Barry Humphries. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. 20 Jun 2015
In Adelaide during the Cabaret Festival, Barry Humphries can do no wrong no matter how hard he tries.
Hence, audiences laughed and whooped approbation of Sir Les Patterson's most offensive attacks on political correctness. He pushed the proverbial envelope as far as his expelled saliva could go - which, according to the number of people who donned the supplied raincoats, was about four rows deep in the stalls.
Love Songs for Sir Les was the Humphries book-end closer of the 2015 CabFest. It had begun with Dame Edna featured in the sell-out Gala opening show.
Expectations that the love songs would be serenaded to the grotesque parody of a sozzled Ocker polly were not met. Fortunately. The torch singers took turns to own the stage, accompanied by the wonderful Adelaide Arts Orchestra. Sir Les appeared betwixt and between, doing star entrances surrounded by his dancing girls, each time attired in a different soup-stained outfit. Each appearance afforded a song and some new old shtick - priapic promotions of his "purple-headed warrior", jokes about how fat the wife, Gwen, had grown, exercises in P and F words for super spittability.
On the F word front, this was Humphries' chance to spit in the face of those early earnest declarations as CabFest artistic director that there would be no F words in his festival. On that last night, he effed his way across the stage in a contentment of expostulation, racking up enough F words to bring home the irony to even the most obtuse audience member.
She was sitting in the front row, by the way. Humphries described a woman with a face so hard you could strike a match on it. Amazing how he seems to see her in the front row of all his shows.
It was hard to tell who was the MC of the show. Ali McGregor opened the evening and came and went throughout, singing some nice but not riveting songs. Sir Les did some of the introductions and acknowledgements. But there was something missing and, in retrospect, it was Eddy Perfect. The big festival closing show needed a man in the lineup.
That is not, on that flower-bedecked stage, to cast nasturtiums at Trevor Ryan who shone above the women with the brilliant Shirley Bassey of his I'm Every Woman show. He is a national treasure.
From America, Lady Rizo gave a big-voiced Broadway touch of pizazz to the lineup, contrasted by the utter sweetness, beauty and impeccable harmony of the divine SongBirds.
Amelia Ryan looked beyond sensational in a silver lurex sheath but performed a song which was so convoluted that the audience simply lost focus. Where were you, Andy Packer? In both content and movement, she seemed in dire need of a director. But, oh, she did dress the stage well. As did the lovely dancing girls (Adelaide’s The Silhouettes) who, in one Sir Les routine, performed while eating Balfours pies and green frog cakes. Was this history being made? I have never seen dancers eating while hoofing.
Sir Les would not have been Sir Les without featuring his aphorism-ridden Too Many Poofters in the Arts song which has become a classic, nay an anthem, of political incorrectness. But, to give credit to the vile configuration of physical and intellectual repugnance which is Sir Les, he not only gets away with it, but has gays laughing in unison with homophobes. No mean feat.
Now the shows are over. Sir Les has effed off with Dame Edna and their suave alter ego.
And, the city settles down to wait on what wonders Perfect and McGregor will bring to fire up another Adelaide winter.
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
