Review: THE OLD RAZZLE DAZZLE: AN EVENING OF LIES, LYING, AND LIARS – ADELAIDE CABARET FESTIVAL 2023 at Banquet Room, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Thursday 15th June 2023.

The much-loved Mark Nadler is back in ‘Nadelaide’, after a ten-year gap, to present The Old Razzle Dazzle: An Evening of Lies, Lying, and Liars. After loud applause at this entrance, he opened with a nod to the great music of the Weimar era, with Friedrich Hollaender’s Illusions, sung by Marlene Dietrich in the film A Foreign Affair, then moving into A Blizzard of Lies, by David and Samantha Frishberg. This introduced the theme for the evening, and he announced that everything that followed would be a lie.

The fictional police detective, Inspector Morse, stated “Everybody lies”, and Mark Nadler sets out to prove him correct in this mostly hilarious look into of all aspects of lies and liars. It is not all funny, as there are some serious moments, too, in a carefully balanced production, typical of Nadler’s ability to write a show that provides food for thought, as well as hits the funny bone. Why have we had to wait so long for more of this?

He moved to another great lie, singing When you Wish Upon a Star. No, dreams don’t come true. Pinocchio was not the only liar. The lies we tell to children was an hilarious segment of the perfomance, condemning the concepts of the tooth fairy, the stork, the Easter bunny, and Father Christmas, as well as the Boogie Man. There were, obviously, many guilty parents in the audience, judging by the laughter and applause.

He explained that children, as they grow into teenagers, become rotten, and, it seems, that it is all due to the music to which they listen. He read some statements that, at the time, were presented in all seriousness, and now, in hindsight, are laughable. This was a clever introduction to a lively Ya Got Trouble, sung by Professor Harold Hill in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man.

His introduction of the next number included his first tilt of the evening at the former president, Trump. He then gave the gentlest of renditions of Francesca Blumenthal’s The Lies of Handsome Men, before increasing the tempo for How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life, by Alan J. Lerner and Burton Lane, from Royal Wedding.

By great coincidence, as I drove in to see the show ABC Jazz played a version of his next song, Guess Who I Saw Today, by Murray Grand and Elisse Boyd. He gave it a wonderfully poignant interpretation. He continued with another fascinating reinterpretation on The Great Pretender, written by Buck Ram for the Platters, building in intensity to a rousing conclusion and, yes, more applause, cheering, and whistling.

A Little Tin Box, by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, showed his skills as an actor, creating some very funny characters, and included seated tap dancing while still playing piano and singing. We had moved now to the political aspects of lying.

Friedrich Hollaender’s Münchhausen, from 1931, took us back to the glorious era of Berlin Kabarett, which he sang mostly in English, but with a short passage in the original German. He filled the song with sadness, appropriate to its context against the rise of Fascism. In Jerry Herman’s I Don’t Want to Know, Nadler expresses a thought that many of us might have had, wishing to hide from the truth, when the truth is ugly.

Finally, we arrived at Kander and Ebb’s The Old Razzle Dazzle, which he interspersed with quotes from some of the greatest of liars; past presidents. After experiencing the likes of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison, and their governments, it came as no surprise, whatsoever, that politicians featured prominently in this performance. He then moved away from the piano into an extended tap dance, accompanying it with a long series of statements made by Donald Trump, every one a blatant lie, or an expose of his delusions. To the great amusement of the audience, Scott Morrison also rated a mention.

A second standing ovation marked the end of the performance, which had showed us how much we had missed out on in the past decade. Forget about triple threats. Mark Nadler goes much further. He sings, plays piano, tap dances, acts, playing many characters during the performance, he is a wit, and is a wonderful storyteller, doing all of these at the highest level, and he also is a great researcher. He doesn’t perform cabaret; he IS cabaret.

The performance overran the advertised time, but that was entirely the fault of the audience, who laughed and applauded enthusiastically throughout. We can only hope that this marks the beginning of, once again, annual visits from Mark Nadler, who has many more of these scripted shows that we have not seen here, and others that he performs in conjunction with people such as K. T. Sullivan, and, of course, there are his freewheeling Hootenannys, which he will be running on Friday and Saturday. Be there.

Photography, Claudio Raschella.