Review: HOOTENANNY – ADELAIDE CABARET FESTIVAL 2023 at Banquet Room, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Friday 16th June 2023.

After a ten-year absence, Mark Nadler’s freewheeling Broadway Hootenanny is back for two nights only, complete with the rubber chicken. Let the Good Times Roll, to open the evening, was a sentiment shared by everybody in the audience. The rubber chicken was thrown, to be caught by a lucky lady. A high-energy version of Walkin’ After Midnight was followed immediately by That Old Black Magic, showing off his incredible technique on piano. Oh, how we have missed Mark Nadler and his sensational evenings of rock-solid entertainment. The King of Cabaret is back.

When he said that he was glad to be back, we could tell that he really meant it. Bringing us up to date, he told, with great humour, of his nomination for a prestigious award for a production in which he had performed in Paris, and of his marriage to his long-term partner, Dominic. He has that wonderful ability to take a large roomful of, mostly, strangers, and make every one of them feel as though they were close friends, sitting in his room and chatting over a drink or two

Queenie van de Zandt had the honour of being his very first guest on his triumphal return, singing a comic song about a romantic encounter, asking herself why she stayed all night. The final line answered the question, to considerable laughter. A duet was essential, and Suddenly Seymour, from Little Shop of Horrors fitted the bill nicely, bringing huge applause.

He then revised one of the songs that he was supposed to have done long ago in a Hootenanny, with Matthew Carey and Donna McKechnie, which, as that didn’t happen, he then performed alone, creating all of the six individual characters in The Cell Block Tango (He Had it Coming) from Chicago. This is a tour de force that shows more of the talents of Mark Nadler. He is a great character actor. Without a second to recover, he went straight into an energetic version of All That Jazz.

He is a skilled storyteller, too, and he took us back to how he first became involved in our Cabaret Festival, invited by Julia Holt, and how the late Frank Ford, the father of this Festival, took an emerging cabaret performer to him for coaching. That was, of course, the popular Catherine Campbell, who was his second guest for the night. She gave us more laughs with Sara Lee, a comical love song to frozen cakes and pastries, written by Kander and Ebb, for The World Goes Round.

Mentioning the midnight deadline, (whose idea was that?), he kept the funny autobiographical stories going as he changed into his tap shoes for that poignant song, Mr. Bojangles. Not for the only time in the evening, Mark Nadler brought the house down.

His next guest, Virginia Gay, admonished him for making her follow that number, then followed it strongly with The Shady Dame from Seville, from Victor/Victoria, recruiting an unsuspecting audience member to assist. They then started to work through Summer Nights, from Grease, pulling Marty Oldfield from his seat to sing the “well -a well-a well-a uh” part. It began to fall apart, so David Campbell was called to the stage to sing Danny’s part. That’s the sort of thing that happens in the Hootenanny. Did I mention that we have missed Mark Nadler and these shows?

Nadler and Campbell then went into a duet that they used to do at Sardi’s in New York, The Birth of the Blues. Yet more massive applause, and the only unpopular part of the evening, the announcement that it was almost time to go. Nadler acknowledged the people in the crew who had worked on the show, then finished with Dream a Little Dream of Me, leaving everybody wanting more, much more. Now that we have Mark Nadler back again, we need to ensure that he returns every year and, with luck, for more than just a few days.

Yes, of course, there were standing ovations.

There is one more Hootenanny, on Saturday night, with a completely different show. Try to get tickets, if it isn’t already sold out.

Photography, Claudio Raschella.