Adelaide Cabaret Festival. The Space Theatre. 20 Jun 2013
They say you know you're growing old when you buy your clothes for comfort and not for style. Thus does Phil Scott underscore the point of his show which marks 30 years of performing solo in cabaret. As Cabaret Survivor he adorns the stage costumed in camouflage pants and beanie. Thank heavens he takes the beanie off. Nonetheless, Scott may well have set a benchmark as the worst dressed cabaret performer ever to adorn a grand piano.
But that's Scott style. He's self-deprecatory and just a bit anarchical. He is, after all, one of the country’s greatest satirists.
This show presents something of a different, softer Scott. It is a trip down memory lane with songs and anecdotes from 30 years in the bizz. He began as an accompanist, he reveals. He is, indeed, an accomplished pianist and the big black grand responds exquisitely to his touch.
At the first Cabaret Festival performance, Scott seemed slightly nervous in this highly personal persona - and he strove to be his own warm-up act. He warmed up a treat the moment he started to sing. He sings, big and strong, clear, and brave, soft and perceptive, gentle and funny with clarity to every word.
His narratives are longish and pleasantly informal. There is a proper sense of "salon" to the casual, intimate way of them.
He tells of his first venture to an Adelaide Fringe in 1984 as part of Zen and Now, and how hard and proudly the little group had worked to prepare some dire, stinky upstairs venue in Hindley Street only to find that the program had erroneously given their address as that of a kebab house down the road. He tells of his worst-ever piece of timing which caused a Lindeman Island audience to walk out as he haplessly sang his very on-the-edge Tas-Tasmania song. He did not know, as the audience did, that the Port Arthur massacre had just occurred. He then sings the offending song. It's quite the shocker regardless of Port Arthur.
Scott pushes the old envelope of bad taste with an air of mischievous defiance.
He throws in Charlie Drake's My Boomerang Won't Come Back. And then, as if such absurdly ignorant archaic racism is not enough, he demonstrates his conversion to the romantic genre. Therein, he sings, ever so sweetly, a misogynistic, disabled-unfriendly song of love and loss which has the hackles really rising - until the punch line, at which moment all is forgiven.
Next, he asserts that everyone over 14 is in love with him when he's on stage. And we had better not deny it. It's a fact, he says. Actually, despite the dire duds, he does get quite a hold of his audience with his power of performance. Of course we're all in love with him. But, on opening night, he ruffled this mystique with a piece of audience participation intended to prove it. His adoring "victim" had a strange line in passionate sighs and sounded more in pain than lust. You can't win 'em all.
But Phil Scott can woo 'em all and he does. He has a good Bette Midler story and an unbelievably wicked yarn about Bea Arthur.
Seventy minutes seems too short. The audience craves more from Scott's broad experience in stage, television, revue and comedy. Scott belts out some terrific old standards and, thank dog, samplers of his witty satire. But, he stays right away from politics which, in the present election overload, is probably a blessing.
Samela Harris
When: 20 to 22 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
