Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 8 Jun 2024
New Zealand company A Slightly Isolated Dog (go figure!) give the iconic gothic story a sexy, high-camp, over-the-top, high-energy makeover while preserving the fundamentals of the story: “We all have a darkness in us, but we push it down”, which is the oft-said refrain of the hard-working cast. The large crowd in the Space Theatre, which has been turned into a black-box theatre replete with bentwood chairs, round tables and electric candles, are all up for a good time. Judging by the whoops, cheers, gales of laughter, and willingness to play along with the performers (and their silly faux-French accents, which really signals we’re in for a silly time!), the audience was not disappointed, but this reviewer was.
Some of the strengths of the show were also its weakness: a large crowd on a mostly flat auditorium floor, but they did not enjoy clear sightlines; an energetic, brash and engaging cast that simultaneously wanders amongst and works the crowd, but it’s too difficult to hear them clearly (depending on where you sat), and there was no amplification; a fast-moving episodic unfolding plot that depends crucially on audience participation, which is willingly given, but it can’t always be clearly seen or heard (it’s as much visual as it is aural).
Occasionally there is a powerful rendition of a song to underline the course of the narrative, such as Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, which is a cute spin on the conflicted mind of Dr Jekyll who loses (or finds?) himself when he becomes Mr Hyde. A rap trio is especially effective and well performed. But the musical numbers are probably less in number than would be expected in a cabaret performance, and the event more resembles a cross over between stand-up and improvised story telling with slap-stick physical theatre that would suit the Fringe Festival in an abbreviated form.
Much store is placed on highly impressive sound effects throughout the performance to underline words, action, and mood. The cast and the SFX operator have it down pat – the timing is exquisite, the sound quality and inventiveness is superb, and even the audience gets in on the act. One young fellow became an instant gun slinger and shot down the cast (and possibly other audience members!) in an impressive impromptu display of gangster gun slinging!
There is so much happening in this show. The pace is dizzying, and unrelenting – it’s almost flawed – and it’s difficult to leave the theatre without much more than having had a good laugh (which is an altogether good thing in these dismal times), and perhaps a nagging feeling that we all have darkness within, but we push it down.
Kym Clayton
When: 8 to 9 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 8 Jun 2024
Standing ovation.
Fascinating Aida must be used to it by now. They are world-travelling super smarty-pants old-school satirists - and they come to the Cabaret Festival like a zephyr of diabolical eloquence.
These are erudite women, masters of their own dastardly lyrics, all three of them endowed with musical skills and showbiz chutzpah. One could fret about pronouns (as one does so much these days) but the Fascinating Aidas describe themselves as “queens”, albeit with mellifluously androgynous vocal range. They are hats-off fabulous, although perhaps not the entertainment fare for people not up with the zeitgeist of today, tomorrow, and yesterday. Their references are wildly catholic and their targets met, bullseye, with a silver arrow.
They are Dillie Keane, Adele Anderson and Liza Pulman with newish chum accompanist Michael Roulston. For forty years Dillie and Adele have been at it with Liza a mere twenty. She’s the young one, lithe and high soprano.
They laugh in the face of the ghastly aging process singing that we are next in line and what a mess we’ve made of the world for the next generation and, by the way, we haven’t finished.
Their songs are expertly arranged, their harmonies tried and true, their self-written lyrics ever full of surprises for those not au fait with their work. Some songs such as Cheap Flights have been out online for seeming aeons and were among the entertaining comforts we all sourced during Covid lockdown. It is joy to hear it live as their encore.
Oh, the fun they have with a poke to provoke the woke. Oh, how silly they are in the botox send-up. Of course We Go Dogging is beyond risqué, but the Fascinatings are not the market for shy prudes or, for that matter, right wingers. Their bring-down of Trump brings the house down.
They’re comic bliss on steroids. They are Lehrer-esque with non-binary bells on.
If only their season could have gone on and on. One would have seen them again just in case one missed a glorious word.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 9 Jun
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. The Banquet Room. 7 Jun 2024
Mark Nadler - along with his ubiquitous rubber-ducky, makes a welcome return season to the Banquet Room at the Festival Centre for Cabfest.
It begins as a strap-yourself-in one-man show and it never stops. He simply is an experienced and class performer, who owns the stage from the outset and never lets go. This is a consummate performance.
Nothing and no-one, is sacred. He references an audience member as "nothing more tragic than a hapless drag queen". The Banquet Room he compares to playing at the Holiday Inn - at least it's the "big room at the Holiday Inn". A late comer who arrives with a bag of chips is regularly referenced. Yet all is delivered with style and panache and a generous dose of personality.
In a partly self-mocking way, Nadler recalls his risqué COVID home-podcast that includes his dog. It doesn't get broadcast.
At the show's beginning, Nadler tells us that his only planned numbers are his opening and his closing songs. The rest is a spontaneous, come-as-you-are show. His wealth and breadth of experience serves him brilliantly. Though too, he is able to adapt. Having promised "more Gershwin" (which had not eventuated) he replaces this final number with...'"more Gershwin". He is so at ease. This is his stage.
His brilliant vocals and skilful piano playing remain the focus. His songbook is wide and rich, and his pianism is exceptional. With his range, skills and variety on full display the audience rarely has time to draw a breath. Nadler progresses so quickly from song to anecdotes and observations (and everything in between), that we are clearly seeing a one-man, all-singing, all-dancing, all-talking virtuoso performance. The likes of which are rarely seen. Catch your breath for a moment and you're in awe.
With the welcoming of his handpicked guests, Gillian Cosgriff, Mark Lebante, and Joan & Flo, this is Nadler's moment of generosity - championing the talents of all three. All had played at the earlier Gala Performance, or in Nadler's words the "Galah Performance."
Cosgriff ranges from Why Try To Change Me by Cy Coleman to a brilliant piano duet with Duke Ellington's Dont Get Around Much Anymore. It is sassy and wildly energetic. Lebante's signature piece focuses on the playlist of Nat King Cole - and both he and Nadler balance and counterbalance each other harmoniously in a rich duet. With a change of pace, Flo and Jo sing One Night Only from the show Dream Girls; however it is their own number of having drunk too much that is the highlight, and so very funny.
As the end of the show draws nigh, Nadler individually thanks all of his crew. Another nice and generous touch. It is clear that this is not so much a curated show - but rather a spontaneous one. Closing with Who Could Ask For Anything More (complete with tap shoes) is so apt.
Just perhaps, Mark Nadler may one day get his own star at the Festival Centre's ‘Walk of Fame’? It will be well deserved.
Brian Wellington
When: 7 to 9 Jun
Where: The Banquet Room
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. The Banquet Room. 8 June 2024
Barbie doll.
Plastic. Pink. Really smooth. Manufactured perfection.
Sits on a high silver table offering sarcastic retorts, blended with bone crunching legal smarts, even if she is meant to be a loving confidant to a Christie Whelan-Browne circa school year 6 – 9. Barbie’s presence hangs large even when your eyes are on Whelan-Browne in full flight.
Life in Plastic surveys Whelan-Browne - young girl, teenager, young woman - attempting (and yet battling a deep need) to be a perfect Barbie despite life, and her body, not being smooth, manufactured pink plastic perfection. Still attempting it, even when unselfconscious innocence is smashed.
When you are made to cover up in a Dinosaur costume in the school play instead of being a dancing Pebble, you realise consciously, you are not beautiful.
Bubble gum colours of 80s//90s popdom, with Dolly Magazine and Impulse spray in the air were wonderful times. Whelan-Browe delivers Cyndi Lauper’s songs alongside every other girl hit of the era’s magic, happy days when she was a “Westfield Barbie on minimum wage” despite the secret malice buried within myriad gleefully relayed comic, and not so comic, life experiences.
Sheridan Harbridge wrote and directed this sensational sass laden Whelan-Brown life saga. Key element? Balancing a bright, innocent outer world with a very sophisticated, deft and delicate revealing of things darker, raw, intimate and vulnerable. Yet managing still to be screamingly funny when the show unloads difficult, hard-core stuff. There is a point where all things Barbie do not cut it. Can Barbie have a baby? What if you can’t either? IVF and $10,000 a pop anyone?
Harbridge’s direction and writing allow Whelan-Browne the freedom to create her story in performance as an act of art freed from the life-material’s inescapable attachment to her. She is enabled to create, one step away from herself. That freedom is the infectious spirit powering this show. Whelan-Browne lets it rip. She shows off her superb stylistic vocal range with kick arse elegance, laced with whip sharp comic timing that never fails to land the laughs.
Kellie-Anne Kimber’s score and sound design capture that 80s/90s period perfectly. You won’t hear bubble gum pop overlayed with Cyndi Lauper’s lyrics any better than this.
David O’Brien
When: 8 June
Where: The Banquet Room
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. One night only, 7 Jun 2024
If one wonders why the bubble bath features on the 2024 Cabaret Festival’s “Soak It In” program, keep wondering. Its wondrous Artistic Director Virginia Gay made her entrance to the Gala show clambering and tumbling from a big white bathtub onstage. ’Twas an ardently silly and memorable opener.
Gay has made the CabFest very much her own, so proud of it and her role as AD that barely an effusive compere's intro goes by without her mentioning it; ebullient, enthusiastic, vivacious, and verbose. One could go on. She certainly did. And her stars worked hard to live up to the superlative extremes of peerless, incredible talent she touted.
She was gloriously frocked up for the big night. It was an abundance of stunningly oily-looking black organza and she set the show on the road singing Ben Folds’ famous Adelaide song.
Shanon D. Whitelock’s massive orchestra was perched in two sections across the Festival Theatre stage with a classic cabaret-drapes backdrop and assorted giant light-balls dangling aloft.
In an odd tickle of irony on this Gala night of glittering dressup, the stage crew was attired in particularly drab dressing gowns, of all incongruous things.
Fabulous Aida, comprising Dillie Keane, Adele Anderson, and Liza Pulman with Michael Roulston kicked off the program with an autobiographical song from Adele. Both fun and touching, it was called Prisoner of Gender and it contained my absolutely favourite lyric rhyme of the night: “puberty” rhymed "Schuberty”. Ten out of ten.
Mim Sarre - Photo by Claudio Raschella
According to Gay, Bert LaBonte is “the greatest stage actor in Australia”. He was not on stage to act for the Gala but he certainly sang and he was certainly “wow” factor. The adoring audience joined in on the chorus of Let’s Get it On and delivered a surprising prettiness of sound in so doing.
Gillian Cosgriff followed on at the piano with a diverting ditty about ghastly gifting delivered in a very lovely voice after which Adelaide’s own Millicent Sarre, now a Class of Cabaret Mentor, belted out I Can Cook Too in strident hot Mama style.
English gals, Flo and Jo, had the house laughing from the moment they stepped on stage. Casually clad and with recorders poking out of their hip pockets, the dissimilar sisters revved up the orchestra to accompany them in the song answering the constant question as to their genuine sisterhood before dismissing the musicans and turning back the musical clock to timeless Celtic folk harmony and their song of Lady In The Woods; a long unforgettable song with an evolution of narrative verses. It brought the house down!
It was a hard act to follow. But, Jess Hitchcock came equipped with a very well-honed tool, otherwise known as a well-trained voice. Thus, from her A Fine Romance show, in clear, pure tones, she enabled one and all to be Suspended in Time. Then on came the Jewish genius American songster and satirist Mark Nadler. He plays the piano like a furious sorcerer and plays the audience like a Stradivarius. Funny? Oh, yeah! Clever? Blowaway so. He’s high octane and highbrow. He electrifies the piano with his transcendent brilliance and adorns the piano stool like a comic madman. His theme was I Love a Piano and everyone loved him. He has shone forth in many past CabFests and it is pure joy to have him back in town. There’s no one like him. And no one remembers to play up to the dress circles like he does. Finesse.
Exhausted by Nadler's fearless physicality, the audience tottered out for refreshments before the second act.
Mark Nadler - photo by Claudio Raschella
And out came the divine Reuben Kaye; exquisite to behold and outrageous to perceive. He’s wickedly pithy, provocative, political and, dammit, he sings like an angel. He’s pure five-star cabaret and when Virginia Gay came on and announced him as the 2024 Cabaret Festival Icon, it was to tumultuous cheers. He has “it”.
It was unfortunate program timing for Gabbi Bolt and Matthew Pedney with their Murder For Two encore duet at the piano. They’re good but it was hard for anyone to outshine what had gone before with Nadler and then Kaye.
Cassie Hamilton came on and did a terrific big, bouncy musicals-style number with her fabulous voice. She’s an exciting new creative. Her show is Transgender Woman On The Internet, Crying and, despite the title, says Gay, it promises laughs. Cassie is particularly endearing in the way she uses her Aussie accent in song.
Here, she was billed up with the old-school musicals pro, that living legend Rhonda Burchmore, still fresh after 42 years in the business, giving a taste of her Tall Tales CabFest show and singing, supremely, Moving The Line. Sighs of approval.
Virginia Gay & Reuben Kaye - (Cabaret Icon Award Winner 2024) - Photo by Claudio Raschella
Virginia Gay, now in a black pants suit, had been on and off throughout the show giving her garrulous introductions to an audience known as “my beautiful friends”. She’d made it clear that this was her show. But it was when she donned a leather jacket to take the John Travolta part in a duet with Christie Wheelan Brown in You’re the One That I Want - she truly owned it. She just stole the scene. Applause.
This was another hard act to follow but, with some formal thanks to the production team which featured our beloved Mitchell Butel as director, she brought on Mahalia Barnes. In a breathtakingly beautiful black and floral gown, that beautiful Barnes girl belted out River Deep and Mountain High. Hot ain’t the word. The audience went wild. It was a top signoff for the Gala and teaser for the rest of our wonderful winter festival.
Samela Harris
When: 7 Jun
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
More info: cabaret.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
Festival dates: 7 to 22 Jun