Frank Woodley and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. 11 Jun 2016
Maybe you weren't up at noon the day after the Cabaret Festival's opening night, but a heck of a lot of families and yours truly were, to be entertained in this oncer by one of Australia's most get-about comedians, Frank Woodley, in this Australian premiere show. Using a text by Lemony Snicket (I had to look up this bizarre appellation - it's the pen name for contemporary American novelist, Daniel Handler), "Detective" Woodley's mission was to find who murdered the composer, who was de-composing as he spoke. And Woodley had on stage with him no less than 55 musicians of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra plus conductor Brett Kelly - all suspects, and looking mighty suspicious, I might add.
Woodley questioned each section of the orchestra - first strings, second strings, violas, bass, wind, reeds, percussion, etc - and gave them each a hilarious voice and persona to answer his questions. There was a thing going on between the tuba and the harp. He weaved amongst the musos, incidentally making the kids aware of where the various parts of the orchestra are located and what they do. Brett Kelly led the ASO in fine and often rousing classical pieces relevant to and intertwined with the detective's investigations. The score has been created and assembled by contemporary American composer, Nathanial Stookey - the whole thing originally commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 2006.
This was an absolutely brilliant way to get the kids and other orchestral newbees to learn how an orchestra works, and for many it was the first time to even hear one live. Of course, the joke was that the conductor has been murdering composers for years - wherever you find a conductor, you will find a dead composer! A very funny and entertaining hour. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 11 June
Where: Festival Theatre, Festival Centre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Artspace. 11 Jun 2016
Lyricist Andrew Strano cultivates a '50s, Buddy Holly look in this world-toured show that Adelaide is finally getting a look at. Looking dapper in a blue sequin sport jacket, stretch-fit pants and complementary blue socks, Strano samples the oeuvre of songs about love that he created with composer Loclan Mackenzie-Spencer. Nothing escapes their attention in this theme - incest and self-pity are right in there with the real thing - and it stays pretty complex - musically and psychologically. Except it wasn't complex in the first overly rhymed offering, with Strano groaning with cliches, like "step at a time," and "hell of a climb." All the songs are of the contemporary musical theatre variety and while each is clever in its own way, they have an overarching stylistic similarity. You would be forgiven mistaking they had been lifted out of some Broadway show. Strano's narratives linking his songs betrayed his middle class -an addiction to social media, a rant song about Tigerair, and hoping we think about Salisbury the same way he thinks about Frankston. Pianist Robyn Womersley seemed to keep her distance while providing faultless accompaniment. Loads of the material seems to come from personal experience, and a view we would feel the same.
There was a great musical intelligence evident, but the creative team's ticker didn't talk.
David Grybowski
When: 11 June
Where: Artspace, Festival Centre
Bookings: Closed
Robyn Archer. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 11 Jun 2016
What if the crumbs of history creating a trail followed backwards by historians to decisive moments resulting in major, catastrophic events where not words, books, images or crumbling pieces of architecture but the sound and rhythm of songs?
Robyn Archer does just this with Dancing on The Volcano. Archer regaled her audience with the birthing and maturing sounds and rage of cabaret sandwiched between World War I and II in such a way as to give an incredibly real sense of the impending danger about to spew like deadly hot murderous lava over the world thanks to the rise of Hitler.
Amassing the songs of Brecht, Eisler, Grosz, Tucholsky, Wedekind, Hollaender and Heine to name a few, Archer does something with these songs beyond the short introductory remarks made to contextualise them within the flow of history.
A very real sense of a musical culture in which people are in close communication with each other, openly so in spirit and action from the late 1800s, is brought to life by Archer accompanied by Michael Morley on piano and George Butrumlis on accordion. The melding of Archer’s voice and musical accompaniment from songs of this era creates an aural sense of people dancing together, singing together and very much culturally secure.
Slowly but surely, this changes.
Archer’s voice becomes much more prominent in the mix. Stridency in lyrics and expression from an angry solo voice becomes ever so much more pronounced as Archer moves the audience along into late 1920s and through the 1930s. It’s powerful, riveting stuff. It’s also clearly more of protest than accomplishment in the world, and niggles at you.
By the time the glamorous era of the tango has been reached, one can practically feel what has happened over the decades, socially and politically, on an emotional level; it is an extraordinary achievement of communication by any artist.
Robyn Archer has offered a new way to understand the lessons of history through Dancing on The Volcano, a highly effective one reaching directly to the heart as much as the mind.
David O’Brien
When: 11 to 12 June
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Hew Parham. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Artspace. 11 Jun 2016
Imagine cabaret is a glove: a beautiful, glamorous, very expensive stylish must have, to die for glove, styled with the finest songs; sharp, biting, sexy, rebellious.
Now imagine a tall white face French clown takes that glove and turns it inside out exposing its stitching, a flaw here or there, a hidden patch; these are the things behind the glamour we usually don’t want to know about.
Welcome to Rudi’s The Rinse Cycle, where suffering is entertainment of the most miraculous order.
Under Sarah Dunn’s superb direction, Hew Parham delivers the performance of his career. His Rudi is a masterful clown willingly suffering in the laundromat of life by giving up performances on the command of an offstage voice to cleanse his smelly artistic soul.
From rudely hilarious violin played on multicoloured long johns, to heart wrenching, ultra angst laden renditions of Weil and as many cabaret standards as possible - even anti standards - Rudi turns himself inside out for our amusement; just like he has that glove of cabaret.
There is nothing he will not do, not a musical cadence he will not seek to reach, not a ridiculous moment will he not pass the opportunity to fall into.
Parham’s clowning, paired with song, is exquisitely rich in emotional depth, powerful in vulnerability, and overwhelming with white hot truth. At the same time, he’s ruggedly unforgiving in parody to the point a song is not needed for the bit involving wearing a flannel shirt. See it. You’ll get it!
The rinse cycle of cabaret through to popular music culture is a very thorough and rough treating one, much to the audience’s sheer delight.
Aaron Nash’s superlative accompaniment on piano provided Parham’s performance with the musical gusto and rebellious gravitas needed to make a perfect production.
David O’Brien
When: 11 to 13 June
Where: Artspace
Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au
The Therry Dramatic Society. Arts Theatre. 11 June 2016
Big Fish is big business in so many ways. The story has its origins in Daniel Wallace's 1998 novel. Then it was a Tim Burton film in 2003 and finally we see here the Broadway musical of 2013. Therry puts on a big show with a cast of 28 and easily triple that including the creative and production teams and the orchestra. The set (design uncredited) is a work of modern art. And there is a cornucopia of extravagant characters. (The action takes place mainly in some previously unheard-of part of small town Alabama where black Americans are not extant.)
Being new to the story, I had no idea what was going on for the first 20 minutes and I loved it! A knee-slapping dance caused fish to fly out of the river. Then there is some witch foretelling the future of our hero, Edward Bloom, a la Macbeth. There is a bit of normalcy and then Bloom entices a giant out of a cave. And yes, there is a giant on stage! You learn that anything can happen in this show, as these scenes are manifestations of Bloom's imaginative parables. Turns out to be a very sweet intergenerational story and at the centre of the intrigue are the source of Bloom's fantastical stories and a son searching for his "real" father.
Actor Andrew Crispe very successfully invests Edward Bloom with goodness and country-style domesticity. His song, Fight The Dragons, playfully rendered with child star Oscar (someday winner) Bridges as Young Will, his son, was one of my favourites for recalling a young'un's yearning for adventure, and for father-son bonding. Rebecca Raymond plays Edward's wife with equal veracity and wonderful voice. Bravo! Lindsay Prodea's Will Bloom spent a lot of time with a furrowed brow and annoyed with his father. He maybe should stick to the river of the play, as he was wobbly on the high Cs. Scott Nell was a wonderfully gentle giant - great deep voice and skillfully dancing on stilts. What a costume! There's a lot more - a mermaid, an entire circus full of performers, assassination attempts by blow darts, nothing is too far out.
The creative team comprising director Amanda Rowe, musical director Mark DeLaine, choreographer Kerry Hauber and lighting designer Jason Groves whipped their cast and crew into a proper good night out. There is evident a fantastic team effort to create the costumes and sets for a great number of very different outlandish situations. And did I mention Sandra Davis for costumes? Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 9 to 18 June
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com, bass.net.au, or direct 8410-5515