Sven Ratzke. A show with the music of David Bowie. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 22 Jun 2016
You'll have to skip reading this review and go straight to the box office; there were only 3 seats left as of Thursday morning for the remaining 3 shows, so get on your pogo stick.
In his return to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, direct from Bendigo, Sven Ratzke is the eponymous Starman, the extra-terrestrial who was afraid to blow our minds in the David Bowie song. Starman opened with his band comprising bass guitar, drums and keyboard/effects in a startling outfit, looking like a black pitcher plant in ill-fitting tights. While all his costumes were exotic, they lacked the panache of Bowie's threads.
The Starman connected the Bowie songs with a wonderfully wandering and bizarre narrative; a peripatetic sojourn from earthly cities and distant stars. The songs and the prose had a distinctly celestial theme and Ratzke's nuclear-fueled rocket energy took us amongst the spheres. Ratzke and his musical director Charly Zastrau shone Bowie through a particular type of jazzy prism, where the familiar melodies mixed with fascinating arrangements. After the round of applause following a nostalgic number, the Starman temporarily transformed into an appreciative Sven the showman, which was very sweet. Sven harked back to his Dutch/German base with amusing mimicry. The Starman is a wonderful invention from a Bowie song and a touching homage to the great man.
P.S. In August, Sven is doing an incredible 27 shows at the Edinburgh Festival, so get in your spaceship and blast off with Starman.
David Grybowski
When: 22 to 25 June
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Lisa Fischer and Grand Baton. Dunstan Playhouse. 18 Jun 2016
Lisa Fischer has performed on the biggest stages in the world. She played to more than 500,000 people in Rio, and to sold-out stadiums from London to Berlin, the US to Australia. Since 1989 – along with keyboard player Chuck Leavell and bassist Darryl Jones – Fischer has been an indispensible part of The Rolling Stones touring band. Stones fans will never forget her show-stopping solo at the Adelaide Oval, reprising Merry Clayton’s legendary vocal riff in Gimme Shelter – and making it indelibly her own. Fischer was also a long time singer for Luther Vandross and accompanied Tina Turner and Sting.
We now know much more about Lisa Fischer – along with Merry Clayton, Darlene Love , Claudia Lennear and other rock vocalists – from Morgan Neville’s 2014 Oscar–winning documentary, 20 Feet from Stardom, a memorable, and provocative exploration of the role (and plight) of back-up singers who stand near the spotlight but never quite in it.
Lisa Fischer has always had a solo career – her first album, So Intense, was released back in 1991 - but it has had its interruptions. Scheduled to play last year’s Cabaret Festival, she then cancelled because of Stones concert commitments. At last, in 2016, Adelaide audiences have the chance to see her -
centre stage in all her brilliance.
And surely there is no better time. Touring with soul-psychedelic trio, Grand Baton, Fischer is undoubtedly at a career high point, with a cabaret scale show which is breathtaking in its intimacy and technical flair.
The Saturday night set in the Dunstan Playhouse begins with greetings and introductions. As the stage fills with a purple haze of downspots, Fischer makes immediate connection with the audience and identifies the band – Aidan Carroll on bass, drummer Thierry Arpino and musical director and multi-instrumentalist J.C. Maillard. Then she begins vocalising – humming, trilling, entwining her voice with Maillard’s acoustic guitar as they begin a ten minute exploration of Amy Grant’s Breath of Heaven (Mary’s Song). “I have travelled many moonless nights / I am waiting in that silent prayer. “ It has both a gospel gravity and a spiralling ethereal questioning as Fischer reveals both her strength and fragility.
Using dual microphones – one for reverb and echo effects, the other for her soaring multi-octave vocal excursions, - Fischer is a marvel of expression and control. From bell-like soprano to sultry contralto, it is claimed she spans a range from A2 to G6.
From drummer Arpino’s intro, using timpani mallets, and Carroll’s driving upright bass, Fischer leads into Eric Bibb’s blues classic, Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down. J-C Maillard takes up his SazBass (an eight stringed electroacoustic instrument based on the Turkish baglama) to add some tasty syncopation as Fischer’s mercurial vocals redefine the blues for the 21st century.
Several mash-ups follow – Freedom, and Railroad Earth’s Bird in a House - featuring great drumming and Maillard, fleet-fingered on guitar and Rhodes keyboard. Then, the band goes full throttle into Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll. Fischer is in full belter mode and Maillard reaches for his fuzz pedal for some jazzy Hendrixisms - before segue-ing into Fischer’s own Grammy-winning soul ballad, How Can I Ease the Pain.
With her long association with Jagger and Richards, it is hardly surprising that Lisa Fischer has become an inventive interpreter of their songs. Miss You, Jagger’s pouty lament from Some Girls, is expertly extruded by Fischer into a performance that begins with a catchy groove from the band, bass and drum rippling, guitar riffing, and Maillard adding some Daft Punk beatboxing. Fischer’s majestic voice then soars once again, as the four musicians carry us through eleven minutes of jazz-rock virtuosity.
“I was born in a crossfire hurricane” drawls Fischer as the band sashay into Jumping Jack Flash, Thierry Arpino’s crisp drumming etching the beat with Carroll’s rich bass and Maillard playing his SazBass like an electric oud and adding multilayered dervish Qawwali vocals, as Jack becomes a very different kind of gas, gas, gas. Fischer glides and twirls as a song, thumped out on concert stages for forty years, transforms into a modal earth dance, an ecstatic celebration with a high priestess of song officiating.
The set closes with: “The lights are on/you’re not home”. You might as well face it – it’s Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love. From a sweet, insinuating intro Fischer’s powerful vocal climbs again – stronger than Tina, more majestic than Adele. The trio -Maillard in full Fender whine, the rhythm section rock solid and increasingly urgent - carries her through surge after surge, wave after wave of rock and roll electricity.
And for an encore – beginning with Fischer’s sweet crooning over a trickling acoustic guitar: “Childhood living is easy to do / The things you wanted I bought them for you / Graceless lady you know who I am / You know I can’t let you slip through my hands“ Wild Horses. This time without Mick’s faux twang and nasal whine, but deconstructed and reassembled as a soul aria that envelopes us in sound and feeling; too lucid to be called bewitching, too open-hearted to be mesmerising.
Lisa Fischer is a superb artist and Grand Baton are perfect collaborators. The audience was on its feet for the final curtain. We all knew we had seen and heard something exceptional - and splendid. Wild horses couldn’t drag us away.
Murray Bramwell
When: 18 to 19 Jun
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Festival Centre. Festival Theatre Stage. 17 June 2016
This is a playful and delightful show by British singer, pianist and songwriter, Joe Stilgoe. Looking sharp in a three piece suit, he opened on the piano with a jaunty medley of movie tunes - it was great fun to silently recall the names of the films - and there was immediate engagement as he even gave you clues. Joe's excellent bandsmen on the bass and drums then accompanied him on a jazzy version of the music from the dance contest scene in Pulp Fiction, followed by a medley of cartoon music, which also got the jazz treatment. They deftly and comically juggled a number of sound effect instruments.
Joe has been playing piano since the age of 5 and was schooled by his father, Richard, who apparently was a British national treasure for his satirical songs on a Sunday radio program, and his mother, Annabel Hunt, an opera singer. Even Hal David's and Burt Bacharach's Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, from Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid benefited from Joe's jazz treatment. Joe was the only one of the five kids who went into show business and he noted his strong recollection of the velvety seats of the local cinema that he so frequently attended.
A whacky medley of '80s movie music showed how a few bars - even a few notes - can open a floodgate of memories. Newly arranged songs from a few of his favourite movies were introduced with context on the film and an explanation of why Joe liked it. There was even a pretend contest of producers' theme songs, and The Advertiser's Patrick McDonald was the only one to get Warner Brothers'. Joe called him Warner Brothers after that.
The musicianship was impeccable and while so many of the songs were familiar, Joe and the band conveyed them in stimulating jazzy arrangements with high energy. Joe is a sweet personality and it was a pleasure to share with him, and the audience, his love of movies and their music.
David Grybowski
When: 17 to 19 June
Where: Festival Theatre Stage
Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre Stage. 18 Jun 2016
The hook for me to see this fascinating show was that I was in the middle of high school all hormones a'leaping when Bat Out Of Hell was released in 1977. There was no better way to get revved up for a night on the turps with the boys in downtown Toronto than a few doobies, a number of brewskis, and a nostril-flaring good long listen to Meat Loaf waxing lyrically on motorcycles and mayhem. Even the album cover sets the heart aflutter. I'm listening to it now as I write, decades later, and I'm re-palpitating. However, I wasn't that interested then in the fine print - "Songs by Jim Steinman." (Two years of "seeing paradise by the dashboard light" were followed by the break-up with the only girl I went out with in high school. I returned to the album to boozily lament with Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad, but that's another story.)
In a return to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Toby Francis opened excitingly with the eponymous song from the album, accompanied by musical director and arranger Andrew Worboys banging away at the piano. There was nobody else on stage at this point and the wall of sound of recorded percussion and God-knows-what-else nearly masked the fact that Toby might have forgotten to turn on the wireless on his Fender Stratocaster. No matter, it wasn't needed much in that song and was noticeable soon enough.
Toby introduced himself as Jim Steinman and the narrative of the show was Jim writing and trying to get his work-in-progress rock musical, Neverland - based on Peter Pan - off the ground a few years after Bat Out Of Hell. Toby, aided sometimes by vivacious vamp diva Josie Lane, belted out some songs from the stillborn musical with frightening energy. Josie performed very passionately, to say the least. Along the way we are introduced to famous Steinman songs, like A Total Eclipse Of The Heart (Bonnie Tyler's biggest career hit), and Making Love Out Of Nothing At All (first released by Air Supply in 1983). Toby paints a portrait of a misunderstood musical genius, embittered by disputes and discouraging remarks. Toby's own genius must be recognised in realising that Steinman is a great story to tell, and sampling his oeuvre in an hour-long narrative is a remarkable feat. A perusal on Wikipedia of Steinman's six decades of musicology spun my head, it is so rich in projects and musical relationships. Not only that, Steinman's work is pop-Wagner, and Toby and Andrew, with Josie, raise voices to the occasion and put on quite a show.
They bookended with the pop duet You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night) from Bat Out Of Hell to highly appreciative customer approval - mostly everybody knew the words when invited to sing along. Bravo!
PS Newsflash - Toby Francis has been cast to play Charlie in the Australian premiere season of the Broadway and West End hit, Kinky Boots, at Melbourne's Her Majesty's Theatre in October 2016.
David Grybowski
When: 18 to 19 June
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Sydney Theatre Company. Her Majesty's Theatre. 15 Jun 2016
The Wharf Reviue, written by stalwarts Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott, is a Sydney treasure - celebrating 15 years and 21 shows this season. Lampooning Australian politics and some other key current affairs figures - those from the left with a measure of mercy and those from the right with merciless mirth - I found this show to be non-stop funny and a hit of my Cabaret Festival.
With Amanda Bishop (famous for her Julia Gillard of the ABC miniseries, At Home With Julia, shown in September 2011 - Gee, was it that long ago already?), the show goes like a rocket because of the team's incredible talent for mimicry, strong vocals and singing voices. The show begins in the Howard Bunker - the final hours of the 2007 election - and takes us right up to the present PM. Live performances were separated by filmed entertainment to allow costume and personality changes. As well as being a review of national politics and issues, the Revue reprised their past successes.
Throughout the political narrative, there are copious outstanding performances. Biggins created an incredibly credible Costello, to be followed by an uncanny Keating in a sketch where Paul and Bob are in wheelchairs plotting a political roadmap at the old folk's home. Finally, Biggins comes out as Tony Abbott, and I can't believe my eyes how he apes the body language. Scott's sketch of Howard is hilarious, complete with pouting lower lip, and his Rudd is side-splitting in a parody of Gillard's and Rudd's complex psychodrama in the context of Phantom Of The Opera. Forsythe's private school-proper Alexander Downer was delicious while his rap as Christopher Pyne accurately betrayed the latter's persona. In a spoof of Les Miserables - called Les Liberables - political correctness stalls the insurrection. Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart gets what's coming to them in a duet of entitlement to the nations' resources, portrayed with delightful verisimilitude (catch it on YouTube). The classics were not ignored with politicised Joyce and Dylan Thomas. How about arts funding-wrecker George Brandis in a tutu? The cast ended the cavalcade with a live Goon Show. Gosh, I could go on describing sketch after sketch, each performed with clarity and top quality performance.
Not to be missed. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 15-18 June
Where: Her Majesty's Theatre
Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au