Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Sunday 7th June 2015
Jacqui Dark and Kanen Breen, accompanied, or perhaps that should be aided and abetted, by their musical director, Daryl Wallis, at the piano are the Strange Bedfellows. Their production,
Strange Bedfellows - Under the Covers, is another that finds it roots in German Kabarett from the Weimar Republic era between, the wars in Berlin. What makes this particularly interesting is that Dark and Breen are opera singers of note, regularly performing with Opera Australia, and both have won Helpmann Awards, Australia's premier awards for the performing arts, as well as Green Room Awards. This, however, is definitely not a performance that you will see presented by that particular company.
Berlin Kabarett was subversive, political, and dangerous, particularly for the many Jewish writers, composers and performers with the rise of Nazism. It was also a time of great sexual freedom and deviance, and that is embraced in this production.
Kurt Weill and
Bertolt Brecht exposed the seedy side of life in The Threepenny Opera and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which was hated by Hitler. Such songs as those in these works, and many by other composers were pushing boundaries. Dark and Breen are doing that here, deeply engaged in the tradition, but updating to push current boundaries. Performers in Berlin were not bothered by 'good taste', 'accepted definitions of morality', or 'polite society'. Their world was that of ordinary working people and the underworld. They shocked, and made their audiences think. This show does the same.
To go into details of the songs and the show would ruin it for those who are yet to see this performance, but be prepared to be challenged. Suffice to say that the rock opera scene, in which they show themselves to be dog lovers, is not what that term generally means, and that is not the most devious part.
This production is one out of the box, with the sensational voices of the two performers, their marvellous interplay, the many tongue in cheek moments, some poignant times, and some that come right out of left field. This is supremely intelligent cabaret that, as it should, challenges and provokes thought and discussion and takes the audiences into places that they would not normally dare to go.
I have to admit that the familiar opening notes of Schubert's Lieder,
Das Erlkönig, had me amused when the lyrics of
Tainted Love were superimposed on that accompaniment. There are some very fine brains behind this brilliant production. If it should come your way, run to get a ticket, but take note that this is not for the prudish or squeamish, it for thinking, mature adults.
Stop Press: It has been announced that Jacqueline Dark will play the Mother Abbess in Australian tour of South Pacific. This is somewhat different from her current cabaret role.
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