The Castanet Club
Space Cabaret
The Space Cabaret is back on deck for its summer season with the Castanets new show, Santa goes Nude, followed this week by the Melbourne hit Wogs out of Work. The Castanets, ambassadors of culture from Newcastle, first wheedled into the hearts of Adelaide a Fringe or two ago but like all celebs they have suffered those heartaches of success that shape any mature performer.
In Santa Goes Nude, the Castanets are in more reflective mood – the shallow and imperceptive might even say they are less funny. Certainly there have been line-up changes. T ron Wexler, Elvis Presley, Rodney Cambridge and Maynard F Sharp Crabbes have all left the fold but replacement Terry “Ginger” Vitus shows that less can be more and few will recall more charming instances than his whistling in the theatre.
Much of centrestage has now gone to ]ohnny Goodman aka the Master of Sad, whose self-penned ballads, The Magpie is My Favourite Bird of All, My Serenade and I’m Not Relationship Shopping Now, show him to be a deeply unusual person. Bowling Man returns to rub paunches with Goodman for vintage Castanet belly laughs and when he wasn’t around someone called Pastor Noel Anderson talked about Christian Boys’ Problems, then Richard Nixon himself appeared announcing that he was tanned, rested and ready for ’92.
Shirley Purvis and son Damien presided over the wet stubbies contest – surely where audience participation verges on the Theatre of Cruelty. Then the classically trained Medley Sisters, Doris Crawley and Kid Paganini, sang about the fine line between pleasure and pain. Doris sang I’ve Been Everywhere (yet again) and lounge reptile Lance Norton, more introverted this time around (maybe he’s having provisional tax problems) sang the haunting ballad I Nearly Died When You Broke it Off.
The Christmas decor was early Miller Anderson and costume, Fletcher Jones and Staff circa 1973. The Castanets were lower voltage this time but kept their promise to be immediately funny, to try very hard and to start on time. They continue to give bad taste a good name.
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Glynn With a Why is Glynn Nicholas’s post-Edinburgh one-person show, retreaded for Adelaide and containing some greatest hits. Nicholas used to gather bigger crowds than the Second Coming as a busker in Rundle Mall but the experience seems to have left him somewhere in the middle of the road. His jokes got decidedly reactionary at times and it was hard to tell whether they’d been improvised for the works’ pre-Christmas knees-up over at table nine or not. Nicholas is clearly very talented but he is curiously absent from his work. Somehow he manages to keep even his personas at arm’s length.
Like his opening piece, the Body Awareness Programme, his Marcel Cliche is a vehicle for his proficiency in mime and movement but when it kept moving to the wrong side of ungenerosity, Glynn with a Why became too querulous for its own good. “If you liked me I’m Glynn Nicholas,” he announced at the end, “If you didn’t I’m a little fat guy called Daryl Somers.” Perhaps that’s why I kept looking for Jackie McDonald.
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The Splatto Family Circus presented two shows. The cabaret night was described as risque which, as you know, is French for dangerous, so thinking that that meant lion acts or rabid chihuahuas under stern discipline, I opted for the family show instead.
The Splattos are a second eleven Circus Oz but that’s not a problem. Directed by the ubiquitous Robert Draffin, they have played hyperactively to patchy Christmas crowds at the only-partly Living Arts Centre. Big Tim Scully acts as a moving target throughout their ninety minute workout which contains all those brown rice circus skills from tumbling, human pyramids, trapeze, tightwire and conjuring, to fake knife throwing.
High points included Big Tim peeling off his aviator helmet and putting his head in a bucket of water for two minutes, the talented Stephen Sculley (former Tick and Slave Clown) performing a mechanical duck routine with Ralph “Lockjaw” Davis and the suave playing from the entire and versatile Splatto hot latin showband.
Endearing moments were when Peter Brennan’s lassoo brought down half the set in an over-inclusive swoop of spontaneity and John Scally (impressive on tenor sax) juggled on valiantly even when his left hemisphere and right hand were clearly not co-operating.
The Splattos finished off with fire-eating and coal juggling. They even torched their own hats. It was a veritable eisteddfod of pyromania and they stepped through the smoke to triumphant applause. By then I’d quite forgotten about lions and chihuahuas.
“Cabhooray” The Adelaide Review, No.59, January, 1989, p.26.