Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 17 Jun 2021
What a pleasant confection of a play.
Jill Hyem, who died in 2015, was a prolific writer of plays and TV series which tapped nicely into the general zeitgeist of English life and times; in this case, the yen of English women of retirement age to start life anew in Paris. Hence, this play is about Nancy the retired headmistress who invites her recently-widowed friend Anna to come and stay with her in an apartment in Paris. It becomes a liberating experience for them both as they deal with both a charming out-of-work actor/handyman and a venomous French landlady.
The characters are all a bit on the cookie-cutter side but agreeably so, albeit there are a few harsh words on both sides about the English versus the French. Also, much of the script is in French, an extra stretch for the cast but delivered with chutzpah by all. An added expatriate Englishwoman, Rachel aka Raquel, adds chemistry to the social soup, and lots of humour. Sue Wylie in a moveable feast of shoes and hair pieces, frocks and attitudes, carries her off to a delicious tee. Deb Walsh delivers good, solid Nancy while Lindy LeCornu is both mannered and amusing as mousy Anna. Versatile Peter Davis embodies the agreeable Frenchman, Charlot, with accomplished physical eloquence and some lovely bi-lingual parrying. Vicki Horwood stalks into character as the villain of the piece, the venal and judgemental landlady, and makes her easy to hate.
Director Norm Caddick has given the play an easy, relaxed pace and designer Brittany Daw has picked up on a very French colour scheme for the rather under-decorated Paris rental. Sound designer Ray Trowbridge, having chosen some lovely inter-scenes French music, was doubtless having kittens when the rainstorms broke over The Arts Theatre on opening night drowning out actors’ voices. Of course, the show went on and a jolly good time was had by all.
Samela Harris
When: 17 tp 26 Jun
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. The Space. 13 Jun 2021
Was ever the Space Theatre a more sumptuously luscious venue?
Never!
As conceived by Craig Ilott and Stuart Couzens, the Space has been transformed into a romantically lamp-lit realm of intimate tables occupied by an audience out in their finery. It’s a black tie do. After seeing people in Ts and sneakers turning up for major theatre openings in the past, it is something of a pleasure in itself to be among a crowd of the elegantly attired. So, there is a sense of occasion.
And, what an occasion.
It is a case of “expect the unexpected”. And expect it to be of five star production standards on every level.
French-speaking waiters attend one’s table, pouring French champagne and serving a platter of decadent French cheeses between performances of arresting Pina Bausch-esque dance routines. Our lithe and handsome young waiter is Olivier Nilsson. Like the others, he is a genuine actor but, unlike most of the cast, he is perhaps not so much an acrobat as just a figure of attentive charm.
For the first thirty minutes or so, the audience settles in drinking champers and enjoying cheese, listening to French music, watching the wait staff’s periodic routines, observing the gradual arrival of L’Hotel’s guests who, after being greeted by the concierge onstage, drift off to assigned rooms. The balcony becomes the L’Hotel’s upstairs corridor along which bellboys run errands and housekeepers push their cleaning wagons and dust and polish the railings, pausing to join the dance routines.
Prompt side downstairs is a stage for singers. OP is a bathtub being steadily filled with water. Begowned women come to and fro attending to it. Meanwhile, in the heart of The Space is a platform groaning with buckets of champagne and arrays of flowers and cheeses in a display of opulent decadence.
A French chanteuse arrives and the official performance begins: Caroline Nin singing in French and introducing another table treat. Eclairs. Oh, they are delicious, as is she. Table lamps are removed and a total blackout presages show time.
Thereafter it is one awe-inspiring routine after another, all rather on the sensual side. Bri Emrich and Lexi Strumolo take off their dressing gowns and share the bathroom in a glory of athletic femme sensuality. A luggage trolley takes centre stage to become suspended as a shining cage in which, clad in a prettiness of lingerie, Russian acrobat Masha Terentieva spins and bends and hangs and contorts with breathtaking skill and grace.
The luggage trolley is replaced by a stripper’s pole as the Concierge leaps onto his reception desk and with sublime nonchalance begins to peel off his uniform, revealing an erotica of burlesque lingerie and, all-of-a-sudden stiletto shoes so vertiginous that even Cher might quake. His physique is imposing and muscular but he is light and limber on the pole.
The sense of wonderment drifts into sorrow when Leah Shelton as an awkward masked and begowned character totters to the stage, gradually removing layers of latex ending, at last, with the pouted red cavern of her fake mouth. She is the symbol of loneliness, of sexual secrecy in impersonal hotel rooms, the sad, used sex doll. Her performance is utterly gripping and deeply heart-wrenching.
Throughout the show, Brendan Maclean has been darting around as a deliciously devilish bellhop with a finger in every pie. Now he comes to the piano and in his powerfully beautiful voice, sings People I’ve Been Sad while exquisitely androgynous Beau Sargent sparkles aloft in the sweetest of aerial acts adding a dash of naughty dance just for fun.
And it is a room full of swoon.
The audience is in no hurry to leave. It is sated and happy.
With travel off the menu, this exotic and mysterious French hotel has come to us; room service par excellence.
This immersive show will shine forth as the jewel in the crown of the 2021 Cabaret Festival program.
Samela Harris
When: 13 to 20 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Amber Martin. The Famous Spiegeltent. 11 Jun 2021
Welcome to the bathhouse! Through a steamy haze, three men wrapped in bath towels appear, and we’re off and running. The crowd whoops, the boys take their positions at piano (Henry Koperski), bass (Tim Wilsdon) and drums (Paul Butler) and the larger than life Amber Martin is onstage, ready to take us on a wild ride. And what a ride it is.
Martin is here to pay homage to Bette Midler, the Divine Miss M and those performances at the Continental Bathhouse in New York in those early days of the ‘seventies. The bathhouse regularly featured what was to become a veritable who’s who of the era - Gloria Gaynor, Manhattan Transfer, Glady Knight, The Pointer Sisters – and of course, accompanying Bette on the piano, Barry Manilow.
Opening with a robust rendition of Friends, Martin warns us that the show is going to get raunchy, and it’s no idle threat.
Martin tells us of her admiration for big, gutsy female singers; hardly surprising the way she belts it out herself (she performed Janis Jopling songs in Janis: Undead in ACF 2019). This all goes along with a Bette history, then she moves smoothly into one of Midler’s more passionate songs, Superstar.
Martin shows that she’s just as capable of the vocal dynamics that Midler is famous for, as she moves on to Hustler, which introduces us to the inevitable Mario and Lance, two hip swivelling young male dancers in short shorts and, oh yes, Docs.
Much of the material comes from Midler’s debut and sophomore albums, The Divine Miss M and the eponymous Bette Midler respectively. She unapologetically slips a couple more into the mix including a beautiful rendition of Tom Waits’ Martha (sung by Midler on SNL), beautifully accompanied by Henry Koperski (also Alan Cumming’s Musical Director).
And as for the raunchy warning, she isn’t kidding. Noting that Midler admired female artists from the twenties and thirties, like the great, bawdy Sophie Tucker, Martin is not backward in reeling off some of the bluer jokes in the repertoire. The fact that Martin is now quite naked, having just blasted us with Sweet Marijuana, only adds to the telling. And in extra homage to bawdy women, we are treated to Lucille Bogan’s Shave ‘em Dry – just wouldn’t get past the censor these days!
Amber Martin just doesn’t let up; she’s a powerhouse of energy and song, but the pleasure isn’t all ours. She pauses a moment to reflect on the year that has been; like many live artists, she hasn’t performed since March 2020, and it’s been hard. She misses the energy that she gets from an audience, and she thanks us for being there, and giving so freely. You’re welcome Amber.
The show closes with Dylan’s powerful I Shall Be Released; ‘awesome!’ says the women in front of me. Yes, just ‘divine’.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 11 to 13 Jun
Where: The Famous Spiegeltent
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. 11 Jun 2021
It might be Alan Cumming’s festival but the Gala was Hans' show.
Compere incomparable. He sang. He danced. He zoomed on wheels. He followed the script. He didn’t follow the script. He sparkled. He glittered. He cracked hearty and funny, with a pithy line in covid gags, to boot. And, oh my, did he have costume changes.
This 2021 Variety Gala may have set a record as the most epic of them all. It ran over by an exuberant hour or more.
Perchance director Mitchell Butel was having kittens backstage but the huge, masked audience was having a rowdy, happy ball of it - well, most of it.
First up, it was our new First-Nations rising star, Isaac Hannam, in Kaurna bling with a very special Welcome to Country, some marvellous virtuoso on the didgeridoo and an endearing comic turn. Immediately, good spirit was cast upon the show.
Interestingly, the biggest hit of the night is not even in the Festival. It was Gerry Connolly doing The Queen. Impeccably bewigged and costumed, he read the Queen’s speech to end them all, clever, daring, and rib-achingly funny.
A couple of other performers graced the show with cameo spots; the divine Meow Meow, for instance, via Zoom from Melbourne. But the stage itself was packed with performers and, featured on the splendiferous set a fully-operational bar, staffed by rising actor Tom Murdock along with Festival supremo Alan Cumming. The drinks flowed, the dangling chandeliers shimmered, the lights delighted, and Mark Simeon Ferguson’s onstage orchestra could not have been bigger, brighter, or better. ’Twas a bit on the ticketyboo side, as they say in the classics.
Trevor Ashley did his Liza with a big voice and lusty lisp. Magician James Galea did some tricks and a song to take dick-happy humour to the edge of bad taste. Jan van de Stool brought the house down as the Dutch musical therapist interpretive dancer from BoyBoy or Woy Woy and stripped back her costume layers to do a comic take on Frozen. She’s a bit of a jewel, that one. And so is Steph Tisdell, a wickedly confronting First Nations feminist standup with the best Welcome-to-Country gag anyone has ever heard; love at first sight. Tutti’s Sisters of Invention, the world’s first disability girl band, put it out there in fine fettle and the audience clapped in time. Brendan Maclean did a potent number from the show, L’Hotel. The very versatile Michael Griffiths did some musical audience participation. Hot from New Orleans, Amber Martin showed such a big, clear, piercing jazz voice that perchance they could hear her back in New Orleans.
Adelaide’s adored Willsy-of-the-sequins with her equally adored mate Bob Downe dared some “choreography” and a friendly song, prelude to their many nights of Adelaide Tonight in the Festival.
A few acts milked the moment a bit too long. Mama Alto, for instance, did an MGM production of attenuated vocal dexterity. Even the beloved 2021 CabFest icon, Paul Capsis took a Lennon song to dramatic extreme. Conversely, superstar Tim Minchin complained that had we wanted him sober, he should have been earlier in the program. He did a song about sex which rose to a super-duper Minchin crescendo and then sat down with a glass of wine before just disappearing back into the wings.
Hans, throughout, was coming and going and introducing and dancing and covering the show with a blanket of ebullience. It was fast and busy and busy and fast. Cabaret in overdrive. An audience in overload. There may have been more. It’s a big program.
And it certainly started with a blowout of pizazz.
Samela Harris
When: 11 Jun
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
State Opera South Australia. Plant 4, Bowden. 3 Jun 2021
Love Burns is a compact chamber opera with music by Adelaide’s own Graeme Koehne and libretto by Louis Nowra. The story has its basis in fact and is inspired by the true 1940s story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck who were known as the Lonely Hearts Killers. Con-man Jack (played by tenor, Mark Oates) seduces and marries lonely rich widows for their money, and then kills them at the urging of his real life partner Angela (Soprano, Jessica Dean). They eventually come undone and the State of New York ‘burns’ them in the electric chair! It’s all very melodramatic and the action is very episodic with little room to explore issues and develop characters other than superficially. This is a shame because the historical characters and events make for very interesting reading, and several films have been made about the case (most recently in 2006). That said, the opera is great fun and definitely tongue-in-cheek.
Director Nicholas Cannon draws terrific performances from the all members of the cast, and the overall high quality of acting is a feature of the show. Plant 4 is not the best of venues for any seated and staged performance, and as a concert hall it makes a good shed! The acoustics are awkward, and needed the near faultless sound engineering provided by Allpro Audio to give the audience a reasonable audio experience. When at full voice in the tenser moments of the opera, Jessica Dean’s soprano voice doesn’t always come out the winner, but in quieter and more reflective moments she produces nicely rounded and sweet tones that gently fill the space. On the other hand, Mark Oates has no problems and is uniformly excellent. His acting and comic timing, and strong tenor voice is a highlight. Cherie Boogart, Rosie Hosking and Jeremy Tatchell provide excellent support in a variety of roles. Again, their fine singing and strong (almost over-the-top) acting prop up the slender storyline and give the audience much to enjoy.
Simone Romaniuk’s set is skeletal and works very well with Ben Flett’s distinctive lighting design. The execution scene is particularly effective and makes the audience immediately sit back and contemplate what has just happened! It is almost blasé and gives one cause to think about the ho-hum, here-we-go-again response the US of A displays when confronted with yet another mass shooting. The choreographed scene changes by the cast are fun, and one forgets about the often interrupted nature of the story line.
Anthony Hunt conducts a small, quality orchestra of ten and handles Koehne’s eclectic score particularly well. It is a tight performance, whilst being musical and fun.
This latest production in the State Opera’s ‘Lost Operas of Oz’ series is one of its best. More please.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Plant 4, Bowden
Bookings: Closed