Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Shane Anthony and Critical Stages. Dunstan Playhouse. 15 Jun 2016
Marie Duplessis went from dirt poor waif to courtesan and much adored party girl of Paris in the 1800s, but died as she began life, poor and dead at 23.
How did her story begin? With a pony, an apple and a wealthy man.
Songs for The Fallen celebrates Duplessis and the era she emblazoned with her tempestuous passion, wit and guile in a fine, wild style.
Writer Sheridan Harbridge’s material is rich in playful comic intensity, perfectly suited to the production’s smooth moving blend of vaudeville, melodrama-laced burlesque, superbly balanced by Basil Hogios’ style perfect baroque pop score which would not be out of place any time after 1847 when style was high - the 1920s and 30s particularly.
Lisa Mimmocchi’s costumes and Michael Hankin’s fabulous round bed boudoir set, dotted with fantastic prop pieces work brilliantly in blessing a show stopper performance space with a sense of raffish, scrappy, decayed gentility in which Duplessis’s life ended.
Director Shane Anthony ties up all these magnificent strands with great assurance, delivering a crowd pleaser of a production.
Harbridge not only wrote the work, she is Marie Duplessis on stage. Her performance was a grand delight of high energy in song, fully charged by an electric, raw, powerfully alive characterisation. Not to be outdone, Ben Gerrard and Garth Holcombe offer equally strong performances in support in multiple roles.
Songs for The Fallen is that rare, happy mix of the musical and cabaret daring, as true cabaret should, to challenge to the way things are in the most seductive, subversive way possible.
David O’Brien
When: 15 to 16 June
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au
