Robyn Archer. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 11 Jun 2016
What if the crumbs of history creating a trail followed backwards by historians to decisive moments resulting in major, catastrophic events where not words, books, images or crumbling pieces of architecture but the sound and rhythm of songs?
Robyn Archer does just this with Dancing on The Volcano. Archer regaled her audience with the birthing and maturing sounds and rage of cabaret sandwiched between World War I and II in such a way as to give an incredibly real sense of the impending danger about to spew like deadly hot murderous lava over the world thanks to the rise of Hitler.
Amassing the songs of Brecht, Eisler, Grosz, Tucholsky, Wedekind, Hollaender and Heine to name a few, Archer does something with these songs beyond the short introductory remarks made to contextualise them within the flow of history.
A very real sense of a musical culture in which people are in close communication with each other, openly so in spirit and action from the late 1800s, is brought to life by Archer accompanied by Michael Morley on piano and George Butrumlis on accordion. The melding of Archer’s voice and musical accompaniment from songs of this era creates an aural sense of people dancing together, singing together and very much culturally secure.
Slowly but surely, this changes.
Archer’s voice becomes much more prominent in the mix. Stridency in lyrics and expression from an angry solo voice becomes ever so much more pronounced as Archer moves the audience along into late 1920s and through the 1930s. It’s powerful, riveting stuff. It’s also clearly more of protest than accomplishment in the world, and niggles at you.
By the time the glamorous era of the tango has been reached, one can practically feel what has happened over the decades, socially and politically, on an emotional level; it is an extraordinary achievement of communication by any artist.
Robyn Archer has offered a new way to understand the lessons of history through Dancing on The Volcano, a highly effective one reaching directly to the heart as much as the mind.
David O’Brien
When: 11 to 12 June
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
