Adelaide Festival Centre. Artspace. 24 June 2016
Debora Krizak is certainly a hard worker. She was not-long-ago nominated for a Helpmann award for her role of Sheila in A Chorus Line, was in Opera Australia's Anything Goes last year, and co-wrote and starred in her ABBA bioshow, CABBARET, for the Sydney Theatre Cabaret Festival in 2014. But what really keeps her busy is her twins, born in 2008!
So Debora really knows what it takes to be a lady in show business - a funny lady - and therefore is eminently qualified to explore comediennes, and female comedic actors and singers in her new show, Laugh Be A Lady, in this world premiere production at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
On the set is a projected montage of cartoon renderings of the greats: Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Whoopi Goldberg, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers maybe, Lily Tomlin, I think, and of course, her in the middle, I guess. If only this show was five hours long so they all could have gotten the Krizak treatment! With her model's good looks - did I mention that she was in the Harris Scarfe catalogue - and was that before or after her Performing Arts degree at the University of Adelaide? Do you remember her in Chunky Custard?
The show opens with a gloriously ridiculous Christopher Hitchens explaining with a straight face in a filmed interview how women do not need to be funny for their role in mating, and that men must be; so women are genetically not predisposed to comedy. Ha ha ha! That got the ball rolling, and the next thing you know we see Krizak channeling legendary model-turned-comedic performer, Lucille Ball, in the latter's signature burlesque musical movie number, Jitterbug Bite. Krizak later rendered The Yelling Singer skit from The Carol Burnett Show. How about an outlandish Phyllis Diller, with her zinger lines and zany hair. And why is it, Krizak posits, that female comedians have to mask their beauty with silly voices or whacky hair-dos? Good questions aside, these impersonations were awesomely amusing. Krizak also tried her hand at stand-up, but looking drop-dead gorgeous in a chorus line corset most the show, I was faintly distracted. Homage is paid to American Betty White, the first woman to produce a sit-com. However, the show stoppers were her songs. Debora has an incredibly clear voice and is a terrific interpreter of lyrics. Accompanied by musical director Andrew Worboys, she can blast a room with the sweetest notes. After tragicomically playing a composite of her show biz comics in a chorus line character, reminiscent of Lucy Ricardo in one of the I Love Lucy episodes, her Send In The Clowns was the most poignant version of this song I have ever heard. But coming as it did at the end of her show, after all the terribly funny business, and personal banter about her life in the stage lights, and the nostalgia around these great women - after an hour of thorough and thoughtful amusement - I was putty in her hands. And the standing ovation she so deserved at her world premiere opening showed that I wasn't the only one who felt like this. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 24 to 25 June
Where: Artspace
Bookings: Closed
