12 June
Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2005
Cabaret
Murray Bramwell
I Protest!
Robyn Archer, Paul Grabowsky and the Agitators
Space Theatre,
Adelaide Festival Centre.
10 June
Paul Kelly A-Z
10 June
Space Theatre
Until 15 June. Bookings BASS 131 246
Tickets $ 42 – $ 50
Australia’s Leading Ladies
Festival Theatre,
Adelaide Festival Centre.
11 June.
It must be a portent that Adelaide’s drought broke the same day that the fifth Cabaret Festival opened. It is clear that this annual fixture brings a much-needed boost to the Festival Centre’s winter trading. With 22 performances of its two week program already sold out, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival is bringing enthusiastic audiences in from their lounge rooms for a lively program of song, dance, retro and comedy. And, while there is a broad mix, it is evident that the fifty-plus age group is very well represented. The Cabaret Festival has definitely captured the grey – no, make that – the silver dollar.
Frequent collaborators Robyn Archer and Paul Grabowsky are among the openers with I Protest! – a fistful of songs by Bert Brecht and Bob Dylan along with several compositions of their own. After a hesitant reading of Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom, Archer, with the Agitators, a six-piece outfit including cello, horns and accordion, hits her excellent stride with Brecht’s All of Us or None, Grabowsky and the band moving through Hans Eisler’s musical gear changes with alacrity.
Quoting current wealth statistics from BRW, Archer reminds us of the timeliness of Song of the Moldau and takes up a megaphone for The Death of Dialectic, her own talkback to Talkback. Dirt, her ode to smear and spin, fits like a glove to Grabowsky’s swing-blues tune. The Dylan settings are more variable – Times They Are a-Changing is sung more in sorrow than certainty and Bob Dylan’s Dream, is over-decorated in Grabowsky’s intricate arrangement. Masters of War with its locomotive rhythm is a highpoint but also a melancholy reminder, with Adelaide’s recent defence contracts, that the themes of I Protest! are still blowin’ in the wind.
Paul Kelly’s great bands, from the Dots to the Boon Companions, have always served his music, but his solo show, A-Z, is the first in years to showcase his splendid lyrics. Over five nights and ninety nine songs, Kelly is giving audiences a rare chance to hear the sweep and intricacy of his work. On Friday he just made it to D – but the ABC of Paul Kelly is enough to demonstrate that he is one of the country’s leading poets with an eye for detail that rivals Bruce Dawe and a gift for balladry that is as memorable, for his generation, as Paterson and Slim Dusty.
With simple, often rudimentary, guitar Kelly dips into his tucker bag – the domestic portrait of Before the Old Man Died, the frank eroticism of Blush, the tall tale of Bradman and – its unsettling lyric set to a peerless tune – Careless. Adelaide plays first in the alphabet and the encores feature the snazzy Curly Red and Deeper Water. But, for me, the highlight is his perfect kodachrome of the Boxing Day Test – Behind the Bowler’s Arm. Paul Kelly’s week at the Cabaret Festival is already a highlight.
Australia’s Leading Ladies reminds us of the depth in the batting in our music theatre. Any one of these extraordinary talents is a star performer but combined they are a supergroup. Supported by the nimble Adelaide Art Orchestra this survey of Broadway shows ancient and postmodern, is engagingly narrated by Toni Lamond and full of delights and blue notes. There are so many wonders here – Judi Connelli’s Some People from Gypsy , Rhonda Burchmore dancing Ziegfeld and Shaking the Blues Away, Marina Prior and Sharon Millerchip’s duet from West Side Story, Geraldine Turner as Nancy in Oliver, Anne Wood singing Abba and Lamond herself reminding us, as the next fortnight surely will, that there is No Business like Show Business.
“Top drawer program” The Australian, June 13, 2005, p.16.