Loading ...- Category:
- Soap Box
- Author:
- Phil Scott
- Posted:
- Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Thursday
I arrive in the city that always sleeps to take part in the campest Adelaide Cabaret Festival ever. If the Mardi Gras Festival had this line-up, we’d say: Isn’t it a bit too gay?
Apart from my own stuff (The Twink and the Showgirl with Vincent Hooper), there’s Bingay with Mitzi and Naomi, Gentlemen Prefer Blokes with Trevor Ashley, Courtney Act and the supremely camp Virginia Gay, Steven Brinberg’s Streisand show Simply Barbra, Nick Christo channelling Frances Faye, and Mark Trevorrow in World War Bob.
Most performers stay at the Hyatt, but because I’m here for longer I get an apartment. Embassy Apartments they’re called. I don’t know which embassy is the model, but judging from the furniture it has to be somewhere in the Third World.
Still, unlike the Hyatt, you can actually open the windows.
Friday
We rehearse for tonight’s Gala concert. I’ve been asked to resurrect Liberace (I haven’t done my Liberace show since 1998!) and to accompany Hugh Sheridan, recent Logie winner from Packed to the Rafters. An Adelaide boy, he’s closing the Gala.
Hugh will have a gospel choir as backup. I emailed their music a week ago, to be told they don’t read. Their formidable director Trace Canini said, We feel it, and added, I’ll do some wailing.
I see their previous gig was The Gospel According to Elvis. That makes sense: Elvis, like Jesus, came back from the dead.
My Liberace act follows Bernadette Peters in the concert. Nobody else wanted this spot. Still, Ms Peters has to follow Bob Downe: that’s not so easy either. I realise the audience see a lot of themselves in Bob.
Bernadette Peters is a great Broadway star who looks and sounds half her age. With piano and cello, she sings No one is Alone from Into the Woods, a show Stephen Sondheim wrote for her.
I fidget in the wings in my ridiculous Liberace suit and wig, waiting to confront two thousand people who -” after Bernadette’s performance -” just want to be left alone with their thoughts.
I’m fighting knots in my stomach that aren’t nerves but emotion, in reaction to the world Bernadette and her musicians are creating.
She sweeps offstage, and I prance on to make a fool of myself. It seems to work.
Saturday
Tonight a bunch of us hit the Mars Bar, Adelaide’s infamous gay nightclub. My friend Chris dances there. His 2am show features a magic theme: two drag queens disappear into a box large enough to hold two drag queens. Voila!
Our party includes Magda Szubanski. We shield her like a gay Swiss Guard as disbelieving punters push past to grab her, cuddle her and scream at her about their trivial lives. I guess she’s used to it. That’s the power of television.
If Bernadette arrives, she’ll have to line up to see Magda like everybody else.
June 10th, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
Bitter and self promoting much? I look forward to a more positive 2nd diary entry, possibly something that reviews the other talent at the festival.
June 12th, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
Hey Adam, jealous much?
It’s Phil’s column to write anything he wants in and he does it with the panache he has been demonstrating in writing several books as well as writing and acting on Stage (MTC, STC & multiple one man shows) and Television (The Big Gig, Good News Week etc) for the last 15 years.
What was the last public performance or piece of theatrical work you did doll?
If you want reviews of the Adeliade festival acts then I would suggest that you read the Adelaide Advertiser.
June 13th, 2009 @ 10:15 pm
Which bit sounded bitter to you Adam? Phil has just written about a great sounding festival. I think it sounds fabulous and would skip along to see any of the acts that Phil talked about it his column. Maybe read it again when you have found a sense of humour.
June 14th, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
The trouble with writing an Opinion piece is that every Tom, Dick or Adam has an opinion about it.
June 15th, 2009 @ 3:43 pm
All I have to say to Adam is: it’s not my brief to review shows. My brief is to write personal observations, and in a diary piece that includes what I’m doing and how I feel about it.
For the record, the week I was at this year’s Cabaret Festival was fantastic. I saw a few shows other than my own and there was not a dud amongst them. Some were staggeringly brilliant.