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
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Shane Anthony and Critical Stages. Dunstan Playhouse. 15 Jun 2016
Marie Duplessis went from dirt poor waif to courtesan and much adored party girl of Paris in the 1800s, but died as she began life, poor and dead at 23.
How did her story begin? With a pony, an apple and a wealthy man.
Songs for The Fallen celebrates Duplessis and the era she emblazoned with her tempestuous passion, wit and guile in a fine, wild style.
Writer Sheridan Harbridge’s material is rich in playful comic intensity, perfectly suited to the production’s smooth moving blend of vaudeville, melodrama-laced burlesque, superbly balanced by Basil Hogios’ style perfect baroque pop score which would not be out of place any time after 1847 when style was high - the 1920s and 30s particularly.
Lisa Mimmocchi’s costumes and Michael Hankin’s fabulous round bed boudoir set, dotted with fantastic prop pieces work brilliantly in blessing a show stopper performance space with a sense of raffish, scrappy, decayed gentility in which Duplessis’s life ended.
Director Shane Anthony ties up all these magnificent strands with great assurance, delivering a crowd pleaser of a production.
Harbridge not only wrote the work, she is Marie Duplessis on stage. Her performance was a grand delight of high energy in song, fully charged by an electric, raw, powerfully alive characterisation. Not to be outdone, Ben Gerrard and Garth Holcombe offer equally strong performances in support in multiple roles.
Songs for The Fallen is that rare, happy mix of the musical and cabaret daring, as true cabaret should, to challenge to the way things are in the most seductive, subversive way possible.
David O’Brien
When: 15 to 16 June
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival with Master of Ceremonies Robyn Archer. World Premiere. Dunstan Playhouse. 13 Jun 16
The Weill File was The ‘Adelaide Cabaret Festival Gala’ for hard core cabaret aficionados of the Weimer Republic era and its great antagonist, Kurt Weill and all he inspired after him.
The heart of attraction of Weill for audiences and artists is his ability to assign brutally realist, starkly politicised lyrics concerning a genuinely brutal world with a score seemingly apposite the lyric, never failing to keep a listener hooked to it.
Fittingly, Australia’s most renowned expert on, and performer of, Cabaret from this era, Robyn Archer, was MC at an event which not only celebrated the work of Weill, but opened up the books, as it were, on the extraordinary diversity of his output from those Weimer days, right up to his Hollywood career.
Bringing such things to life on stage is a significant challenge. One acquitted superbly by a medley of Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2016 artists banded together, including Eddie Perfect, Ali McGregor, Barb Jungr, Die Roten Punkte, Hew Parham and John Thorn. The six piece band accompanying them was no slouch either; Adelaide Cabaret 2016 artists’ class as well.
Given all Archer had to do was sing one and a half songs (and one would normally expect her to do the whole show, given her famous name is on the banner), what a joy that was that’s all she sang.
Hollywood glamour blended with political angst? Ali McGregor proved she could do that, Eddie Perfect too. Barb Jungr, the capable interpreter of an even later angry political era, was so totally in her element she practically stole the stage. Die Roten Punkte did things with an arrangement involving a Fender guitar with reverb Weill would have adored and Hew Parham ripped the soul of cabaret to shreds while John Thorn quietly addressed its most childlike fears.
David O’Brien
When: 13 June
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 12 Jun 2016
For the first time in the Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s history, the iconic Variety Gala has been expanded to include two new revues - a closing night festival affectionately entitled The Last Galah, with a focus on Australian music, and an afternoon Family Gala.
Ensuring the littlest cabaret lovers don’t miss out, the Family Gala is a child-friendly version of the opening night event, hosted by festival artistic directors Ali McGregor and Eddie Perfect. Both have a solid pedigree in children’s entertainment; McGregor with Jazzamatazz! and Perfect on television’s Playschool, and they lead the festivities like pros.
Featuring a subset of the same performers as the Variety Gala, the family edition included Jitterbug and Peppa Pig theme song in a performance from Miss Behave’s Gameshow; rollicking rollerskating from Amy G; and plenty of opportunities for the little ones to join in – including a ball fight to close out the show!
Live theatre proponent, Ali McGregor, remarked at the Variety Gala that kids should be given every opportunity to experience live theatre – her hilarious take on Bjork’s It’s Oh So Quiet proving that she’s not afraid to put her money where her mouth is!
The Family Gala is a great opportunity for families and kids alike to sample the wares of the festival’s performers in a safe and encouraging environment. The activities surrounding the event made it all the more immersive for the little ones and a great day at the theatre.
Nicole Russo
When: 12 Jun
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed