Parker and Mr French. Gluttony - The Octagon. 12 Mar 2016
I was lucky to get a ticket to this sold out show from Hugh Sheridan himself. He was catching the breeze in the Fringe Club one night and consulting with the chair of the Adelaide Critics Circle. The ACC gave California Crooners their Best-of-Fringe award for Week 1 and the show - lucky you - is back for a second week to Monday, 14 March.
Hugh, baby, is Adelaide's own. A graduate of Unley Youth Theatre, he is the Numero Uno ticket holder for the Port Adelaide Football Club. Internationalising after the Victoria College of the Arts by winning a scholarship to study acting in New York from State Theatre, he wound up in Packed to the Rafters and earned a Logie for the Most Popular New Male Talent. That's code for hunk. Currently he's tickling chins in Tinsel Town, but along the way he teamed up with a couple of equally high octane crooner-types and stapled together this show. What you would have seen three weeks ago was the world premiere including three Adelaide musos to blend with the canned horns.
Friday was extremely off scale hot and the a/c in The Octagon was no laughing matter. The crooners soon forsook their impressive tuxedo jackets and ties - even their shirts - and necessarily delivered all but the first two songs in T-shirts, not that anybody minded. The opening number, Come Fly With Me, is an incendiary tune in the mouth of one crooner, but as a melody and in parts Three Tenors style, the temperature was raised to boiling.
It was going to be a white hot night from then on.
The golden tunes were just a starter as the boys strutted with panoply of styles from hip hop and rap to Justin Beiber. Emile Welman of South Africa has a heavenly high voice. Gabe Roland of Kansas City channeled Ray Charles as only a white person could. Hugh Sheridan was on fire with a boy-next-door kind of sweetness - and his pride in premiering the crooners in his hometown was palpable. The boys mixed into the crowd, shook hands and serenaded when the occasion arose. Their friendly banter made you want to chum around with them. My wife thought they were all lovely to look at and that's an understatement. Even though the swelter in the shelter of The Octagon was raised by the general high quality on offer, the heat was maxed when the boys synchronised their vocal energies. Their debut single, Just A Little More, was alarmingly catchy.
I hope you can make time in your life to witness history in the making. Double bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 12 Feb to 14 Mar
Where: Gluttony - The Otagon
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
