Ole
The Castanet Club
Space Cabaret

When the Castanetsplayed the Fringe last year they lacked lustre. The
Little Sisters area at the Living Arts Centre didn’t help matters, of course.

Despite the best efforts of the organizers it was a swine of a venue. On their return season to the Space Cabaret, the Castanet Club were quite transformed. They performed virtually the same show with the same jokes and routines but this time it all worked.

Watching the Castanets is like watching weevils. As all eleven of them move on stage at the same time you feel that at least half of them need special diets for hyperactivity. There is a hilarious sense of non-stop hucksterism about them. Even before the show has begun the group move among the crowd like an encyclopedia sales team in the suburbs, hawking Castanets merchandise – records, .assettes, $8 haircuts (some exhibitionist with four Southwarks too many on board invariably offers to get shorn) and a variety of daggy memorabilia.

In the words of Cecil B. de Mille the Castanets like to start with an earthquake and work up to a big finish. Led from the front by Lance Norton, Leagues club lizard in mauve velvet flares, the Castanets go through their Archie and Jughead routines with alacrity. The material is good-natured and broad to the point of chaos.

A sampling of the songs might give anidea: a pudgy man who calls himself Elvis Presley (and looks distressingly like him) plays “Love me Tender” through a recorder up his nose, someone actually called Stomping Betty sings “I Like to Watch My Boyfriend Surf”, drummer Rodney Cambridge sings a road courtesy song entitled “The Motorist’s Friend”, Lance deadpans through “The Age of Aquarius” and the classically-trained Doris Crawley sings the peripatetic “I’ve Been Everywhere” with every name in place.

That, needless to say, is not all. Bowling Man, a primate in pastel shorts is a one person television station and we get Monkey and Pigsy out of lipsynch and testimonials for Dynamo getting the stubborn stains out of the veil of Turin. It’s routine stuff but like the whole show, running on such high octane that it works.

The Castanets are versatile musicians and that became even more evident in the second half. Natassja Bassey belted out blues and ballads and even made Kate Bush’s giddy “Wuthering Heights” almost bearable. Then, with delicious understatement, the Castanets introduce their alleged road manager, Lana Caruso, an overdressed little butterball who sang the socks off “River Deep, Mountain High” and did “Dream a Little Dream” as a stylish encore.

The showstopper was Maynard F,Sharp Crabbes, a mutant in horn-rimmed glasses and recent graduate of the Johnny Young School of Talent, whose medley of “New York, New York” and “Give My Regards to Broadway” gave a good indication of why the Castanets had to leave Newcastle.

The troops give a great show, they inhabit their stage personalities with cheerful familiarity and look as though they enjoy their work. The crowds couldn’t get enough of them. The Castanets really clicked this time round.

“Ole” The Adelaide Review, March, 1987, p.21.