World Premiere. Brink Productions. Space Theatre. 13 Jul 2021
Is he beautiful or is he grotesque? In his fire red lipstick and swirling Spanish gown of electric blue, Paul Capsis is a phenomenon of strange allure.
Highly mannered, he flicks his bewigged head from one side to another to present his magnificent profile. He is, for the moment, the haughty Perichole, greatest actress of 18th Century Peru, and she has stories to tell; stories of love and cruelty, of splendour and despair. These are the tales of those whose lives were lost to the collapse of the ancient rope bridge woven by the Incas: The Bridge Of San Luis Rey. Every time the actor enunciates the name of the bridge, it rings out like the striking of a beautiful bell.
This is the contemporary reimagining of the great Thornton Wilder novel which took out the 1927 Pulitzer Prize. Adapted for the stage by Phillip Kavanagh, it is a Brink production directed by Chris Drummond under the auspices of the Adelaide Guitar Festival. To that end, the festival’s artistic director Slava Grigoryan is onstage with fellow classical guitarist Manus Noble of the UK. These sublime musicians book end the narrator and illustrate the dramatic undulations of the five tales. Sometimes they are a part of them with flamenco flourish. Sometimes they are a moody musical mirror. Sometimes the beauty of their classical exposition is transcendental and the audience may just drift into its being.
Paul Capsis, meanwhile, is tackling one of the most challenging roles ever thrown at a performer. Since The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a book, he carries the book and for various stretches of stories, he reads from its pages. There are so many words. Oh, so many words, so complex in the separation and intertwining of the tales of the bridge’s victims. Timing is all. And the audience must concentrate.
Sometimes he is a clown, a pastiche character of large teeth in a huge red-rimmed mouth, mocking and hamming and taking theatricality to its stylised edge. He draws a laugh here, a chuckle there. That mouth is extraordinary. Sometimes he has prima-donna tantrums. And sometimes, he sings. The Capsis forte. Lovely, albeit the Sia Chandelier parody grates.
The play is a tour de force of fabulist verbosity, sometimes seeming steeply uphill, relieved only by the strains and strums of the guitars. One is watching a performer hard at work, changing narratives and genders and costumes in a round world of brilliant blueness. The Jonathan Oxlade set is a circular dais backed by curtains which open onto projected designs and sometimes silhouettes of the performers. Spotlights shaft in from all directions and the blue night takes on many forms. It is its own work of art.
Indeed, it is all very Brink and Drummond in its deceptive simplicity. Three people on one small stage and one huge experience.
Samela Harris
When: 13 to 24 Jul
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
David Gauci & Davine Productions. Star Theatres. 8 Jul 2021
If you missed seeing this remarkably memorable show in the 2020 Adelaide Fringe, you are hereby given a second chance. And if your first encounter with Carole King was through her stupendous song catalogue largely written with then-hubby Gerry Goffin, or her debut album, Tapestry, or subsequent albums - or God bless you - a live performance, your nostalgia nerves will go all a-tingly with this tribute bio-musical of King’s career from her first song-for-sale at age 16 to Tapestry.
Most radio listeners would not have known at the time who composed The Drifters’s Up On The Roof, or who wrote Will You Love Me Tomorrow? first sung by The Shirelles. But the secret was out with Tapestry in 1971. Tapestry’s song list carpet-bombed the Grammy Awards by winning album, record and song of the year, and King won best pop female vocal. Some say she set the liberated style for female singer-songwriters ever since.
In book writer Douglas McGrath’s sanitised sojourn of King’s early career, we see the 16-year-old prodigy meet the rather creepy Gerry Goffin and soon a writing team and marriage ensues. At 1650 Broadway in Donnie Kirshner’s music factory, there is tremendous pressure to write songs for the pops. Along life’s journey, King and Goffin are desperate to balance work with raising their two girls, and the challenge of Goffin’s demons. The musical is structured with a good-natured songwriting challenge with another writing team, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, and we hear their hits, like We Gotta Get Out of This Place and You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’. Including Kirshner, it’s all impossibly playful and good-natured, but maybe King really was as straight as Doris Day or Julie Andrews.
The only drama is Goffin, and the product of his departure from the scene is King’s solo writing and performance career. History stops with Tapestry and Carnegie Hall, so three-plus hours isn’t enough to include King’s other three marriages, two more kids, her environmental advocacy in Idaho, more albums and concert tours and tons of awards.
And the star of the show is…Jemma McCulloch! McCulloch interprets a complex yet ever-ebullient Carole King – feisty, determined, hard worker, yet falls into crevices of self-doubt, but only shallow crevices. Her renditions of King’s singing are heavenly. It is magical to be in the room with the first ever tentative rendition of Will You Love Me Tomorrow and marvel at McCulloch’s melodious tones and tenderness. All the more powerful when we see the song later murdered-by-style by The Shirelles. Curiously, McCulloch introduces a few moments of country twang in some songs which I’ve not detected in the real deal. So what? Bravo!!
Director and producer David Gauci supports her well. Trevor Anderson is a brooding Goffin trapped with a young marriage and family with a hint of drugs. The joy in his fantasy escape performance of Up On The Roof is skillful and touching. Maya Miller is a bubbly Weil – easy to watch with a strong voice. Joshua Kerr makes the most of his comedic lines and his strong vocals are good listening. Brendan Cooney does his best with McGrath’s underdeveloped character while Kate Anolak as Carole’s mum makes a tiny gem role sparkle with acerbic wit.
But it is Gauci’s assemblage of the parts that puts a rocket under all this talent. Gauci’s uses all that the deep stage of Star Theatre One has to offer and frames the action between two large LED displays that light up any background you can invent – he chooses mostly cartoonish images by vision designer Tim Bates. Musical director Peter Johns’ large and snappy band is television band-stand material. There is a dizzying amount of colour and movement and texture in Louise Watkins’ and Renee Brice’s 50s, 60s and 70s costumes and wigs, and Tim Bates’ lighting. Choreographer Shenayde Wilkinson-Sarti’s dancers are vibrant and sharp. The whole shebang is pacey and pristine, alternating between intimacy and wild ensemble.
Gauci, McCulloch and co. wear King’s crown gloriously. So many tunes and images are still runnin’ round my head. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 8 to 17 July
Where: Star Theatres
Bookings: eventfinda.com.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre.
Oh, my. Our Cabaret Festival supremo has revealed himself to a packed Festival Theatre audience before leaving town. Alan Cumming has lots of adoring fans. But, even they, one ponders, may have had cause for a rethink after his headline CabFest finale show.
In his quirky short-pants suit, of which he is inordinately proud, he bounces out in big white sneakers bragging about having his clothes “tailored” and sets the spirit of the show. It is pretty much a brag-fest. Being only Wiki-familiar with his extensive career one had looked forward to finding out what the acclaim was all about. What is revealed amounts to a couple of decent songs and a lot of vanity patter.
Cumming’s brags about his dancing skill and an important upcoming dance show, but this song-and-dance man does not dance for us. Instead he tells us how marvellous he is and how many big name stars think he is fabulous. He is Sean Connery’s "Little Prince", you know.
As one who lived and worked in the media in Scotland, it is wonderful to revel in the sweet comfort of his accent. But what was he saying? That he masturbates every day and recommends everyone else does, too?
The script for the monologue feels as if it were something knocked up after a few too many wines up in Quarantine. It is not a winner in style or content. It is delivered with a few songs and a lot of quaint fussing with the hair. Cumming’s says he is trying to give it balance by talking about death. His touching account of the death of his dog is the high spot of the show.
But it’s all just a digression from the theme of what a big star he is. Oh yes, and he has a bar in New York City just around the corner from his home. He recommends having your own bar in NYC; a great place to take one’s guests and leave them when he is tired of them. Hilarious.
He has had more marriages and relationships than most. Gay and straight. So many that he can’t remember. In fact, as he so delicately puts it, so many that he has been known to have difficulty recognising those who have had Alan Cumming’s penis inside them!
Oh, my. Too much information, Mr Cumming.
One can only ponder how that sort of braggadocio would go down if the performer was female, or even straight male…
’Twas a strangely disappointing end to an otherwise wonderful Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 25 Jun 2021
From the get go, you know you are in the presence of a trio of accomplished songstresses. These women aren’t just singin’, they’re livin’ these female anthems of celebration. Conceived and directed by Trevor Ashley, Australian drag queen and all-round fun guy performance artist with a Helpmann Award nomination, we are treated to panoply of legendary pop tunes sung and/or written by women, reimagined by three self-made women with rich and varied resumes.
Tania Doko, of Bachelor Girls fame, reminded me both of Tina Turner and Dolly Parton, even though their songs were absent. Her Divinyls’ I Touch Myself was performed with as much raunchiness as she dared. Stevie Nicks’ Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves was her personal favourite, but her Madonna song was relatively ordinary. Emma Pask was discovered by James Morrison when she was 16 and her career careens between jazz and Latin. She loves Latin so much she married one. Although her jazz and Latin renditions in this show weren’t particularly authentic, everything Pask does is impressive and powerful. Prinnie Stevens taps her cultural roots bigtime with a moving Billy Holiday number and by channeling Aretha Franklin’s Respect with singalong verisimilitude. But this is what you expect from someone who performed a slice of Michael Jackson in the tribute show Thriller Live. The best songs got the best out of each singer. The trio saved the eponymous number for last and although Helen Reddy’s hit got a lot of air play last year due to her passing, it’s as durable as gold and still rousing and relevant.
This is a much different show – a smaller show - than the six-singer version done in the Sydney Opera House in 2018, with a somewhat different song list, although the mainly female band is a constant. But even with half the body count, there must have been just as much energy and fun in the current offering as the audience loved it and begged an encore.
David Grybowski
When: 25 to 26 Jun
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. 24 June 2021
Liza, Michael, and Joel would be unimpressed that their world-famous Cabaret attracted only about 300 people in the 2000-seat Festival Theatre during the world-famous Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Unless you were always a fan of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, it was this movie that brought cabaret and its Weimar Republic treatment out of the shadows of nascent Nazis and chiaroscuro lighting. The movie is largely based on the 1966 Kander and Ebb Broadway musical, but there is much different in the sub-plots compared to the film. (Footnote: I saw an amateur production of the musical in Jerusalem in 2018. It was queer to see Jews playing the Nazis, as well as everything else.) The film won the most Academy awards ever, without winning Best Picture. Liza Minnelli got the Best Actress statue for her first singing role on screen and Joel Grey won Best Supporting Actor for his incredible Emcee. Joel Grey reprised the role he created on Broadway and his performance is as iconic as Tim Curry’s Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. You can’t imagine anyone doing it anyway different. Have a look at a recent picture of Joel Grey on Wikipedia – he looks like a very happy banker, now living out his 90s in Cleveland.
In the giant Festival Centre, the screen was not big, and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra was not playing the score, so you get what you pay for ($25). What was more than I paid for was a jolly good introduction by Weimar cabaret specialist and Helpmann Award nominee Kim David Smith and his piano accompanist. Kim David Smith is also starring in his own Adelaide Cabaret Festival show, Mostly Marlene, direct from its world premiere in New York at guess where – Club Cumming. He bubbles like champagne just poured into a cold flute and mixes professional singing and personal comment miscibly like tonic and gin. Bravo!
Liza Minnelli plays the volatile showgirl, Sally Bowles, dreaming of her big break, against Michael York’s intellectual plodder. They are exact opposites in Myers-Briggs Type Indicator code, Sally’s ESFP vs Brian Roberts’s INTJ. Thrilling and exciting in the short term (ie, the course of the movie) but can’t last (ie the end of the movie). Director Bob Fosse loved close-ups and the camera loves Liza. Not nearly as appealing in the close-up department was Joel Grey’s gaping yap filled with yellow teeth. Michael York was a boring actor playing a boring character, so no Academy Award for him. Most of his career was yet to happen and he is now an OBE.
The film is 50 years old next year and Liza is 76. If you missed this screening, I’m sure you’ll see Cabaret somewhere next year, and it’s worth every minute, because you really do “leave your troubles outside.” “In here, life is beautiful.”
David Grybowski
When: 24 June
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed