IsoLate Late Show prefect way to kick off Brisbane Festival
The Brisbane Festival officially opens tonight but there were sneak previews last night and audience members at this show were in raptures.
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I’m not the most demonstrative audience member on the planet but, hell, if I could have got up and boogied at The Tivoli last night I would have.
Of course dancing is verboten during the pandemic but plenty of people were gyrating in their seats at The IsoLate Late Show LIVE! which set the scene for tonight’s official opening of Brisbane Festival, which will feature Jumoo, an indigenous smoking ceremony to kick things off.
Thursday night’s program featured some great music but the highlight for me and for many others was Luke Kennedy’s Little River Band Medley.
I know all the words to their hits and I was surprised that many of the younger audience members knew them too. In fact one of our table buddies (it was cabaret style seating) mentioned that she knew the songs because her dad used to play them on their record player when she was a kid. Ouch!
The IsoLate Late Show was the brainchild of The Little Red Company, a Brisbane outfit that has put on some great shows in the past. When things locked down they took it online and over the past months they have been live-streaming their hugely popular virtual variety show featuring some amazing local and national talent including the likes of Marcia Hines, John Paul Young and others.
Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina wanted to bring the show into the real world though and programmed it for her inaugural festival, bless her. Obviously the interstate artists couldn’t come but we have enough talented folk here and the retinue of singers last night included Queensland’s first couple of song, Naomi Price and Luke Kennedy, Rachel Everett-Jones and her partner Lai Utovou and Irena Lysiuk via satellite because she’s in Byron Bay filming a television series. Add a hot band and musicians from Camerata led by the brilliant Brendan Joyce and you have the sort of local talent that means we can still have a festival even with borders closed.
The show opened with Lai Utovou doing Young Hearts Run Free in an over the top disco suit with wings. What a way to begin! He was positively funktastic. Rachel Everett-Jones followed up with Guns ‘N Roses’ anthemic Sweet Child of Mine and rising star Tom Oliver did Powderfinger’s On My Mind and boy did he belt it out to the back row.
And so it went with a request section featuring among other things, Blackbird by The Beatles – a gorgeous instrumental version with Jason McGregor on guitar – and Naomi Price bringing the house down with Dolly Parton’s Jolene. I was kind of embarrassed to find I knew all the words to that one too.
With a couch on stage and lots of chat it was an informal variety show that had the same flavour of intimacy as the online version which managed to raise more than $100,000 for the Actors’ and Entertainers Benevolent Fund (QLD) which has been helping artists struggling during a period that has been catastrophic for the arts industry.
The bad news is there are only two more shows today and they are sold out. The good news is that some of these artists will be popping up in your suburbs over the next few weeks as part of Street Serenades, a series of guerrilla style surprise performances that will be happening in all 190 suburbs of greater Brisbane during Brisbane Festival which runs until September 26. Keep an eye out for them and fingers crossed the IsoLate Late Show LIVE! will be rebooted on stage again sometime soon. In fact we demand it!
If and when it does it will be one of the most joyous hours you will ever experience. Hell, Anything that can make me get jiggy with it has got to have something special going for it. Just saying.