Presided over by exuberant Artistic Director, Virginia Gay, this year\u2019s Variety Gala – featuring an array of amazing women (and also some excellent blokes) – is one of the briskest and best we have seen for a while.<\/p>\n
Written by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that time again. A week into June, just when winter starts to bite, and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival convenes for the 24th<\/sup> year. And, as old as the festival itself, is the Variety Gala. They are a chance to sample the program, a glimpse of the weeks ahead. For many it is an occasion for a night out, for others some serious plumage display, and for everyone a celebration of that elusively defined thing called Cabaret .<\/p>\n After Isaac Hannam\u2019s quietly eloquent Welcome to Country, the curtain rises on Kathryn Sproul\u2019s elegantly minimal d\u00e9cor \u2013 quilted curtains at the back of the stage lit in purples and blues and, suspended above, a dozen or so mid-century orange globes. Downstage left is a large bathtub from which tumbles, in a full-length grey gown, the Person of Ceremonies, current Artistic Director, Virginia Gay.<\/p>\n She is announcer, narrator, but also chief spruiker of the event. Gay first performed at the Cabaret Festival fifteen years ago and she is both advocate and devotee. Her pride and respect for the accomplishments and expanding reputation of the June get-together borders on hyperbole even for the local cheer squad. But it is deeply felt and generously sincere and offers a welcome morale boost to a host of performing artists still recovering from a devastating loss of momentum during Covid.<\/p>\n Gay plays to local sentiment with a lively rendition of \u201cAdelaide\u201d \u2013 Ben Folds\u2019s wryly parochial paeon, rather than the sardonic Paul Kelly one.<\/p>\n To follow is Fascinating Aida, the UK trio of droll women satirists celebrating forty years of musical barbs and lampoonery. \u201dPrisoner of Gender\u201d has them chirpily venturing into the choppy waters of transsexual transformation but they tunefully manoeuvre into a hymn for inclusivity and viva la difference<\/em> to conclude.<\/p>\n The house band, lamentably unintroduced but outstanding all night, lights up with saxophones and horns for Bert LaBonte\u2019s dazzling version of Marvin Gaye\u2019s \u201cLet\u2019s Get it On\u201d. He captures that sweet, grainy high tenor in one of many highlights of the evening.<\/p>\n Also excellent is Gillian Cosgriff with \u201cPresents\u201d an impishly preceptive send-up of the increasingly lackadaisical approach to gift-giving. The crisp, clever lyrics will attract many to check out her show, \u201cActually, Good\u201d, which plays until Sunday.<\/p>\n Graduate, and now mentor, from the festival\u2019s Class of Cabaret, Millicent Sarre featured with a belting version of \u201cI Can Cook Too\u201d from Lenny Bernstein\u2019s \u201cOn the Town\u201d, and Jess Hitchcock delivered a scintillating reading of \u201cSuspended in Time\u201d from \u201cXanadu\u201d \u2013 part of the Olivia Newton John tribute, \u201dHopelessly Devoted\u201d which has one performance with the ASO on June 15.<\/p>\n From the UK, the deadpan, zany musical duo, Flo & Joan come close to stealing the night. Their plaintive folksong rendering of \u201cLady in the Woods\u201d, complete with tender harmonies and recorder interludes, is a hilarious melange of alliterative innuendo that gathers with alarming comic speed. Flo & Joan -one in earnest horn-rimmed specs with embroidered roses on her jacket, the other looking like a chorus member from \u201cPippin\u201d- are surely one of the hot tickets of the festival.<\/p>\n In a line-up that has a welcome predominance of extraordinary women, the men nonetheless make their mark. Like Mark Nadler for instance, whose \u201cI Love a Piano\u201c is a thunderingly funny (and brilliant ) musical mash-up of Fats Waller, Scott Joplin, Glenn Miller , Mozart and Liberace. Nadler hammers the klavier with hilarious virtuosity, while managing not to sit on his suit tails and beaming imperiously at the audience. The Stein-Yamaha, as he calls it, will not only need tuning it might need a chiropractor \u2013 especially after Gabbi Bolt and Matthew Predny\u2019s four-handed keyboard blitzkrieg from \u201cMurder for Two\u201d later in Act 2.<\/p>\n Reuben Kaye, a longstanding Cabaret Festival and Fringe Person of Outrage did not disappoint with \u201cI Want Ya\u201d from his show \u201cThe End\u201d. With his reptilian wit, immaculate timing, and comic insouciance, Kaye delivers both queer comedy and challenging satire, attributes Virgina Gay alluded to as she awarded the genuinely startled Kaye the well-deserved Cabaret Icon Award for 2024.<\/p>\n The program, astutely paced and briskly directed by Mitchell Butel, closes on a series of high notes. Cassie Hamilton is a rising talent with her splendidly sung and proudly affirming \u201cFalling in Love with Someone\u201d from her comic odyssey \u201cA Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying\u201d.<\/p>\n Rhonda Burchmore, celebrating 42 years in the business, spoke both poignantly and pragmatically about the life of the jobbing stage performer before launching into a terrific version of \u201cThey Just Keep Moving the Line\u201d and Virginia Gay put on the Travolta leather jacket and mixed it with Christie Whelan Browne for a wiggly and Greasy workout of \u201cYou\u2019re the One That I Want. \u201c<\/p>\n This has been one of the better Galas in a while. Gay works hard and winningly to keep the pace going, even if sometimes the superlatives get the better of her enthusiasm. Musical Director, Shanon Whitelock and the band don\u2019t miss a beat, and Mahalia Barnes\u2019s closer- a soaring rendering of \u201cRiver Deep, Mountain High\u201d- with a chorus of ooh-ah singers – augurs very well for the weeks to come.<\/p>\n The Adelaide Cabaret Festival runs until June 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Presided over by exuberant Artistic Director, Virginia Gay, this year\u2019s Variety Gala – featuring an array of amazing women (and also some excellent blokes) – is one of the briskest and best we have seen for a while. Written by Murray Bramwell It\u2019s that time again. A week into June, just when winter starts to bite, and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival convenes for the 24th year. And, as old as the festival itself, is the Variety Gala. They are a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,5,9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-46","category-archive","category-cabaret","category-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3592,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions\/3592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}