The Adelaide Cabaret Festival still has a week to run, but alas, it’s happening without me. After two weeks Down Under – one week in Sydney, one in Adelaide — I’ve had to come home – real-life has to kick back in, and I’ve got off the plane this morning with the prospect of tonight’s opening of Into the Woods at the Linbury Studio; but I’m already expecting to feel a pang of déjà vu. One of the last events I went to in Adelaide on Saturday was a masterclass in singing Sondheim held by director (and long-time friend of the composer) Jeremy Sams, and one of the singers was tutored in “Moments in the Woods” from Into the Woods.
Jeremy’s involvement in the festival stretched from a personal cabaret retrospective of some of his work to two masterclasses – as well as the one on Sondheim, he also did one on writing for the musical theatre. One of the participants in that was Eddie Perfect, whose Shane Warne – the Musical was premiered in a workshop concert version yesterday as part of the festival; I was already on a plane back to London by the time the curtain went up, but I’ve been following Eddie’s work ever since I first met him on my first trip to this festival four year ago, so he allowed me a rare glimpse into the creative process of getting a musical up on its feet so quickly for that showcase. He allowed me to watch the tech run on Friday afternoon. And I was so impressed by what I saw and heard that I went back on Saturday morning for a two-hour band call, too.
Dame Edna – who is coming to Adelaide next week, after the festival ends – gave an interview to the local paper, The Adelaide Advertiser, on Saturday, where it was reported that she once “likened Adelaide to a diagnosis from her gynaecologist – all quiet on the surface but it seethes underneath” – and the same is true of this festival. Everything seems so slick and effortless, but behind-the-scenes a lot of very hard work goes into putting each show on. Especially in the case of shows like Shane Warne that have never been seen before anywhere; but there’s also something about getting a show up this fast that concentrates the minds and talents of the artists. There’s a phenomenal degree of commitment to their work: to show the work – and themselves – to their best advantage.
And while there’s a phenomenon known in New York as “workshop love”, where a musical looks far better in the ‘naked’ state of a workshop than it does by the time it is fully dressed, I have to say that what I saw of Shane Warne – the Musical contained some of the freshest, most eclectic and invigorating musical writing I’ve heard in a theatrical setting since Jerry Springer – the Opera. Musicals based on real-life, living personalities are obviously gifts for creative writers (just as musicals based on dead ones are apparently death to the theatre – think Napoleon the Musical, Lautrec or Leonardo, to name just three). Biographical musicals like Shane Warne have, first of all, great title recognition: people know, or feel they know, him, not just for his sport but for his tabloid-fuelled life story. (David Beckham and Wayne Rooney might be good subjects for the same reason). But the wonderful thing about Perfect’s musical is not that it attempts to satirise and poke fun at him, but that it actually does something intensely serious and committed: it looks at the man, the myth, and has him wonder what his own legacy might be – there may come a time when no one remembers who he is. But no one who sees this amazing musical will ever be able to forget it. And Adelaide saw it first.
That’s a big part of the festival: it is not just a showcase for work created elsewhere but a developmental platform, too, where artists can stretch themselves – and each other. They learn, and they teach, too. The masterclass series offers a wonderful window into the creative process on both sides of the fence: for participants in it, naturally, but also for members of the public (and critics like me!) who don’t usually have access to the working processes of directors, composers and performers.
