Adelaide Cabaret Festival
\nAdelaide Festival Centre
\nUntil June 24.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s to the Ladies
\nChristine Andreas
\nFestival Centre Stage
\nJune 13.<\/p>\n
Camille
\nLa Fille du Cirque
\nSpace
\nJune 13.<\/p>\n
Waterloo Sunset
\nBarb Jungr
\nBanquet Room
\nJune 14.<\/p>\n
Keating !
\nCasey Bennetto and the Drowsy Drivers
\nSpace
\nJune 15 <\/p>\n
Tina C in Manifesto
\nChristopher Green
\nBanquet Room
\nJune 14. Tickets : $25- $30
\nBookings BASS 131 246
\nUntil June 24.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
It\u2019s wintertime and the living is easy. The Adelaide Cabaret Festival heads into its final week and, despite some frosty June nights, is full of beans. Houses are packed and there is plenty on offer. Once again, the festival has attracted the lucrative grey dollar as early boomers and perky retirees revisit the lounge grooves of the late fifties and sixties, alongside some new and subversive inroads on the genre. This cabaret event is more a twilight than a late night affair, with shows starting early and most over by ten thirty, but this only seems to ensure that, in its sixth year, the festival has found its formula just as it has found its audience.<\/p>\n
Among the pleasures in recent days, is Here\u2019s to the Ladies, a bouquet of Broadway favourites presented by US soprano Christine Andreas. Accompanied suavely on piano by her husband, the composer Martin Silvestri, Andreas, in excellent voice, opens with a flawless reading of Fly Me to the Moon – and it is all up from there. Songs from the great \u2013 Merman, Gertrude Lawrence, Streisand, Helen Morgan \u2013 are included. But it is the bell-like voice of Julie Andrews, which Christine Andreas\u2019s much resembles, that is most prominent. When she gets to My Fair Lady, the appreciative audience could have listened, if not danced, all night.<\/p>\n
There is always a creative tension in the Cabaret Festival between the virtuoso Broadway stylists and grungy neo-Weimar acts like Camille. Part-French, part Irish, she is a gamey mix of bar-room Brel and the Pogues. In harridan scarlet and black, Camille, with a five piece band and a bottle of Yalumba, opens with Nick Cave\u2019s sardonic God is in the House. Jacques Brel\u2019s Amsterdam and Song for Old Lovers get some tough love, but Cave\u2019s The Mercy Seat is the electrifying highlight as Camille moves from song to song like an open razor.<\/p>\n
Barb Jungr is another excellent chanteuse whose second show, Waterloo Sunset, follows the first weekend\u2019s Bob Dylan tribute set. With songs by Leon Russell, Elvis Costello, the Everly Brothers and, of course, the inestimable Ray Davies, it is still the Barb Dylan songs which stand out \u2013 most notably the slow ballad deconstruction of Like a Rolling Stone. Matthew Carey, at the piano, tags her inventive vocals with apparent ease as Jungr, with wit and intelligence, maps out some very original territory of her own.<\/p>\n
Also a lady of the cabaret is Tina C (that\u2019s for Tennessee, yo\u2019all) the very altered ego of UK scriptwriter and character performer, Christopher Green, who has waxed and blushed to prepare Tina for her \u201canti-anti American tour\u201d. This is a three flag circus of patriotic country music as Tina, in her camouflage mini skirt and Stetson, sings from her latest album, Scars and Stripes. I can smell the love in the room Adell-aide, she purrs, as she sets us straight \u2013 and very right \u2013 on Irack and much else. It is a one joke show with some familiar targets, but with her long legs and red, white and,often, blue satire, Tina carries it confrontingly in her stride. <\/p>\n
Another colossus under scrutiny is \u201cthe Man, the ruler of the land\u201d, the Placido Domingo of nineties politics \u2013 Keating ! In one fast hour, writer and director, Casey Bennetto and his band, the Drowsy Drivers, re-tell the rise and demise of Paul Keating (a needle-sharp Mike McLeish) as he meets his rivals \u2013 Hawke, Newson, Howard \u2013 and the ticking clocks of his impatient ambition. The music, spanning reggae, rap, soul and torch ballad, is far from drowsy and the lyrics \u2013 sharp, funny and for many, dreaming of a different light on the hill, unexpectedly poignant. Keating! as the publicity spiel reminds us, is a beautiful (and very inventive) set of numbers. <\/p>\n
The Australian, June 19, 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adelaide Cabaret Festival Adelaide Festival Centre Until June 24. Here\u2019s to the Ladies Christine Andreas Festival Centre Stage June 13. Camille La Fille du Cirque Space June 13. Waterloo Sunset Barb Jungr Banquet Room June 14. Keating ! Casey Bennetto and the Drowsy Drivers Space June 15 Tina C in Manifesto Christopher Green Banquet Room June 14. Tickets : $25- $30 Bookings BASS 131 246 Until June 24. Murray Bramwell It\u2019s wintertime and the living is easy. The Adelaide Cabaret […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-cabaret"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","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=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}