Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Melbourne Theatre Company. Her Majesty's Theatre. 13 June 2015
There's only one house on Pennsylvania Avenue that matters and that's the big white one with the flag on top. In this one person play with fabulous songs, we sit with assistant to the assistant to the assistant Harper while she packs her removal box in the Blue Room of the White House after an extraordinary long service as a sort of events co-coordinator for the First Family from Kennedy to Clinton - with the unexplained absence of George Bush the First.
This is Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith's second bespoke play for songstress Bernadette Robinson. Both directed by the irrepressible Simon Phillips, Songs For Nobodies was a hit in 2010 and the trio reprise their success with this offering, which opened in November 2014 at the Melbourne Theatre Company.
The situation is a bit like West Wing where you're with the underlings in the office except when the President just happens to surprise you at an embarrassing moment and lends you some avuncular advice. And Harper is a bit like Forest Gump - not only is she present at the late 20th Century's most historical events, she influences them. The cutest examples are when she whips off Marilyn Monroe's panties to smooth out that skin-clinging Happy Birthday, Mr President dress; and when she comes up with Tear Down This Wall! for Reagan's Cold War-ending Brandenburg Gate speech.
The set, comprised of a set of formal White House furniture, recalling Imperial Rome, and the presidential portraits that digitally dissolve to reveal images of the times, instilled an embarrassing, forelock-tugging cringe.
As Harper, Robinson is warm, charming and innocent, but the patter is just a petite too pat, and the Tennessee accent a bit over-egged. The Harper thing is a conceit to thematically link some songs to showcase Robinson's astonishing vocal skills and mimicking abilities. Sarah Vaughan, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Eartha Kitt, Barbara Streisand and even Bob Dylan are vividly present and accounted for. The songs are introduced with some cute intercourse between the diva and Harper - usually womanly support. Robinson has an uncanny ability to get into the divas's skins, and to astonish with vocal veracity, especially the black ones, yet her mimicry skates very close to parody and the drag show. Or maybe it just seems that way as these women are easy prey for the drag artistes. Along the way, she does a very passable Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and who can remember what Gerald Ford sounded like?
I am personally a reader of this era of American history and I loved this show and Bernadette Robinson's work in it.
PS I cannot find any evidence that such a Harper person actually existed, though intriguingly, a slide show at the end of the performance showed a Robinson-looking person in a snappy with various presidents and at work in the White House. Maybe the CIA doctored the pics?
David Grybowski
When: 11 to 14 June
Where: Her Majesty's Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
