and Goebbels. The horror lies in a quote about killing Jews and blacks, not from the Nazis but a right up-to-date, June of this year, American blogger.
As a non-gay, non-Jewish guy (that is another lie, by the way) he can take a leaf from Donald Trump’s grubby handbook of seduction, but he grabs us by the ear. His Trump inspired tap-and-rap routine boils with frantic energy.
All the desperation, all the love and all the fear for his future – our future – radiates out of this man. He glows in the dark. “I want what he’s on” I heard someone say. He’s on fire.
Ewart Shaw
The Fig Tree – Gillian Cosgriff
Banquet Room
June 15
Adelaide Cabaret Festival has a fine tradition of workshopping musicals-in-progress – Eddie Perfect’s Shane Warne and Broadway composers Maltby and Shire’s Take Flight among them – and Gillian Cosgriff’s The Fig Tree looks set to be another exceptional addition to that list.
Uproarious laughter at the clever lyrics and outrageous dialogue presented, mutters of recognition at the situations explored, and an instantaneous standing ovation at its not-quite conclusion (some mysteries have to be saved for its eventual opening night) would suggest Cosgriff has a hit on her hands.
This world premiere reading and sing-through was the merest skeleton of a show, with some narration to set the yet-to-be-built scenes and live synthesiser arrangements doing a mighty good stand-in for a future band, but the audience was already fully engaged with its distinctive and very contemporary characters.
After a decade-long relationship, teachers Liv (Cosgriff) and Tom (Jamie Hornsby) decide to take a six-week break to sow whatever wild oats they still have before deciding whether to continue and have the baby he wants, but she is unsure about.
They set three rules, one of which negates any involvement with mutual acquaintances, which would include former students like Elliot (Lachlan Williams).
Some magical realism comes into play courtesy of Liv and her troublesome sister Tess Philippa Lynas), through their shared exploration of Sylvia Plath’s writing and the titular fig tree in their childhood backyard.
Perhaps it was just the synths, but Cosgriff’s tunes seem to have a joyous, catchy 1980s pop sensibility and her capacity for matching inspired rhyme with smart phrasing meant they carried meaning as well as mirth.
This delicious taste left us wanting to eat more of the forbidden fruit – and to see how Liv’s love life eventually resolves.
Patrick McDonald
Edge of Reality – Songs of Elvis Presley
Paul Grabowsky, Deborah Conway, Joe Camilleri
Dunstan Playhouse
June 14 and 15
The King could be forgiven for not recognising many of his most familiar melodies as their malleable mettle was tested to the limits by maestro Paul Grabowsky and his jazz combo reworkings.
Deconstructed and often slowed right down – even those that were already ballads – many tunes were rebuilt almost from the ground up … or perhaps that should be the roots up.
Mining Elvis’s music for its African-American origins brought an often sombre sensibility to many of the interpretations.
Burning Love became a slow-cooked gospel lamentation as Deborah Conway (appropriately attired in white pants suit and scarf) took the microphone and an almost tribal rhythm kicked in, and her Hound Dog owed more to Big Mama Thornton’s blues original.
Black Sorrows frontman Joe Camilleri (also clad mostly in white) fused his own distinctive phrasing with occasional Presley vocal mannerisms, starting with a frantic, mumbling and rumbling, runaway Mystery Train. It also featured neat interplay between Grabowsky’s boogie-woogie piano and the lead guitar, with some noir crime theme horns thrown in for good measure.
However, the arrangements stayed closer to home for Camilleri’s takes on the country classics True Love Travels on a Gravel Road, and Always on my Mind, with violin and vibraphone adding just a slightly more ethereal quality.
In between, Conway tackled a rather ponderous Don’t Be Cruel, its plodding beat punctured by shrill bursts of trumpet, but she really hit her mark with a heartfelt and fairly straight reading of Love Me Tender, with its brushed drums and a delicious upright bass solo, and on her soaring Unchained Melody.
The title track was another highlight, transformed from its original psychedelic swirl into a dark, brooding nightmare that matched the almost suicidal nature of the lyrics, which Camilleri indeed pushed to the very Edge of Reality.
One Night With You also started slowly but cranked up as it progressed to take on the chaotic vibrancy of a New Orleans street parade, and by Conway’s closing Suspicious Minds the band sounded positively pop-like. A few more up-tempo numbers like this would not have gone astray earlier in the set.
The most striking number was saved for the encore, a duet on Viva Las Vegas that sounded like a buzzing nest of hornets caught in a maelstrom; a whirlpool of competing instruments and syncopation.
Presley purists might have left the building bewildered, but jazz enthusiasts gave the fresh take on these familiar tunes a rousing reception.
Patrick McDonald
The Blank Page with Eddie Perfect
Banquet Room
June 11
One of the many joys of the Cabaret Festival is the presence of dozens of amazingly creative people. All are musical storytellers, with their own approach, and all have experienced the highs and lows of one of the riskiest of businesses.
Eddie Perfect knows it all, from trudging in the trenches with biting left-wing satires that scream “fringe” – and not with a capital “F” – to the lights of Broadway.
In a very special one-off event, Perfect amassed a stellar line-up of fellow creatives to give their own insights, and sing a tune or two. This conversation with luminaries Dean Bryant and Mathew Frank, Michelle Brasier (with not one but two shows this year), Leah Sprecher and Brad Stevens (of Broadway Barbara celebrity), Virginia Gay and Gillian Cosgriff was a real treat.
There were a few common themes – dealing with failure being number one on the list. Most also had a conviction that they were destined to be on the stage and some found, usually to their surprise, that their place was in the director’s chair, or in the band.
The musical items were a choice selection. Cosgriff gave a piece from her new musical The Fig Tree (premiering next week), a song about ending a relationship, which sounded just right for the dramatically important moment at which it occurs. In contrast, Michelle Brasier’s tribute to Millennials was terrifically funny.
Bryant and Frank gave a piece from their hit musical My Brilliant Career, a slick piece with two tunes that combine at the end – a feat that many have tried, and few have mastered. Virginia Gay sang Taking Out The Bins, a droll number from Eddie’s excellent Vivid White, and kept the laughs coming in a “Behind You” send-up from The Boomkak Panto, a pantomime within a play, that’s also a musical (original music, E. Perfect).
The Blank Page was a fascinating “fly-on-the-wall” experience of the graft, the grind, and the joy of the creative process.
Peter Burdon
Singing Straight – Mark Trevorrow
Banquet Room
June 11
Mark Trevorrow comes on stage and you know you’ve seen him somewhere or someone before.
Bob Downe’s not invited, he says, but a smirk here and a gurgling laugh remind us of his alter ego. It’s a great opportunity to confirm his talent as a cabaret performer and an elegant singer.
His musical director Bev Kennedy is an old friend and one of the country’s finest. They are such a team.
Trevorrow’s career has been extensive and well travelled. He shares anecdotes about working with the great Anthony Newley and Cilla Black. There’s an unrepeatable second-hand story about Noel Coward in Sydney that had the audience gasping.
Singing straight, as far as Trevorrow is concerned, means giving his songs full value with energy and a cheeky smile. He has the audience right where he wants them.
He drags his mate Rupert Noffs on stage for a maybe spontaneous tribute to Stephen Sondheim, from another show of theirs called Old Friends. Cabaret bookers should check that one out.
He ends simply on stage with The Rainbow Connection. The world’s favourite frog reaches out to everyone, and so does Mark Trevorrow. He received a standing ovation.
Ewart Shaw
Come in Spinner – Vince Jones and Nina Ferro
Festival Theatre
June 11
Vince Jones is one of Australia’s finest vocalists. His voice is a tenor of light sweetness, flowing so easily through the music.
We’ve got along without him pretty well, of course we have, but he’s back to remind us of nights in little bars while he played the piano and sang.
This time he sings and the piano part is taken by Matt McMahon. Jones come on stage humming to himself, arranges his music on the stand and the songs just flow.
He’s joined by Nina Ferro to recreate the Come in Spinner soundtrack from 1990, Australia’s highest selling jazz album.
Ferro is a sophisticated lady, indeed, with an engaging manner and a very stylish approach to her lyrics. The music is in the very best of hands.
The big band directed by Steve Newcombe blends some excellent Adelaide musicians and a few flown in for the night. The charts are frequently dense and the balance with the voices not always perfect but, as Vince says, the bands were very important to the music scene.
Once the big band leaves the stage it’s just Jones with Mcmahon, Karl Dunnicliff on double bass and Gordon Rytmeister on drums. It’s elegant.
Quipping that his quintet only lasted as long as his father could transport them in his old Holden, he calls a sax player on stage and finally plays trumpet in an eloquent rendition of Rainbow Cake, co-written with Paul Grabowsky. We could have sat through the whole thing again.
Ewart Shaw
Comedians Auditioning For Musicals
Space Theatre
June 11
Variety formats are always a big part of the Cabaret Festival, which is another way of saying that many of the shows are just frameworks for whichever artists are in town that week to get up and do five minutes of their schtick.
Either that, or for singers from other shows to cover a number as part of a themed tribute concert.
Comedians Auditioning For Musicals put its own spin on this by having other acts from the festival program come in and do a Broadway or West End number – with tongue firmly planted in cheek – at a community theatre casting call.
Michelle Brasier and Ben Russell play ex-spouses Sir Robert Nida (geddit?) and Vicky Cristina Aguilera (as in the VCA), who do a number from/on Les Mis, with quivering lips and extra ham, before conducting the cattle call.
However, they were quickly upstaged on this occasion by Virginia Gay’s own resonating baritone rendition of Javert’s death scene, accompanied by a squeaky stage and some well-sprinkled chardonnay.
Trevor Jones did Grizabella via the Delta (Goodrem, that is), merging Memory with Born To Try, in a costume that was more Rum Tum Tigger than Tugger.
Reuben Kaye took on The Little Mermaid in Poor Unfortunate Souls, and Aunty Donna’s Zachary Ruane added some vaudevillian humour to Chicago’s Mr Cellophane.
Eddie Perfect produced an almost impossibly deep bass voice for I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No, before Brasier’s character gave us a taste of Rizzo from her “one-woman Grease”.
While Nida and VCA retired to make their judgments, accompanist Gillian Cosgriff took the opportunity to loop some of her own astonishing vocal samples.
There was a brief all-in singalong on the magical Mr. Mistoffelees but it was all done in under an hour – about 20 minutes shy of the advertised running time
Brasier and Russell’s improvised banter could be refined to include more rehearsed repartee between numbers, which would give the show a bit more structure, storyline and a solid ending.
Patrick McDonald
My Life is a Symphony: Kate Ceberano with Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Festival Theatre
June 10
Kate Ceberano loved everything about her one night stand with our Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
You couldn’t wipe the beaming smile off her face as she performed her favourite songs, including tracks from her latest album My Life is a Symphony – the love letter to her 40-year career she recorded with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
The evening kicked off with the unashamedly poppy Pash, re-imagined by My Life is a Symphony’s arranger Roscoe James Irwin, who was also on piano.
Slowed down, the dancefloor favourite became a sensuous showpiece for Ceberano’s superb vocals.
But this wasn’t going to be a night devoted to “hits and memories”. For example, Bedroom Eyes was nowhere to be seen.
That said, chart-toppers were there in the form of the anthemic Brave and Everything’s Alright/I Don’t Know How to Love Him, which Ceberano first performed as a 25-year-old opposite John Farnham in Jesus Christ Superstar.
Somehow, it gets better and better with age – as does Ceberano; her voice has never sounded so divine and was beautifully backed by daughter Gypsy Rogers, Jessica Fairlie and Adelaide’s own Charmaine Jones and Joanna Arul Tropeano.
Other highlights included the sublime, soaring Earth & Sky, simply stunning Time to Think and the encore, a rousing retro number – a joyous cover of Minnie Riperton’s Les Fleur.
As my companion noted, strings add beauty to everything and that wasn’t lost on Ceberano, who told the audience that after this experience she may never be able to perform without a symphony. Judging by the standing ovation, Ceberano is more than welcome to come back for more.
Anna Vlach
Ali McGregor: Fool’s Gold
Dunstan Playhouse
June 10
A new show from Ali McGregor is not to be missed, and legions of fans were out in enthusiastic force for the Adelaide premiere of Fool’s Gold.
Premised in part on her approaching 50th “golden” birthday, it seemed like a good time to pause and take stock, reflect on what’s been done, and what’s yet to come, and express it in her own inimitable way, in song.
Some favourites from shows gone by were there, like Aqua’s Barbie Girl in the style of Makin’ Whoopee, and a bossa nova take on Blur’s Song 2. A selection from her stunning 2018 Peruvian Songbird concert featured the music of Yma Sumac with her astounding five-octave range.
And there it is: the voice. Operatically trained, McGregor’s instrument is at its absolute peak. One of Sumac’s party pieces, as her fame spread, was an outrageous take on the Queen of the Night from Mozart’s Magic Flute, one of the famed coloratura arias. McGregor has every one of those notes, and more.
Apart from the fireworks, McGregor’s laid-back (but never lazy) intensity – kudos here to MD Sam Keevers – is another hallmark of her work, ranging from Fine Young Cannibals’ Johnny Come Home to the Foo Fighters’ Best Of You.
A blissful romp ended with an echo of Ali’s first tentative steps away from the rarefied world of opera when she braved the Spiegeltent, accompanying herself on the autoharp – she couldn’t afford a pianist – in Radiohead’s Creep. With a top G at the end!
Peter Burdon
Michael Griffiths: It’s A Sin
Space Theatre
June 10
When the supremely talented Michael Griffiths takes hold of another artist’s songs, wonderful things often happen. Way back in the early days with his Madonna and Annie Lennox shows, and then of course Peter Allen and Cole Porter. Why, even Kylie!
Now, in the world premiere of a new show deftly directed by Dean Bryant, it’s the Pet Shop Boys … as always, with a twist.
It’s A Sin: Songs Of Love And Shame is an intensely personal piece about the struggle faced by so many young gay men back in the 1980s.
The Pet Show Boys were carrying all before them, but HIV/AIDS was casting its dark shadow, and in the ad breaks, you saw the Grim Reaper mowing down the community, gay men first.
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe certainly knew all about it, and wrote about it, yet their lyrics went almost entirely unremarked at the time.
Griffiths takes a fine selection of their songs and weaves his own story around them. It’s often deeply moving, but not without humour, as with the groans of recognition sweeping the audience at the mention of the gay clubs of yore.
In musical partnership with Julian Ferraretto (violin) and Dylan Paul (bass), the instrumental arrangements are sensational.
Some classics are completely reimagined. It’s A Sin, for instance, could be a Bond theme in this version. It’s stripped back, but never lacking.
It’s a risk mounting a confessional kind of show, which can so easily become a conceit, or worse. Not a bit of it here. As Griffiths approaches his 50th birthday, here we have an artist who’s at peace, for all the challenges, and still very much in love, a lifetime on and counting. Hooray for that.
Peter Burdon
The 2023 Variety Gala
Festival Theatre
June 9
Hostess with the mostest razzle-dazzle, Virginia Gay, described this gala as a sampler and that it was – up there with the most more-ish selections from Haigh’s Chocolates – with no less than seven of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s nine artistic directors among its stars.
What was not to love about Eddie Perfect’s satirical original ode to the theatre reviewer, Death to the Critic, which he introduced by name-checking our very own Peter Goers?
Pure perfection, it not only held a mirror up to the society of critics, but gave us a true reflection of Perfect’s extraordinary talent as both a writer and performer.
Kate Ceberano’s stripped back, raw rendition of her hit Brave, Ali McGregor’s OTT operatic take on Radiohead’s Creep and the absolutely rapturous Wow by Sarah-Louise Young, of An Evening Without Kate Bush fame, were all deserving crowd pleasers.
Meow Meow’s inimitable, intimate tribute to the late, great Barry Humphries was breathtaking.
Matt Gilbertson’s alter ego Hans – the winner of this year’s Icon Award – was stronger than ever, opening act two by what sounded like it was going to be Tina Arena’s Chains before launching into a tenacious tribute to “the other Tina” and a Proud Mary that did Ms Turner proud.
When he was starring in Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 The Musical, Perfect told this reviewer its final scene was one in which “everything gets tied up in a delicious bow”.
Which is exactly what David Campbell did in the gala’s finale with his irresistible singalong swinging medley of South Aussie rock and pop classics, including Chisel’s Cheap Wine, Sia’s Chandelier and It’s Because I Love you by The Masters Apprentices.
This review has only covered a small selection of the fine artists – who all left us hungry for more – on show at the variety gala.
If it was a taste of things to come, everyone in the audience ought to be up for an oh-so-very delicious and downright decadent Adelaide Cabaret Festival which should leave us craving the 2024 gala and program.
Anna Vlach
Michelle Brasier – Reform
Space Theatre
June 9 to 11
Buying online is a scam risk, but Michelle Brasier delivers, and how.
Her year-long relationship with Jacob, an Adelaide boy constantly excusing his inability to deliver the promised and paid for pilates equipment, is the raw material for an absolute laugh-out-loud show.
She admits she’s finally making money out of him. After all, if you’re taken for a ride,
why not make a travel documentary?
Brasier’s energy fills the Space. The songs are clever and heartfelt. The audience roars with laughter.
Guitarist Tim Lancaster stands in for Jacob, with Jordan White on drums. Through Lancaster we hear the rapid-fire excuses to Michelle’s inquiries, and as the relationship develops we get the serious stuff about mental welfare, and the codependant liaison between them.
Her disappointment discovering that he’s been milking at least one other woman for emotional and financial support doesn’t dim her generous enthusiasm.
The title of the show is a clever pun. A “reformer” is exercise equipment and a person who hopes to make good, and this hour or so of full-on fun makes very good entertainment indeed.
If you’ve been scammed like this, and it’s increasingly likely, going to Reform will ease the pain.
Ewart Shaw
Paris Combo: A Celebration of the Songs of Belle du Berry
Dunstan Playhouse
June 9 to 11
When French cabaret superstars Paris Combo played the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2015, frontwoman Belle du Berry began by reminding the packed house that the first song was all about love. Likewise the second, and the third, and the fourth … you get the idea.
Love in all its shades, some vibrant, blinding even, others less so. And Paris, the city of light, and love. And sadness, or melancholy, when love seems a distant thing, sometimes far away.
Du Berry’s death in 2020 silenced one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary European cabaret. Both as singer and composer, her legacy is immense. But thankfully the fantastic Paris Combo is still very much with us. Their live performances, and their many recordings, are a tribute to the singular talent of their absent friend.
Their generous 100 minute concert runs the gamut from their early recordings from the late 90s with numbers like Je Rêve Encore, Señor and Pas à Pas to the last recording with du Berry, Quesaco?, completed shortly before her death.
The contrast between the early and late tracks is striking, everything from their so-called “gypsy jazz” of Django Reinhard and his ilk, with broad-ranging intercultural influences, through smooth, accessible pop and even soft rock, but clearly drawing on the same wellspring of inspiration.
Of the newest music, it’s strongly accessible, with Maudit Money (Cursed Money), in particular, a modern classic, wry and witty, with a long, slick rap from band member Rémy Kaprielan.
And so to the band. Under the direction of Aussie expat David Lewis, Paris Combo has a unique, instantly recognisable sound. Even without du Berry, the slick sound, especially Lewis’s trumpets, sing “Paris Combo” from the get-go. The current line-up, Potzi (Guitar), Francois Jeannin (drums) and Benoit Dunoyer de Segonzac (bass) was joined by a number of guests, including the band’s original bass player Mano Razanjato.
Gone but not forgotten, this is a heartfelt tribute to a star whose light continues to shine.
Peter Burdon
Broadway Barbara – Live in Australia!
Banquet Room
June 9 and 10
All modesty aside – quite literally – Barbara Dixon struts out to the theme from Jesus Christ Superstar and before long has made the song – like everything else – all about her.
Never heard of Broadway Barbara? Don’t fret, neither has anyone else, but her rags to sequin-studded rags story echoes that of every diva who ever walked (or dreamt of walking) the stage along the Great White Way.
Every syllable is overemphasised and ultra-dramatised, every big note hit perfectly but then extended to extremity, and every anecdote is turned into a string of hilarious but unintentionally self-deprecating one-liners.
Dixon has also stolen the patents to all of Bob Fosse’s classic choreographic moves – check them out in advance on her YouTube channel – and performs them on demand, despite her many joint replacement surgeries.
She can still get down, but it might take her a while to get back up again.
The comic creation of Los Angeles actor Leah Sprecher, Broadway Barbara tackles everything from musical theatre standards to pop and rap with genuine aplomb, and even performs a gasp-inducing soft shoe shuffle with her late husband Dick which has to be seen to be believed.
Patrick McDonald
Ali McGregor’s Late-Nite Variety-Nite Night
Banquet Room
June 9 to 11
It’s a time-honoured Cabaret Festival tradition that star-hosts will inveigle visiting artists to do turns at a nice-but-naughty late-night variety show. Few hosts are more persuasive – and more intuitive – than Ali McGregor.
Having directed no fewer than three Cabaret Festivals, McGregor has a keen eye (and ear) for talent, and of course, talent of her own in spades. With the support of a crack band led by Sam Keevers, the night delivered, big-time.
McGregor combined the MC role – draped on a chaise longue – with plenty of numbers of her own, beginning with a sultry Tainted Love, and a heap of self-described “mash-ups” that various combined Cher (Bang Bang) with a slick rap, the Eurythmics with Nirvana and The White Stripes, and some laid-back Annie Lennox. Her voice is one of the finest we’ve got.
The guests were choice. Social media sensation Broadway Barbara (“a classic triple threat: a singer, a dancer, and the trainer of four illegal bobcats”) began not with Ebb (and Kander) but with Eminem, with a couple of Fosse-like moves for good measure. Singer-songwriter THNDO – well on the way to cabaret stardom, apart from anything else – stunned with a stripped down take on What A Difference A Day Makes.
Sarah-Louise Young’s “An Evening Without Kate Bush” doesn’t play until week two, but the sneak peeks had the phones out to book some of the few remaining seats. The entire house cheerfully woofed along in the backing lyrics for Hounds of Love. hula hooper Jess Love (of La Clique and La Soirée fame) was a riot, and gave full force to the nudity warning.
The final guest – sadly, not carried in on a litter – was newly crowned Cabaret Icon Hans, who raised the roof and had the entire house on its feet with a couple of his tremendous numbers.
Even the stony-faced punter next to your writer, quite clearly not expecting anything remotely like what they got, moving not a muscle and radiating disapproval, couldn’t resist a couple of tentative claps.
Peter Burdon
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