I’m aware that I often blog about projects I’m working on before they happen, but very rarely afterwards. Plenty of effort goes into each of these shows but often I don’t take the time to reflect on the outcomes of that work.
There was a review of the show I’ve been performing with Catherine Campbell, ‘Made in Australia’ in the Adelaide Advertiser today (Sat Mar 15, 08). I’ve learnt my lesson over the years that if I’m prepared to accept the praise that is sometimes offered in such reviews I need to be prepared to also accept the inevitable criticism that appears. Today’s review was fairly generous in my opinion. Although the reviewer Jessica Hurt didn’t award the show a 5 out of 5 stars rating, her comments were encouraging.
Jessica picked up on what I feel is one of Catherine’s great strengths as a performer, her infectious energy. Audiences warm to her very quickly. I admire the connection that Catherine develops with the crowd – she has a ‘common touch’ (meant in the best way possible). This is similar to someone like Robyn Archer, a woman with remarkable talent and a vast wealth of experience as a performer. Whilst Robyn has fabulous talent and craft and is captivating on stage, at the same time there’s something about her personality that means that you’d be just as comfortable having her sing to you from across your kitchen table as from centre stage. There’s something about a performer like Robyn, or Catherine, that everyone can relate to and connect with in some basic way. It’s an extremely powerful gift to have as a performer.
Catherine is also a great story-teller – both during the songs and between them. Her natural story-telling ability feels very comfortable although I think we could probably tighten up some of the anecdotes with more preparation time.
If I ask myself what we were trying to achieve with the ‘Made in Australia’ show, I’d say that Catherine has designed this and her previous Fringe shows to be opportunities to perform and develop the ‘cabaret chops’ that she has been working on. She has reinforced her years of performance experience with shows such as ‘Berlin Cabaret’ and ‘My Blue Angel’ with a workshop at ‘The Cabaret Conference at Yale‘ and a number of featured roles in various productions at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. It was her idea to use this show as a vehicle to move away from the traditional cabaret repertoire of songs from the Great American Songbook and find works by Australian songwriters that spoke more directly of the Australian culture and experience. I applaud her for doing this because it not only introduces new songs to the cabaret audience, it introduces cabaret to a new Australian audience. Most importantly, by creating and performing this show of (almost) entirely Australian material, Catherine helps establish a platform where new Australian songwriters may hope to have their work performed. Who is going to write original Australian cabaret songs if there is nowhere for them to be performed? With this show, Catherine has helped ’set the stage’ and serves as a new voice for these composers.
I was pleased that the review mentioned the song we re-worked the most. Cabaret is a place where you can safely reinterpret a song that people might already know. We did this with a song recorded by Kylie Minogue – ‘Better the Devil you Know’. I think our arrangement does encourage you to listen to the lyric more carefully and from a different perspective.I’m familiar with Casey Bennetto (Keating!) and Eddie Perfect (Shane Warne, the Musical) from their appearances at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, but had never played any of their songs. They are very clever. My current favourite is Perfect’s ‘My Boat’. I think it is a very clever metaphor with a lot of subtlety and depth.I’d also never played a Paul Kelly or Nick Cave song until Catherine introduced me to the ones in this show. The folk style of some of these songs has meant that I’ve had to think about how to approach the piano almost as if it were an acoustic guitar accompaniment rather than banging around as percussively as I might do otherwise.
Interestingly, the show’s finale is described in Jessica Hurt’s review as a powerful ending. To me it still feels like anything but powerful. We have cobbled together a medley of Crowded House’s ‘Better Be Home Soon’ and Peter Allen’s ‘I Still Call Australia Home’ . I feel like they don’t actually belong together (except for being both iconic Australian songs) and the transition from one song to the other isn’t very crafty at all. However as soon as we start singing the bridge from ‘I Still Call Australia’ the audience recognises the melody as if they’ve had a wave of patriotism wash over them. They then ’surf that wave’ through to the end of the show. I guess the lesson for me to learn from this is that the emotional content of the songs can outweigh the fact that they might not be executed super-cleverly.
One more performance of this show tomorrow night at 5pm at the Queens Arms Hotel, Wright St, Adelaide.
If you saw the show, please feel free to add some comments of your own below.
Tags: Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Berlin Cabaret, Better Be Home Soon, Cabaret, Cabaret Conference at Yale, Catherine Campbell, Crowded house, Great American Songbook, I Still Call Australia Home, Jessica Hurt, Kylie Minogue, Made in Australia, Matthew Carey, music, My Blue Angel, Nick Cave, Paul Kelly, Peter Allen, Queens Arms Hotel, Robyn Archer, story-telling
