Cabaret Festival. Mark Nadler. Space Theatre. 18 June 2014
And the love affair goes on.
There has never been an international showbiz relationship quite like it - and the the New York entertainer heard the love loud and clear as The Space's full house leapt to its feet in a riot of acclaim for his performance. Of course, it had been as seamlessly enriching as have his others over the years. Mark Nadler is a class act. It takes a special sort of consummate pro to engender all this love from Adelaide's notoriously discerning audiences. The Adelaide Cabaret Festival is just not the same if Mark Nadler is not here.
This year he took his audience on a musical storytelling adventure back into the daring 20s when Cabaret was born of a wicked edge and prohibition had people drinking more than ever before. In narratives shimmering with wit and innuendo, he told of just how movie star Clara Bow spread her famous "It" around. He told of one of the world's first openly gay performers, Gene Malin, and of the irresistible Libby Holman whose super-hot sexy style was not what it seemed. Heavens, she was an early cougar, bisexual no less, who ended up murdering her husband. Juicy yarns indeed. Nadler threw in Mae West and, spicing things up a treat, a couple of evangelists, always good to include when the theme is vice and scandal.
Nadler comes as almost a new model of himself. He has become a skinny man. But the new bod is a fine clotheshorse and his superbly-tailored white evening jacket and slinky waistcoat looked extremely dashing.
With two token 20s-style backing musicians on stage, he made magic on the grand piano and sang 20s songs both renown and forgotten. Lots of Cole Porter, some Cab Calloway, Irving Berlin and, of course, Kurt Weill.
He used tricks of coy come-hither in songs such as 'Ain't Misbehaving', he held the audience in thrall with his meld of Gershwin-cum-Braham et all in Limehouse Nights and Blues, all about London's druggy 20s. He raised a steamy torch, he shook up the house, he pranced a bit, mingled a bit and he made a New York dry martini which is so dry that the vermouth is barely an idea.
His performance reached from soft suggestiveness to full-power Broadway belt-outs, from yarns and a few gags even to true confession of an incongruous little religious canker...
On which theme, at show's end, Nadler added the best of stage acknowledgements by naming each person associated with his production in The Space as candidates for the "down there" where the sins are bright. That is the wild "down there" on which the show's devilish underworld theme was based, one suggested by the 20s night club where patrons slid down a chute and into the arms of a huge black man who carried them to their seats.
It seems odd that there was only one day of performances from Mr Nadelaide for he could have filled that cabaret space over and over again. However, he's moved on to the late night fun and games in the piano bar where he and his rubber chickens may continue to be adored for the rest of the fest.
And, perchance more, Mr Humphries?
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
