The Desert Plea

Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Adelaide Festival Theatre Quartet Bar. 24 Jun 2023

The Desert Plea is a ‘work in development’ – the director and producer of the show (Matthew Briggs, Under the Microscope) is very clear about that – but ‘work in development’ almost sounds like an apology, and this show needs none of that. It’s not yet perfect, but it’s future is exciting, and the large audience in the Quartet Bar are already singing its praise.

The Desert Plea is the story of Alice, a musician who ventures into the South Australian bush to an almost ghost-like town with a mission to suggest to its residents a different slant on the possibilities of living their lives. Alice does this through her music. Her mission might be considered arrogant, as she assumes the role of an uninvited saviour, but the experience is cathartic, and she uncovers hidden aspects of herself. In many respects, she experiences healing. Indeed, she pleas to be reconciled with herself and her unique view of a changing world.

Musician/singer Fleur Green and poet David Chapple have collaborated to write original songs and poetry to give life to Alice’s journey, and the result is very affecting. Green sings her songs as she accompanies herself at the piano, and accomplished local actor Rory Walker gives his voice to Chapple’s well-crafted verse. Song. Poem. Song. Poem. And the story unfolds.

Green sings and plays well, but the sound engineering was not always sympathetic to her vocals, playing, and the formal structure of the music. Indeed, some of the early numbers were difficult to hear clearly, and the verse that followed was needed to derive a sense of what was just sung. This will improve as the work is further developed, perhaps with the addition of other instruments to smooth out the sonic balance. The audience however did not shy away from the challenge, and many could be seen intently listening through closed eyes so that the visual would give way to the aural.

Green is the focus of attention – she is alone on stage with her piano and microphone, and the attention does not appear to sit comfortably on her shoulders. Her occasional patter is mildly self-conscious but when she plays the piano and sings, all of that is instantly forgotten. She becomes a different person. She becomes Alice.

Her compositions traverse a range of different musical styles. There are heavily syncopated and complex rhythms, and there are dazzlingly accurate arpeggios up and down the piano sitting under carefully constructed lyrics. The poetry is also complex at times, with polyrhythms that have life breathed into them by Walker’s expert phrasing and enunciation. It’s almost Sondheim-esque at times. These are often followed up by empathetic music of the same ilk.

Arguably, The Desert Plea is more theatre more than it is cabaret, and if that is true, then the next iteration of the show will benefit from more attention being paid to production elements that enhance the story telling: a narrator in person, rather than a recorded voice; projected images to underline the narrative of the poetry; additional musicians; enhanced sound engineering that treats the show as theatre rather than a gig.

The Desert Plea has a big heart. It puts some very important issues ‘under the microscope’ (pun intended), but perhaps tries to say too much. It has the very real potential to become an important piece of theatre.

Kym Clayton

When: 24 June

Where: Quartet Bar

Bookings: Closed

Prizmatism

Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre Banquet Bar. 21 Jun 2023

American chanteuse Amelia Zirin-Brown (aka Rizo) is more than a cabaret singer, much more. Her style is reminiscent of Australia’s Meow Meow, where the singing is important, but the antics and banter are more so. Arguably, Rizo’s interaction with her audience is pivotal to the structure of her show, her celebrity, and her appeal.

For this reviewer, this performance was my first experience of Rizo, and it was an eye opener. She is part singer, comedian, burlesque-artist, social commentator, and raconteur. Rizo is the full package, and she clearly has her devoted followers.

She is first heard backstage, and after a verse or two, she emerges through the curtains at the back of the small stage in the Banquet bar. She is dressed flamboyantly but tastefully and introduces her all-Aussie five-piece band (drums, keys, reeds, guitar and double bass). They are good, very good, and alert to Rizo spontaneously moving ‘off-topic’ – usually mid verse.

Rizo has flown into Australia from Europe via China, and she doesn’t recommend it. She pronounces that “Jet lag is a real thing”, and subliminally puts the thought in our minds that maybe we’ll experience her limbering up before she really hits her straps. She shimmies, and for whatever reason decides a group-shimmy involving the entire audience is just what the occasion needs. After all, it’s the eve of the winter equinox, and its cold and raining outside. We need bewitching and warming up, and although the excellent Adelaide Hill wines on offer in the foyer are doing their best to get our blood pumping and hearts racing, a little exercise wont’ go amiss! “I can see you if you’re not doing it!”, she threatens with a broad smile on her face and an evil glint in her eye. Naturally we comply. The last thing any of us want is to be singled out and made fun of, as some second-rate stand-up comedian would do. But Rizo is not that. And the reality is that she singles everyone out – that’s her skill – but its more an act of care and devotion to her audience than anything else.

Clearly the exercise has warmed her up because she then strips on stage as if it was a topless bar, and changes into another flamboyant costume. The strip tease is amusing more than gratuitously salacious. The gloves are removed seductively, to reveal another layer of gloves. One is ‘eaten’ and then ‘regurgitated’, but it has somehow morphed into gay-pride colours! This segues into heart-felt, well-observed and oh-so-funny comments about the parlous state of conservative politics in the US of A and the brazen and unacceptable attacks on diversity. This is not the only occasion Rizzo gets overtly political in her performance or makes salient remarks about the state of the human condition.

Rizzo decries what she calls the culture of loneliness in our society but doesn’t sheet home the blame to the pandemic and what it did to all of us. She hints at something more menacing in the guise of unhinged political world leaders. Rizzo croons Queen Bee and channels Barbara Streisand in the process, and the lyrics are a metaphor for her condemnation of evil men such as Putin and Trump. (Interesting bedfellows!)

Other songs flow seamlessly through her narrative (some her own), and her vocal sound production is fascinating. At one point her voice sounds like a glass harmonica, and the backing ensemble complement it beautifully, especially the keyboard.

Meow Meow crowd surfed in last year’s Cabaret Festival, but Rizzo trips the light fantastic on tabletops in this year’s, availing herself of what might be on offer to drink, as she goes! She chooses members of the audience with whom to slow dance. Her banter is seductive, fresh, and familiar, as she almost intones Close to You and for a moment we know what it feels like to be in an intimate Montmartre-esque cabaret club.

At this point, the jet lag is shed, and Rizzo has hit her straps. Song after song (or excerpts) sign post her narrative. She sings the poignant Ghost of the Château Marmont by Ariana Savalas (Telly’s daughter) and it perhaps serves as comparison for Rizzo’s own search for her place in the world, as she tells the story of her early life as a singer trying to establish herself.

As the show draws to a close, she sits at a small table and sings a final song and “spreads her wings” as she gazes deeply into a mirror. As she does she applies fresh lipstick and dons an extravagant headdress that sparkles and shines and creates multiple images of her face in its many mirrors. Perhaps this is the ‘prizmatism’ referred to in the title of her show?

Kym Clayton

When: 21 to 24 Jun
Where: Festival Theatre Banquet Room

Bookings: cabaret.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au

At What Cost

State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir Theatre. Odeon Theatre. 20 Jun 2023

A pair of muddy and weather-beaten boots sit at stage centre, evocative and waiting. There is wood, turning twisted gum branches laced around the stage’s perimeter and there is a darkened and broody backdrop.

At What Cost is a taut and powerfully written script from Nathan Maynard, and the anguish is evident within the first five minutes. A story of the return of the remains of one of the last Tasmanian Aboriginals and the battles gone through by a population sent into extinction, this is a modern-day cautionary tale, or a history lesson in horror, or a zombie apocalypse come back to life.

Mind you, it takes its time getting there. The main thrust of the play is not apparent until we are fully immersed, and that pair of boots forgotten. What happened to those boots, so evocative as the stage slipped into black at the start of the evening? Nothing. Sometime in the first five minutes Boyd (played by Luke Carroll) casually pulls them on. That is all.

The action unfolds, sometimes at what seems a determinedly slow pace - movement and blocking across the stage become repetitive and a bland accompaniment to the pace of the script, as predictable as the casual reaching for the saltshaker on the dinner table. The table, hard stage right, serves as one of the focal points, for the stage is divided into spaces (at The Odeon this is floor spaces, the audience overlooking from the raked seating). These spaces are not rooms, but they are delineated. The four actors enter and move along predetermined lines, the blocking is poor in places, but it is the strength of the script which carries it.

Boyd is a proud Aboriginal man, proud of his attempts to reclaim lands for the Palawa people of Tasmania. His wife Nala (Sandy Greenwood) is also a First Nations woman, and her performance is a nuanced and solidly supportive one. She is the quiet star of the evening, whereas Ari Maza Long as Cousin Daniel is somewhat given to histrionics, except he is strangely compliant when taken to bed by the interloper Grace, played by Alex Malone with rather too much gurning as expression for my liking. I say ‘Interloper’ because Grace seems to be a white woman, she is camping on First Nations land, and claims to be researching for her thesis. All, as they say in the classics, is not what it seems.

The question of identity, and identity politics, has tended to be an exploration - if not an accusation - from those on the right of the political spectrum, and has called out those who are deemed ‘too white’ to be considered Aboriginal. This play addresses the question from the other perspective, with Boyd asking his heart wrenching but rhetorical questions, where were you? Why are you here now?

The ‘tick-a-boxers’ or ‘claimers’ must be dealt with, but even within mob it’s a divisive issue, and the thread that runs through this production doesn’t provide any answers. What it does do is make clear that shades of grey are everywhere, but appropriation is never acceptable. The schism that this causes between the protagonists makes the shocking ending inevitable.

It’s not often that audiences gasp these days, but there are three or four places in this play where it is audible. That in itself is a job well done.

At What Cost is a difficult play to review because the revealing of one fact inevitably takes us towards revealing a great deal more. Such is the extremely simple narrative structure of the piece. Suffice to say that in dealing with genocide, and the extinguishing of the Tasmanian Aboriginals as a race, this is not going to have a comfortable ending. And yet to be taken aback by the trajectory of the story and the way it plays out in the final scene, in a gout of red and white lighting, involves a considerable suspension of disbelief.

The message of this play is so much more important than any shortcomings.

Alex Wheaton

When: 20 Jun to 1 Jul

Where: Odeon Theatre

Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au

Rockwiz Salutes Adelaide

Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. 17 Jun 2023

It is not practical to hold RocKwiz in an intimate environment with punters seated at tables enjoying their favourite tipple. Why? Because the show is so hugely popular that the venue would need to be arena sized. So, its RocKwiz in concert mode in the huge Festival Theatre playing to a sold-out audience! Yes, sold-out! And deservedly so!

This show is just so much fun. Before it even starts, it puts a beaming smile on your face as Brian Nankervis, who co-created the show and hosts it with Julia Zemiro, struts through the theatre foyer drumming up volunteers to be contestants. With his shock of silver-fox hair (compared to Don Dunstan’s in his heyday) and his distinctive brogue, he strides up and down whipping the crowd into a frenzy as he shoots off his sharp one-liners encouraging wanna-be contestants to flock to him like lemmings. Already you know you’re in for a damn good time, and two hours later when it’s all over and you’re making your way home (or to the next cabaret Festival event!) the smile on your face is still there.

RocKwiz has been around since 2005 and has been a favourite on our TV sets across a range of channels. It has received AACTA Awards and has even been nominated for a Helpmann Award. RocKwiz has also become a successful touring franchise and has staged national tours and special appearances at festivals, such as the current Adelaide Cabaret Festival.

The show runs to a formula of sorts, with potential contestants being quizzed by Nankervis to win a spot. Zemiro comes on stage and asks the contestants to identify the first concert they ever went to. For the audience it’s a walk down memory lane, but for Zemiro and Nankervis it’s an opportunity to exercise their razor-sharp wit with funny remarks and banter and to whip the audience almost into a frenzy. Then, through a series of ‘who am I’ questions, the special guests for the evening are introduced and they join the two teams at various times. Tonight’s show featured Anne ‘Willsy’ Wills, David Campbell, John Schumann, and Jess Hitchcock.

Of course, we all know Willsy, Campbell and Schumann, and have enjoyed their songbooks over many years, but Hitchcock is perhaps lesser well known. She is a Melbourne-based Indigenous singer-songwriter with a powerful mezzo-soprano voice who has sung everything from pop, country, folk, music theatre to opera (Opera Australia, and Short Black Opera). Tonight, she won a new legion of fans with an impressive rendition of Chandelier by Australian singer and songwriter Sia.

Campbell gave an excellent account of Paul Kelly’s Adelaide, which fitted the tone of the evening that purposely included as a many local references as possible in the quiz questions. (The show of course was themed as a salute to Adelaide.) Schumann of course sang the iconic protest song I Was Only 19 – we would have expected it, and wanted it – which never fails to have an impact on the listener, and many members of the audience were drawn to their feet as they applauded.

The show ticks along at an unrelenting pace, and the four-piece RocKwiz Orkestra is superb as it entertains with excerpts from songs throughout the show. Clio Renner is outstanding on the keyboard, and Olivia Jayne Bartley (aka Olympia) on lead guitar and vocals gave a soulful and skilful performance of the 1971 classic Because I Love You by The Masters Apprentices.

A highlight of the evening was the amazing general music knowledge of the contestants, especially ‘Victor’, who, as we found out, is the current manager of The Masters Apprentices! One could almost be forgiven for assuming he was a plant! And he has a trigger finger on the buzzer!

What a professional show! Ninety minutes passed by in the blink of an eye, and Zemiro and Nankervis had us eating out of their hands. Whether you are a popular music aficionado or a novice, do not, I repeat, do not pass up an opportunity to enjoy a live RocKwiz event. It is an absolute blast!

Kym Clayton

When: 17 Jun

Where: Festival Theatre

Booking: Closed