Suddenly, Adelaide feels like the world headquarters of Roald Dahl.
For young and old, the musical based on his novel Matilda is wowing them on the big stage of the Festival Centre.
But outside that traditional mainstream, there is Dahl just for grownups. A new delight of Dahl arises at the Cabaret Festival.
Elise McCann, fresh from her multi award-winning performances in the role of Miss Honey in the Australian Production of Matilda, is appearing in Adelaide at the same time as the blockbuster stage show, with a new cabaret show which was inspired by her experience in Matilda The Musical on the big stage.
The more of Dahl she has experienced, the more she delights in it.
Her Adelaide Cabaret Festival show, which is part of a national tour, is called Dahlesque. And, she reveals, there’s a joyful piece of serendipity in the name which thrills her to bits.
She had no sooner conceived of a performance piece devoted to the many and varied songs inspired by Dahl writings than she heard that the word “Dahlesque” was being officially added to the English dictionary.
“Oh, my gosh. It means 'in the style of Dahl',” she enthuses. “Immediately I said 'there’s the name for my show’.”
The next piece of serendipity was finding that Matilda The Musical is on in Adelaide at the same time as Dahlesque.
“It is a co-incidence,” she laughs.
“But For one thing, it means I can get to see Matilda. I’m stoked. I never got to see it when I was in it.
“Everyone should see it. It is the best musical - definitely the best one I have been in.
“Doing it was a massive gift. I know it sounds cliché but it was one of the best experiences of my life.”
McCann believes the two shows will inform each other.
Dahlesque is a collection of diverse songs from diverse Dahl stories - Willy Wonka, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Revolting Rhymes, James and the Giant Peach…
“This new show comes back to all that makes Dahl special,” she declares.
He has been special to McCann since she was a little girl.
Dahl, Enid Blyton and CS Lewis, these were the authors of her childhood, she says.
She recalls her parents reading Dahl stories to her by night and, when she was able to read, having her read the stories back to them.
“Then Matilda came along and it was a special moment which brought all those childhood memories back,” she recalls.
“Oh, The Witches. I remember how I was terrified but I loved it at the same time.
“So, I went back and looked at Dahl’s works. All his colour and flavour make him so captivating and at the same time he is teaching beautiful lessons to children and adults.
“My new show comes back to that, to what makes Dahl so special. He reminds us to be brave and to stand up for what is right and to believe that good things can happen if you take action. He is never too saccharine.
“He is empowering.”
McCann has co-written this new show with Richard Carroll and has Michael Tyack as musical director. Her musical arranger is Stephen Amos. This is the fifth project she has worked on with Amos who was the original musical director of Matilda The Musical. Noted is their Everybody Loves Lucy hit show for which McCann was nominated for Best Cabaret Production at the 2015 Sydney Theatre Awards.
McCann is a NIDA graduate and her professional history includes a wealth of stage shows including Fiddler on the Roof and Mamma Mia as well as the Channel 7 miniseries, Peter Allen - Not The Boy Next Door.
She thinks her Dahlesque cabaret show should please audiences of all ages.
“It has adult energy but there is no inappropriate language,” she says.
“The music is colourful and represents all the different elements of his stories, his life and what he liked.
“Actually, he is the most fascinating man.”
The show will touch upon the Dahl life story, including the extraordinary battle to help his wife, Patricia Neal, when she was severely afflicted by stroke and lost the ability to speak.
“He went through a lot in his life but he made a choice not to be a victim but to grow from things,” explains McCann.
"Interestingly, after the experience with Patricia Neal, his next book was the BFG who, of course, makes up language.
It is still relevant today in a world filled with so much fear and misunderstanding of other cultures. He tells us that as a global community, we need to step out of ourselves, to understand each other, to have the ability to learn from others.”
Samela Harris
Dahlesque with Elise McCann
When: 17 & 18 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
How do we know the Cabaret Festival is a big success?
Because it can brag a brilliant burgeoning Cabaret Fringe Festival.
Therein, amid the joy of colour and movement, sequins and feathers and dazzling descants, appears Adelaide superstar and rising international star Matt Gilbertson aka Hans.
As Hans, Gilbertson is hosting the Fringe’s big Gala night in the Freemasons' Hall.
In the same venue on the next night, he’s turning on his Fringe Festival hit show, Mein Camp.
He can’t stop giggling about how the world has changed.
“Imagine me at the Freemasons’ amid the secret handshakes and all,” he exclaims.
It’s far from the spirit of Gluttony where he scored five star reviews for his high-kicking German spoof and also far from The Underbelly Hub on the Edinburgh Fringe where is will soon be performing Mein Camp.
“It will be the Edinburgh version I will be doing for the Cabaret Fringe,” he says.
“Me, the band and no girls.
“How will I survive without The Lucky Bitches? I will just have to dance harder.
“I just have them as an act of charity you know, not to add to the show. No, it’s not for the audience, a lot of whom prefer it without them…”
There’s a pause.
“I think I know how to get myself killed,” he chuckles.
There are, indeed, only so many international airfares a Fringe act can justify. The band which Hans has so kindly named the Ungrateful Bastards, are doubtless more than enough.
Gilbertson, whose day job is as gossip columnist for the mainstream daily, The Advertiser, is down to do up to 30 shows on the August trip to the UK - several in London, one of which is at Nick Zappa’s London Riviera and about 28 in Edinburgh at the Underbelly Hub.
“Scary and exciting,” he says.
Of course, with his hit show riddled with topical Donald Trump jokes, the cabaret funny man is worried about news emerging from the USA. Trump has been a good tool for comedy and, as Gilbertson points out, the comment on social and political happenings is inherent to the history of cabaret.
The official Cabaret Festival is looking very promising, he says. And it is not only because it has such an impressive Fringe.
“It has a bit more of a fringey vibe to it this year,” he opines.
“There are fewer Broadway divas and there are things like the Spiegeltent. This is interesting because part of the point of the Cabaret Festival was in that it took cabaret artistes in the establishment theatre. Now they have the Spiegeltent.”
Gilbertson knows all about performing outside conventional venues. He started out with an accordion, busking in the streets of Adelaide.
The Cabaret Fringe has generated a spectacular line-up of interesting, unusual, glamorous, amusing and talented artistes of every genre and gender. There’s Frankly Winehouse, Dolly Diamond, Cabaret Allsorts, Hot Club de Adelaide, Rusalka, Mikelangelo, Becky Blake, Mama Alto, Tim Nicholson, The Girl from Ipanema, Tomas Ford and masses of others. Their 45 shows are all over town in 16 venues from Nexus Arts and the Chihuahua Bar through La Boheme, the Arkaba, the German Club, Bakehouse Theatre, right down to the Railway Hotel at Port Adelaide and even Ayers House.
Samela Harris
The Cabaret Fringe runs from 3 to 25 June.
Tickets are on sale now.
Bookings: cabaretfringefestival.com
State Theatre Company and Belvoir. The Space Theatre. From 22 Apr 2017
“What would happen if the electricity grid went down?” asks award-winning Adelaide actress Jude Henshall?
Of all people exposed to the plotline of the American play, Mr Burns - a Post-Electric Play, South Australians might have the most vivid foothold on apprehension.
Experience of the dismay and disorder of blackouts and a failing electricity system are fresh in the memories along with emotions of fear and ire.
“But what if it was not for just five days but for ever,” says Henshall.
In Anne Washburn’s play, now in production with State Theatre and Belvoir, the lights go out and stay out. There has been a massive catastrophe.
“She does not tell us what it was,” says Henshall.
“There is no talk of terrorism just that the grid goes down. No clues as to what went before. There are lots of unknowns.
“The play is about a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world without Google, without computers, without phones, without things we’ve put our faith in - food, safe water, keeping computer rooms cool, keeping seed banks refrigerated, dealing with the effect of disaster…”
It is a dark comedy. There’s a streak of sci-fi and fantasy and a powerful meditation on the role that popular culture plays in our lives and the way memories operate, the way myths evolve and how resourceful humanity must be in a crisis.
The play also is about the cartoon series, The Simpsons, and is named after one of its characters, Mr Burns.
Henshall explains that it is divided into three distinctive acts.
The first one describes the survivors confronting this post-apocalyptic world.
Act II, is seven years later when the survivors have collected episodes of The Simpsons. The survivors have formed a theatre troupe and perform them.
Here, the play becomes an examination of how popular culture is inculcated into people, what people can recall and piece together over the years, how oral traditions can grow, how important story-telling is...
Act III is 75 years later, the next generation and time has brought with it wild embellishments. The famous Simpson’s Cape Feare episode is performed, now in lavish song and dance with fantastic costumes.
Henshall describes it as a great and glorious high of song and dance numbers.
“The whole third act is sung,” she says.
“It is a huge musical medley - Beyonce, Kanye, Lady Gaga… all the pop icons of the past decade."
But, from the thrill of glitter, the play is pulled back "to that dark space,” she warns.
"Throughout the play, playwright Anne Washburn is celebrating the best of theatre and theatre tradition.”
Even so, Henshall admits that Mr Burns is a play hard to define.
And Henshall has been in a lot of complex and cutting edge theatre.
As an associate artist with Windmill Theatre, she’s been outstanding through the bright years of Rosemary Myers creations, brave works such as Girl Asleep and as an associate artist with the ground-breaking Border Project she has worked in Trouble on Planet Earth, I Am Not An Animal and Escape from Peligro Island. She has worked with State Theatre and Bell Shakespeare. She has been in films and television shows. She has even directed a Fringe Parade. She has won an Adelaide Critics Circle award and been nominated for a Helpmann. And, she has her own company, IsThisYours, which is priming up for a production of what Henshall hopes will be “the Australian War and Peace, a production Angelique to be performed in Her Majesty’s Theatre come September/October.
She’s thrilled that it received funding from ArtsSA.
“It’s going to be huge - and hugely important for my company,” she enthuses.
Meanwhile, there is the pleasure of playing in this State Theatre of SA/Belvoir of Sydney co-production.
“South Australia will see new faces and Sydney will see new faces,” she says of the cast.
Directed by Imara Savage, the cast includes Mitchell Butel, Esther Hannaford, Paula Arunsdwell, Brent Hill and the inimitable Jacqy Phillips.
Henshell says the director Savage has in her way “reinvented” the American play.
“Audiences can expect a gripping narrative, a hugely entertaining production with dancing and swing and exquisite costumes.”
The Simpson characters may have mutated a bit with time. Mr Burns is emblematic to the play and he has replaced Sideshow Bob who is the villain of the real Cape Feare story.
Do the costumed Mr Burns characters look like the Simpsons?
Henshell pauses. “Let the audience decide that,” she says mysteriously.
The play looks towards myriad contemporary popular cultural references. Not just the Simpsons. Henshell thinks there is something in there for everyone. It is not necessary to be a Simpson’s aficionado.
She sees the playwright as having an uncanny understanding of our deepest fears and of how we make highly consequential decisions we often take lightly.
“The Simpsons are a hook for younger people but I would be comfortable taking anyone from Year 7 onwards to this show, including Mum and Dad in their 70s,” she says
“I look forward to talking to people in the foyer."
Samela Harris
When: 22 Apr to 13 May
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Womadelaide 2017. Interview with Periklis Tsoukalas. 23 Feb 2017
In the lead up to Womadelaide 2017 at Botanic Park I had the opportunity to speak with Periklis Tsoukalas of Baba Zula about the group and their musical styles and influences.
Founded in 1996 by Levent Akman and Murat Ertel, Baba Zula has since gone through many transitions with performers and musicians coming and going from the group. Periklis Tsoukalas was the latest to join, in 2010, and is a composer, electric oud player, and vocalist.
Baba Zula roughly translates to big hidden secret, according to Tsoukalas, a secret which might be life itself. The group have a lot of musical influences, and it is difficult to characterise their style, even for the band.
“I really don’t know if any description can really include what we are doing”, he says.
“It does include psychedelic moments, as well as rock, as well as reggae… because all these sounds are based on eastern Mediterranean rhythms. Also we are using microtonal scales, which differ from western scales in music, and deliver totally different results.”
Baba Zula have been described as “the unrivalled torchbearers of 21st Century psychedelic Turkish rock ’n’ roll” but even in their own bio they recognise their style as a unique blend which they call ‘Istanbul psychedelia.’ Another popular term used to describe their style is ‘Oriental Dub’, but their instrumentation and musicality suggests influences of past Sufi-Islamic tradition, the Turkish gypsies, pre-Islamic Shamanic music, right through Anatolia reaches all the way up to present-day Istanbul.
“This current form of the band is very powerful – very rock and roll psychedelia – really vibing” Tsoukalas says.
With so many influences, and at least 3 composers, it is challenging to imagine how the group comes together to write new songs.
“It is a natural procedure”, Tsoukalas begins. “We are just expressing the music we are living daily in Istanbul. Istanbul was always the metropolis of [the] eastern Mediterranean, therefore it is a big mosaic – colourful – including many people from around the world, so cultures are mixed… giving a unique character to the city. When it comes to arts, we are mirroring this reality and expressing it.”
Tsoukalas explains that the group are not aiming to write any one kind of special musical style.
“We grew up with many kinds of music – traditional, acoustic, electric, jazz, rock, blues, reggae – so we are just going with the flow – we have freedom inside us, and this is very important, so we are free, and… we don’t have limits. We try to be unlimited” he says.
Daily life in Istanbul can be very hard. The members of Baba Zula use their music to express freedom from those limitations. That freedom is the foundation of every Baba Zula song.
“Improvisation is a very big part. Every concert is different. The sounds you hear on the records are not the same in the performance. Sometimes we don’t have any idea, we are just plugging our instruments in, hitting the record button, and then [we] start jamming. We do it again and again, and without saying anything everybody understands what is best for him or her to play. Everybody feels good with his part, and at some point it becomes a song.”
They are renowned for not performing the same way twice. Just as improvisation is the foundation of much of their song writing, it is also the backbone of their live performance.
“A song on the record could be 3 or 4 minutes, but then on stage it could be up to 15 minutes, and almost non-recognisable!” Tsoukalas says.
“Improvisation is really connected to freedom, which is important for us”.
But their sound isn’t by accident. Every band member makes very deliberate choices about the sounds they are creating and it is integral to the finished product.
“Great care is taken to get the correct sound from the instruments to be correct for the intended expression” Tsoukalas concludes.
All of the band members hail from a musical or artistic family background. That background has been their foundation for such an eclectic musical style. Tsoukalas recalls his father playing Carlo Santana records when he was very young, but at the same time he listened to oud music, or Indian classical music, or Greek music.
“Music was always in our houses, and of course this affected… our life from the very beginning. We grew up with all this music, at the same time… traditional music of the eastern Mediterranean together with modern music from the west. It is just inside us” he concludes.
This won’t be the group’s first trip to Australia, and Tsoukalas admits they love it here and are very much looking forward to the tour.
The band will perform on 3 separate occasions over the 4 day long festival; Saturday at 1.00pm on the Moreton Bay Stage, that night at 8.00pm on the Zoo Stage, and finally on Monday at 5.15pm on the Foundation Stage.
Their performances promise to be something truly special, and no 2 are likely to be the same.
Womadelaide runs from the 10th to the 13th of March at Botanic Park, in Adelaide.
Paul Rodda
Who: Baba Zula
When: 10 to 13 Mar
Where: Botanic Park
Bookings: womadelaide.com.au
Adelaide Fringe 2017. Davine Interventionz Productions. Star Theatres.
The Tony nominated musical Violet is the emotional journey of a disfigured girl travelling through the segregated American south in the 1960s to meet a televangelist who she hopes can make her beautiful. Produced by Davine Interventionz Productions for the 2017 Adelaide Fringe, under the Direction of David Gauci and Musical Direction of Peter Johns, the performance will be a South Australian premiere.
The show stars Casmira Cullen in the title role of Violet, with Mitchell Smith and Fahad Farooque as soldiers Monty and Flick.
“When Violet is thirteen she is playing in her fathers shed and an axe comes loose and… cuts her face. Twelve years later she has saved up a bunch of money to go on a pilgrimage, so gets on a bus and travels from North Carolina to Tulsa, Oklahoma with the idea that she is going to find a famous televangelist that is going to heal her scar” explains Cullen.
“On the bus she meets two soldiers who are played by Mitch and Fahad, and she has as bit of a romance with each of them.”
“Obviously [the accident] has a big impact on Violet – she is carrying this scar not just on her face but also in her heart and soul” Farooque explains.
“It is all about the relationship with Violet’s father; that is pretty integral because… he is the one that caused her to have the facial scar, and so there is a very complex relationship there” Smith adds.
The young Violet holds a lot of resentment towards her father and it is emotionally trying for her.
“There’s a young violet and an old Violet…” Cullen continues. Younger Violet is played by Eloise Q Valentine.
Despite both younger Violet and older Violet being portrayed in the musical, the show only spans a relatively short period of time; specifically the bus journey to Tulsa.
“The younger Violet is mainly seen through my memories” Cullen explains. “All of the flashbacks are about how [the incident] affected their relationship” Smith adds.
“Violet is really sheltered, she has spent her entire life just on a farm on the side of a mountain…. [and] hasn’t been exposed to anything - she is [also] an only child.” says Cullen. The journey is “an education [about] the outside world, a really late coming of age; and slightly deborturous! She’s an incredibly lonely person. She’s vulnerable. But, she knows what she wants and she owns it. Part of her journey is that she comes out of her shell a little bit.”
Farooque’s character is a black man during the height of racial tensions in 1964.
“Flick is an African American… and being set in the 60s - for a white girl to be interested in a black guy – that is a quite a big deal” Farooque explains.
“Monty is a white solider, and we have a relationship in the sense that we are both part of the army, but there’s kind of a feeling that if we weren’t thrown together by the army, we probably wouldn’t be friends” he continues.
Smith describes Monty as the privileged white boy out to prove himself.
“He is a bit younger than Violet and Flick… conventionally attractive, he has always gotten what he wanted” Smith explains. “The army is a good way for him to be part of something bigger.”
“He doesn’t quite expect the impact of their relationship”, Cullen adds. “Violet somehow manages to get people off guard; to get them to reveal themselves… she disarms people… and it kind of happens to Monty – Violet brings him out a bit.”
Flick and Monty both have feelings for Violet but express them in different ways. The beauty in the story surrounds how each of them is changed by meeting the others - like ripples in a pond colliding, and changing forever.
“I think [Flick] reminds Violet of her father; like a father figure” Farooque acknowledges.
Equally, Violet sees Flick as more than just a black face. She sees him as a man; as a person; she gives him validation.
“Violet feels a [connection] to Flick because she knows what it feels like to be isolated because of the way she looks” Cullen says. “It is something that’s very skin deep”.
Set in the 1960s the musical genre of the show is heavily influenced by the time, but also follows Violet’s travels through the American south.
“As you travel on the bus [the music] goes from country, and then to blues-rock, and then Gospel towards the end of the show” says Cullen.
“The music is really beautiful… just the lyrics and the way the songs have been constructed is fantastic” Farooque adds.
Adam Goodburn plays Violet’s father, “I have been so excited to finally work with him” says Cullen.
The Preacher is played by Andrew Crispe, “It’s going to be super fun” Cullen adds, “the second act has a lot of confrontation, big emotions, lots of yelling and lots of crying” she laughs.
Crispe describes the show as being unlike anything he has ever seen. “It reminds me of an ocean in the way if flows from one thing to another, and the music is like that too. There are scenes happening with the younger Violet at the same time as the older Violet” he says.
Like multiple waves crashing the time periods overlap and coincide.
Farooque has worked with Director David Gauci and Musical Director Peter Johns before, but for some of the cast, including Cullen, it is the first time.
“They are awesome” Farooque begins, “David gives us this liberty to bring our own truth to the characters – he gives us everything we need to make them our own. Peter is so precise – with cut-offs and crescendos and dynamics – he’s brilliant. He brings a level of professionalism that is very rare in musical theatre in Adelaide”.
Members of the ensemble have also been blown away by the production team and the lead actor’s performances.
“David Gauci is so utterly lovely. I’ve never felt so welcomed or worked with a director who is so warm” says Ruby Pinkerton. Kaitlyn McKenzie says David “makes you feel like family”.
Joshua Barkley has worked with Peter Johns before and describes his musical direction as “precise”. The whole cast agree that the experience is always positive.
Ensemble member Ray Cullen has been particularly impressed by Casmira Cullen’s portrayal of Violet.
“I’ve never seen a person connect to a character as much as Casmira does” he says, “she effortlessly turns into Violet.”
Farooque says, “It is a real privilege being part of the show”, and Cullen agrees.
“Doing the show is having a profound effect on me as a person, experiencing her journey… is something everyone on the face of the planet can relate to on some level” she says.
“The show hits on civil rights stuff, it hits on the Vietnam War, and it’s a real turbulent era - but [for] a woman to believe that all of her inherent worth is in the way she looks, and the way she looks is wrong, so she has to fix that otherwise she is never going to be happy... is still relevant, and is something that a lot of people will relate too” she continues.
“People will love you, and respect you, and see you for who you are… regardless of the way you look. The fact that [Violet] has that revelation is really touching” Cullen concludes.
Cullen is quietly optimistic about the show and the impending opening night, “I’ve never had this much fun working with a cast before” she says, “everyone is so good at what they do, Peter and David are so good at what they do, they are so positive. There is a real sense of cohesiveness in the cast because of [David]… we all get along super well and there is a huge amount of mutual respect.”
Smith gives a succinct summary of the production saying “The whole point of Violet’s journey is that she has this superficial wound that [she believes] if healed… [will make] all her problems go away. Along the journey she potentially learns that maybe, all of her scars are not on her face.”
“Violet just wants to live her life and not feel so held back by what’s happened to her” says Cullen.
She may have set out to heal her superficial disfigurement, but it is the emotional connections she makes that, in the end, give her what she needs most.
Violet plays at the Star Theatre in the 2017 Adelaide Fringe from the 22nd of Feb to the 4th of Mar.
The ensemble cast also contains Russell Ford, Jenny Scarce-Tolley, Alisa James, Lisa Simonetti, Carly Meakin, Emily Glew, Brad Tucker, Tegan Gully, Andrew Kelly, Daniel Watkins and Sandy Wandel.
Bookings can be made online at adelaidefringe.com.au
Paul Rodda
When: 22 Feb to 4 Mar
Duration: 2.5 hours
Where: Star Theatres, Hilton
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
