Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2002
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Despite the fact that the weather has been wintry and the Festival plaza still looks like the Blitz – the decrustation process apparently taking forever – the Centre itself hasn’t looked so busy since… the last Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
As we don’t need reminding, the Centre was not the focus for much of this year’s Adelaide Festival and, otherwise, usage has been sporadic. So, with sixteen nights of programming – in the Space, the Festival Theatre, the Dunstan Playhouse, the Foyer, the Banquet Room, and even the Theatre stage – the joint has been jumping. Reports from the box office have been chirpy and plenty of events have been completely booked.
The audiences are, you might say, somewhat mature in years. Maybe they all the people who held back from the Festival in March, or maybe a program of accessible, often nostalgic, musical entertainment has finally smoked out those fifty-somethings and self-funded retirees who are an increasingly dominant part of this city’s demographic. Whatever the reason, the grey punters came out in their enthusiastic numbers, spent at the bars and food outlets, and shook a tail feather or two with – among many others – Dennis Olsen, Jimmy Little, Combo Fiasco, and various simulacra of Peggy Lee, Edith Piaf, Lotte Lenya, and Dionne Warwick.
The opening weekend, however,is pitched at the younger crowd. Particularly with The Rat Pack, a feral vehicle for Good News Week favourites Paul McDermott, Mikey Robins and Sandman. McDermott comes on first, baiting the crowd with his usual ferocity. He’s like a ferret with a Jesuit education and the perfect foil to the affable Mikey Robins. They are supposed to be standing round in tuxedos, mixing martinis and serving them to the front row but that idea goes out the window as they get straight into the fat and skinny jokes. They almost duet on The Lady is a Tramp but all semblance of order is lost when Sandman enters the fray, defying the dress code in a suit described by someone as penis pink.
The Rat Pack bears no relation to anyone connected to Oceans 11 but McDermott sneers, and sings sweetly, Robins plays Love Me Tender on a recorder up his nostril and Sandman fills his stomach with air and boofheads across the stage as Harry Highpants, Larry Lowpants and the Totally Red Cowboy. For an encore they appear in radiation suits and sing a medley including We’re all Going on Osama Holiday. They sold out two shows and could have played for a week.
Sleepless Beauty is a new show featuring Machine Gun Fellatio singer Christa Hughes and a group of associates including Minx Contortionista, Ruby May Fox and Imogen Kelly. The concept is of the tyranny of body image and the cult of beauty. Not a new notion exactly and there is some irony that the show strongly features the perfect lineaments not only of Ms Hughes but her three alter egos as well. As Beauty stares into her mirror and battles insomnia and a variety of mindbending states, Ms Fox performs a wacky fan dance, Ms Contortionista, in black and dayglo, folds herself in half and Ms Kelly swings gymnastically on a curtain. Beauty contests take a thumping and cosmetic surgery also gets the knife. The satire is laboured and the show needs some fixing yet Hughes herself has plenty of wit and energy, and the band – Michael Lira, Neill Duncan and Svetlana Bunic – with a mix of electrics, percussion and accordion provides Sleeping Beauty with invention and pace.
No cabaret festival looking for a crooner need go further than Jimmy Little whose tribute to Nat King Cole is a very likable smoothie. Backed by the usual suspects – including his manager and drummer Buzz Bidstrup, Chris Bailey on bass and Richard Mellick on keyboards- Jimmy Little covers the classics- Paper Moon, Autumn Leaves, Around the World and Mona Lisa. His voice is not up to Nat’s velvety best but then whose would be ? Cole’s formidable career is all the more remarkable for its brevity- he was dead by the age of 48 having sold 15 million records. He faced frequent racial discrimination and was even beaten up when on tour in Alabama.
Jimmy Little has promised to tell us a bit about Nat King Cole, but, it turns out, he is too busy singing the songs instead. The band gets into the groove with some added vibraharp and the rhythm section is nicely damped down for Twilight Time, Unforgettable and, of course, Stardust. For an encore Jimmy adds his own astronomic Under the Milky Way and dials, once more again, that telephone to glory. It is a mellow set from a charming performer.
English singer Kate Dimbleby has two shows in the festival. The Making of Peggy Lee is her tribute to the astute performer and song writer who worked with Benny Goodman, successfully sued Walt Disney and raised temperatures around the world with Fever. Dimbleby, in a blonde wig, tells us the Miss Peggy story through each twist and turn of a fifty year career, but it is all a bit laboured. She is not comfortable in character and the show is trapped inside the theatrical artificiality of Lucy Powell’s leaden script. Dimbleby sings well the r’n’b of Hallelujah I Love you So and the classic The Lady is a Tramp. Fever also sounds good, the bemused band – a piano trio led by Julian Hinton- rising to the occasion. But the show is low on energy and leaves us wondering – of the remarkable life of Peggy Lee – is that all there is, is that all there is ?
Music to Watch Boys By promised interesting repertoire but again proved Ms Dimbleby can sing but she can’t carry a show. There is less structure but the frequent comments about men behaving badly are neither witty or all that convincing. And again the band looks bored and the singer unsure whether she’s having fun with them or at their expense. There are fine moments – not the Elvis Presley stuff, unworthy of the King, but the excellent reading of Elvis Costello’s I Want You, also Randy Newman’s Political Science and Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones. But they don’t add up to a show and an opportunity to update the cabaret format with more contemporary material is lost.
It takes Robyn Archer to remind us – with her New York Gig, accompanied by pianist Paul Grabowski – just what cabaret is and can be. Archer is not only a consummate performer, she presents her material with a splendid mix of enthusiasm and erudition. From the opener, What Keeps Mankind Alive from Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera through to the Bilbao Song for the second encore, Robyn Archer effortlessly holds her audience. She has a natural manner, which is most refreshing after two weeks of Piaffing and Peggying, and she gives us cabaret music in the present tense, not in some badly staged demimonde of scarlet and gauloise affectation.
Archer is simply the best Brecht interpreter around – as the Barbara Song and the Cannon Song amply illustrate. She can navigate the intricacies of Eisler’s melodies, can sing French café songs and, when she needs more, she also loves to yodel. Grabowsky has a particularly nice touch with the jazzier material and These Are The Days , their tribute to September 11 – performed at BAM in New York just a few days after the event – is a highpoint.
The Adelaide Review, No. 226, July, 2002.