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As Adelaide prepares to welcome a global caravan of musicians, comics, vaudevillians and burlesque artists, Fiona Scott-Norman finds a craft enjoying a national renaissance
IT'S difficult at first to spot the difference between a flashy fad and a legitimate trend or movement. That's why garages everywhere overflow with Thighmasters, old photos show us proudly modelling our Diana hairstyles, and John Howard was as wrong-footed on climate change as if his shoelaces had been knotted together.
By the same token, it's taken a while to see if the re-emergence of cabaret in Australia is a stayer or a passing thing, fuelled by women rediscovering whalebone corsetry and lounge music, and coming to the realisation that if you're going to bitch about George W. Bush, it's funnier if you set it to music.
The cabaret scene coalesced about eight years ago and has not only flourished but been augmented by an explosion in burlesque, circus and vaudeville.
The Butterfly Club, Melbourne's most prominent cabaret venue, has gone from presenting 60 performances in 2004 to 600 last year; the internationally renowned cabaret venue, the Famous Spiegeltent, spends at least four months a year touring Australia; the Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne Fringe, Midsumma and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival feature solid chunks of cabaret programming; The Studio at Sydney Opera House includes cabaret every season; and Adelaide's Cabaret Festival, now in its seventh year, has become a defining destination for the international cabaret community.
"It's enormously flattering to Australia," says Julia Holt, founder and artistic director of the Adelaide event, which starts next month. Among the attractions are American cabaret legend Michael Feinstein, Caroline Nin from France, Eva Meler from Germany, and West End musical theatre giants Jeremy Sams and Philip Quast.
"I get inundated from people wanting to be involved, and I can tell you it's not for the money. It's the worst time of the year for people in America and Europe to come over because it's their busiest festival and touring circuit time. And with the Australian dollar, it's an income loser for them," says Holt, who has put a quote from London's What's On Stage on the festival brochure: "This festival far and away exceeds anything I have ever seen in London or New York."
Holt, whose program features more than 450 artists, is unsure whether the festival is the chicken or the egg: did the festival help local cabaret to bloom, or is the festival increasingly popular and recognised because Australian cabaret is so strong? The one thing she doesn't doubt is that local cabaret is enjoying a stirring renaissance.
"If I look at what was around for me to program seven years ago and compare it with now, well, there's a lot more around now and of a much higher quality," she says. "Australian cabaret is in a teenage stage of growth, I reckon: it's gangly and had a big growth spurt. There are lots of new people and established performers have developed. The stuff that Moira Finucane has been doing for 10 years is now recognised around the world, her show Burlesque Hour keeps going from strength to strength, and there are a whole lot of other acts that aspire to do what she does but aren't at that level yet."
There seem to be three main reasons behind cabaret's revival.
First, producers such as Holt, the SOH Studio's Virginia Hyam and the Butterfly Club's David Read and Neville Sice, are prepared to identify and nurture cabaret artists and original work. Second, cabaret as a medium seems to suit Australia. Third, audiences really, really like it.
Read and Sice program the Butterfly Club with about 90 per cent new works, and they take pride in having presented the early work of such successes as Tim Minchin, Eddie Perfect and rising stars Sammy J and Geraldine Quinn. The two producers have a rigorous commitment to finding new talent and have struck up relationships with the Ballarat Arts Academy, St Martin's Youth Centre and the Victorian College of the Arts, even lobbying successfully with the VCA for cabaret to be incorporated into the musical theatre curriculum.
They go to these institutions' cabaret showcases, talent-scout, and then encourage the newbies to put on full shows in their Up and Coming 7pm timeslot.
Sice says this level of commitment is necessary. "If we don't act as incubators the art form will dry up and we won't be able to sustain the number of shows we do," he says.
"We're legitimising cabaret among musical theatre graduates as a possible career path, showing musicals are not the only delivery stream. People like Tim Minchin, Eddie Perfect, Martin Martini, Casey Bennetto, and Sammy J show there are genuine alternatives, and are also trail-blazing when it comes to writing their own material. People are doing covers less and less.
"Cabaret used to be the thing you did when the phone wasn't ringing. Now it's a way of getting the phone to ring."
Holt's commitment to cabaret is genetically encoded into her festival. This year sees English satirist Christopher Green, also known as sassy American country singer TinaC, return with a new show about indigenous Australians called Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word.
Perfect is presenting a try-out of his new work, Shane Warne: The Musical, as part of Holt's Nearly Ready! series. Finucane is returning with two new shows, the cartoonist Michael Leunig is performing a show with singer-songwriter Gyan, and Trevor Jamieson presents Ngapartji Ngapartji, which combines cabaret with a Pitjantjatjara language lesson.
As well as presenting such established acts as Phil Scott, Bob Downe, Paul Grabowsky and Paul Capsis, Holt has introduced an Entree Cabaret season, which showcases Adelaide acts and new material, including Soursob Bob and the John Baker Trio.
The key, for Holt, is that there is something quintessentially Australian about cabaret.
"Australians and cabaret share a lot of characteristics," she says. "Cabaret sits well with our national psyche, it's all about communication, the relationship between the performer and the audience, and Australians really like to relate to people. They're also usually great musicians and terrific storytellers. If you go back over time you can always pick out national favourites who are essentially cabaret performers, like Dame Edna, the Doug Anthony All Stars."
The informal nature of cabaret, she adds, is what makes it so attractive. "Cabaret is inclusive and welcoming, it's not elite. With art forms like theatre and the ballet there is always a distance between the audience and the performer, and you have to know the rules in order to appreciate it. With cabaret all you have to do is come along and be yourself. You don't need to know anything, you don't need to dress a certain way, because it's a human interaction that acknowledges you're there.
"Performers like Moira and Meow Meow give themselves utterly over to the audience. Sometimes they go too far, but that's how you learn where the boundaries are."
© The Australian.
