Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 15 Jun 2023
I don’t know much about Kate Bush, let alone performer Sarah-Louise Young, but I know a helluva good show when I see one! Research indicates Kate made it big in 1978 at the age of 19 with chart-topper Wuthering Heights. She was in the UK Singles Chart for four weeks and was the first female artist to achieve #1 with her own song! But it took until this year to see her inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Sarah-Louise ran amuck through the oeuvre moving like a pixie on steroids. The show is a kaleidoscope of theatrical trickery with lights, costume, dance and audience participation all coming off with cracker timing. Really unbelievable. And the voice! You are nowhere without a semblance to Kate’s art pop dramatic soprano. An Evening… takes the tribute show to a whole new level because it’s not about impersonation; it really is a loving embrace.
Kate’s movements amply visible in her numerous videos on YouTube are eccentric and ripe for parody, but Sarah-Louise rendered a reverence that was slightly tongue-in-cheek. She is clearly starstruck by Kate and polled the audience on their fandom. Fans are collectively schooled as Fish People – there are so many reasons available for this bizarre appellation that it’s better left as a mystery.
Sarah-Louise gave a humourous quick lesson in Kate’s favourite moves while dressed in signature flowing apparel. She is constantly in motion and talking to the audience with many excursions round the cabaret tables. She fetched a couple of 37 years to slow dance while she sang, re-creating the video. Kate’s crazy dance moves are channeled with delightful dexterity.
For the final song of Wuthering Heights, Sarah-Louise simply let the audience sing nearly all of it, which they did joyously in celebration of the famous songstress. This was a noble act on Sarah-Louise’s part – to take yourself out of the picture and let each audience member relate to Kate in their own special way. Kate’s spirit in the room was already well conjured; contra to the title, it’s actually an evening with Kate Bush.
Sarah-Louise is the consummate cabaret performer, highly skilled in all its aspects – singing, movement, costume, performing and audience interaction. Did I mention the hair? She has brought this show from the UK for her first time in Australia. Hats off to director Russell Lucas who no doubt gave the green light to the complex theatrical elements.
If this isn’t the hit of the festival, I’d be very surprised. Double bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 15 to 17 Jun 2023
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: cabaret.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 16 Jun 2023
She’s the last one standing.
Lionel Williams, Ernie Sigley, Kevin Crease, and Roger Cardwell are gone and that gracious Ian Fairweather is deliberately lost in the mists of time.
Now it lives as favoured nostalgia.
It was Channel 9’s Adelaide Tonight which performed for the workers at the opening of the Festival Theatre fifty years ago this month. And it is Adelaide Tonight which is back with bells on as a variety show in the Adelaide Cabaret Festival - again.
Anne “Willsy” Wills and her 19 Logies are indomitable. She’s 79 already, and not shy about it. She’s kept her voice and her idiosyncratic sense of style. Hence, performing in duets with her beaut sister, Susan, it is in homemade costumes of sequins and feathers.
They are adorable and the CabFest audience whoops with love for them. Having shown the audience a 70s Pru Acton mini frock worn by Sue entertaining the troops in Vietnam, they harmonise on the song Among My Souvenirs with sisterly ease and beauty.
In many ways, Adelaide Tonight at the CabFest is Bob Downe AKA Mark Trevorrow’s show, although he was never a Channel 9 live TV star back in the day. He functions as MC and star of the new Adelaide Tonight. He has the old 70s wig and exaggeratedly corny polyester attire (one outfit no less than Butterick pattern 3459, he reveals). He has all the moves and the vocal slides of his parody persona. And, he is funny. As ever. He’s been doing it for decades and, while it actually is old, it never feels old. He nailed it back in the 80s and it stands as a great, nay classic, Australian comic characterisation. One would say it was iconic, but the icon de jour rocked up onstage on opening night. Hans, the Germanic superstar was just crowned CabFes Icon 2023. Don’t you Want me, Baby? he sings. Everybody wants him. He gives. The audience takes. He is big, sparkling inside and out, witty, accomplished - and ours. He straps on the accordion and the audience thrills. Of all instruments to deliver millennial stardom, but there we are. Hans belts out Treaty and audience members join with “yes”. He is sounding better than ever. Aussie songs ring forth.
Bob Downe has another friend for the show: Pastel Vespa. Lovely crystalline voice, good dancer, quirky character with a solo of When Doves Cry and then a duet with Downe.
Fabien Clark comes as an unexpected delight. Says he’s a “bogan hippie”. A mass of dreadlocks and conventional attire. While one is coming to terms with his look, one has been beguiled by his diabolical standup routine. Kids’ crafts will never seem the same again.
Accompanying a thoroughly entertaining variety show, the Adelaide Tonight Band of Sam Leske, Bev Kennedy, Chris Neale and Nick Sinclair adorn the stage, along with a vintage TV camera and screen for vintage Yo Yo and Safcol ads. Nostalgia blends with the new in a fast, impeccably paced hour.
And, here it comes - a really triumphant new turn, a wildly alternative addition to those good olde days of live telly variety. Therein, Willsy Wills had always been the cute and funny weather girl and popular singer. Stripping down to black corset with red bows and a wild red fascinator was never a “thing” in those good old days. No. But in 2023 Willsy is stretching her wings and her vocals with a bit of the old Weimar style. Down comes the register. Down. How low can she go? Suddenly, it’s “move over Robyn Archer. Willsy Wills has dived into your territory".
And, she’s fabulous.
Adelaide Tonight turns out to be very “today”.
Bright, funny, fresh, clever, warm, and not a bit old school or homespun.
It will be running two more nights through the CabFest with different entertainers making guest appearances. Rightly, it is packing in the audiences so grab a ticket pronto. You won’t be sorry.
Samela Harris
When: 16 to 18 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: cabaret.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Banquet Room 15 Jun 2023
Mark Nadler is back in town.
Thank dog and all powers that be,
He is one of THE great showmen. For a while he was a regular at the Adelaide Cab Fests and we took him for granted.
Then there was a decade-long hiatus. Woe.
Being back in a Nadler audience was the most invigorating and soul-restoring experience. This was for one-night-only The Old Razzle Dazzle performance in the Banquet Room. He’s following on with two of his famous Hootenanny shows.
But, oh, the pleasure of a one-man concert, beautifully and carefully contrived with a theme of liars and lies and conmen.
There will be one truth in this show. See if you can pick it, he jokes
From Pinocchio to Trump went he, commanding and eliciting magic from that mellow old grand piano. His musicianship is such that he can kill on the keys while all the time eyeballing the audience and, for heaven’s sake, doing a spot of percussionistic seated tapdancing at the same time.
And that barely touches the surface of his skills as an entertainer. Consummate and then some.
One swoons in ardent fandom as he pairs politics with fairy stories, love and loss with victory and fury, belting out big, big songs connected by the solid thread of a maddened morality.
Why do we lie to our children? Tooth fairy, Father Christmas. And wasn’t Jiminy Cricket worse than Pinocchio as a liar?
When You Wish Upon a Star. Pretty song, but, ironic perhaps? Blizzards of lies pour forth and he whams the piano and sings in a lather of passionate commonsense.
He’s satire and musicianship, he’s cabaret at its essence.
He delivers a rollingstock of relevance and wit with an interlude of mellow reflection before rolling forth yet again with The Great Pretender and a wickedly funny Little Tin Box song of corruption and deception. From George Washington’s cherry tree to Goebbels, to the value of illusion and the oftentimes need just not to know. We laughed and laughed. We went misty and reflective. And then, of course, a great showman has to have a grand finale…. It was what everyone had awaited. Glorious, daring, twinkle toe, razzle dazzle - original, fearless, funny, brilliant.
And, just because he is such an impeccable pro, he not only praised, and so rightly, the contemporary CabFest transformation of the Banquet Room, but also he gave a list of credits mentioning all the techs and backstage crew by name, oh, except for that one Irish surname, She’d challenged him before the show that he wouldn’t remember it. And if you’ve ever seen a star kicking himself.
Good man and true.
Welcome back, Mr Nadler. We’ve missed you. Please don’t leave us again. You’re a bloody cabaret pinup.
Samela Harris
When: 15 Jun
Where: Banquet Room
Bookings: Closed
Mark Nadler - Hootenanny
When: 16 to 17 Jun
Where: Banquet Room
Bookings: cabaret.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
Adelaide Festival Centre. Dunstan Playhouse. 14 June 2023
Elvis didn’t write any songs himself and only a few did he co-write, so the “songbook” refers to his famous audial oeuvre. Music meister, famed composer, musical director and educator Paul Grabowsky (no relation) gives Elvis the jazz treatment with mixed success. For some songs, it just seems inappropriate, while for others it adds class. And tribute shows are always a balance between giving the fans the familiar and something new. There is no denying the sheer creativity of Grabowsky’s arrangements and the virtuosity of his musicians. It is great fun to guess what the heck the song is, given the jazzed-up introduction, and then to smile at some recognisable notes.
Grabowsky grabbed a couple of household names to sing his songs. Joe Camilleri has been blowing the blues, rock, and R&B with his sax since the 60s and made quite a few bands famous, ie: Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons (he’s Jo) and The Black Sorrows. Debora Conway was in grade school when Joe was playing with The King Bees. She won Best Female Artist in the 1992 ARIA Music Awards for her debut album Spring of Pearls and garnered numerous subsequent nominations for the following nine albums of her career.
Debra Conway started the Elvis tribute with a torturous version of Burning Love that I don’t think even she wanted to sing. But she had something on her mind. Right after the song, Debra delivered this incredible rant against the tabloid press for reporting she was strung out in some hotel room when she had the flu. Then she focused on the source of the story, an anonymous chambermaid or something, and said she’d like to “break the neck of the son-of-a-bitch,” and closed with “pull [his/her] God damn tongue out by the roots.” Well, you can imagine, oxygen left the theatre in the collective gasp from the audience and the musicians. Not the right thing to do.
Things went better after that, but slowly. It took a while for the audience to click with the new arrangements, especially when they made the song unfamiliar or thematically at odds with memory, and Debra’s extraordinary rant. Joe was next and they took turns with only a few chorus duets. Joe never stopped chomping on something in his mouth and it was amazing he could play or sing and chew at the same time. I don’t think they even teach that at WAAPA; Joe is definitely his own man. His tender saxophone and emotive crooning can be magic.
Joe and Debra took a lesson from the band and thought – if they don’t know the music by heart, why should I? Both relied heavily on song sheets mounted on distracting music stands, and songs seemed pinched when they were unsure. Joe had his head buried so deep in the music stand in the encore you couldn’t see his face.
Joe gave an evocative In The Ghetto in his inimitable style. Debra hit her straps with a moving and deeply emotional plea in I Need Your Love. This was the highlight of the night and was given an especially appreciative round of applause. Bravo! She followed this with an equally fetching Suspicious Minds with Joe pitching in for the latter choruses. Now the show was cooking but it was three-quarters over.
In this tag-team songfest, the skinny programme notes leaves blame unknown for having the singers retreat from their solos to their separate corners stage left and stage right, sitting without even a flower or a candle on their own little cabaret table looking forlornly like they were waiting for a lover who wasn’t coming.
The show definitely lifted as time went by and the night ended with raucous applause. My guess is that the sturdy appreciation was for Grabowsky’s arrangements, the band’s musicianship, and the role that Debra and Joe have played in the audience’s music-listening lives, and lesser for this particular show.
David Grybowski
When: 14 to 15 Jun
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. The Banquet Room. 11 Jun 2023
Eddie Perfect is fascinated with the creative process. A few years ago, at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival after-hours venue, Perfect did a gig where he revealed the process of creating a musical. In another show, he shared his experiences writing the music and lyrics for Beetlejuice (Broadway musical) - for which he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Original Score - and how he stepped in to help out with King Kong, the 2013 musical, also on Broadway. It’s a good night out to hear his sonorous voice still amused and amazed with his musical career, and to hear a few songs.
In The Blank Page…, Eddie does it again with a catholic panel of fellow highly awarded and recognised writers. Eddie probes the panel with lots of questions summarised by, “How did you do it?”
The highly accomplished Virginia Gay was the penultimate personality to perform. She had a go at a song whilst wiping away her considerably golden curly locks from her self-described chiseled Greek goddess visage. She is full of beans – a “pure joy-love” engine - and says she wrote her way out of Covid lockdown. Julia remembers from a clowning workshop, “Failure is vital! Do not take the honour away from failure. Sit in it. Be publicly vulnerable. The audience will love it!”
Gillian Cosgriff was first up at the piano after a discussion about how useful comedy training is to creating musical comedy for the theatre. Tickling the 88s and with great emotional import, she played her composition, The Door, about finishing off a relationship – “I wish this door would become a wall.” The best song of the session and Bravo!
Michelle Brasier of Wagga Wagga couldn’t agree more about the comedy training. She is an accomplished stand-up who won the Directors Choice Award at the Sydney Comedy Festival in 2021. Perfect describes her work as “vulnerable truth-telling” - a big wrap. Her song parodying the generational IDs of Millennials, etc, sounded as serious as Julia’s but was counterposed with hilarious lyrics.
Americans Lee and Brad Spencer are married to each other and to teaming up in musical comedy. Brad’s laconic humour and deadpan contrasted to Lee’s overt enthusiasm. What is obvious is that their marriage is all beer and skittles. Their comments on LA vs NY were insightful.
Musical director Dean Bryant and lyricist and director Matthew Frank are also a life and musical theatre partnership. Eddie Perfect credits them with inspiring him with their musical theatre creation, Prodigal, which the duo workshopped while going to WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts). They sampled for us a song under construction that Bryant introduced with an apology that it only has four chords and super-simple arrangements. That turned out to be true and the lyrics and singing by Frank were, well, let’s hope this isn’t their best work.
Eddie Perfect finished off with his All The Way that was strong in melody and a perfect ending. His earlier song about taking out the street-side garbage bins – inspired by a conversation with Baz Luhrman during Strictly Ballroom – reeked. But that was a long time ago.
The afternoon session was the best motivational seminar for which one would pay $1000 to attend. In the process of inquiring how songs and musical theatre springs from creative inspiration, we learned about the role of failure and how to handle it, how to keep trying and to keep your dignity and/or humility, how and when to collaborate and how to move on. Another theme was that most underwent tertiary acting training but eventually found their creative voices best expressed by writing their own material. It was a pleasure to sit in the company of these creative, open and honest artists discussing the craft to which they have dedicated their lives.
David Grybowski
When: 11 Jun
Where: The Banquet Room
Bookings: Closed