MELBOURNE CABARET FESTIVAL
OPENING NIGHT GALA
Chapel Off Chapel, June 19

The history of cabaret is the history of opposition to the bourgeois stage. It’s a transgressive, constantly mutating performance mode with roots in the underground, slithering up from the bohemian demimonde of 19th-century Europe.

If you’re a unicorn and you know it clap your hands: Emma Dean.Credit:James Thomas

We don’t talk about style in relation to cabaret but “stylings”, because it glories in eccentricity. Its defining feature is it offers performers and audiences a radical release from the tyranny of good taste.

The acts at the Melbourne Cabaret Festival's 10th anniversary opening gala delivered in spades. The standout was a selection from Emma Dean’s Broken Romantics: A Unicorn’s Quest For Love. Dean arrived at the piano in rainbow tulle with a glittery horn on her head and broke into brilliant, original songs, including a fabulous ode to idiosyncrasy called I Am A F*%king Unicorn.

Her ethereal, soulful vocals surged over seas of heartbreak and defiance with stunning range and finesse. If the whole box and dice is as sublime as the taster, it’s a five-star show.

The history of cabaret is the history of opposition to the bourgeois stage.

Other artists flaunted a penchant for the bizarre without reaching such heights. African-American drag artiste Nefertiti LaNegra is worth a look, her best moment a seamless mash-up of Dionne Warwick’s Walk On By and Carole King’s It’s Too Late.

Nefertiti LaNegra performs at the opening gala.Credit:James Thomas

Environmentally friendly company Picked Last For Sport offered quirky, earnest eco-cabaret with snippets from Creatures of the Deep. They’re not much to look at, but they sing gloriously, from barber-shop quartets about sharks to a siren song bewailing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.

There’s always a place for tribute cabaret, and Stephen Valeri’s single-minded devotion to John Farnham proved appallingly infectious. Alexis Fishman’s Amy Winehouse, however, while managing to channel the timbre and vocal mannerisms of the fallen legend, didn't come close to capturing the soul under the sound, and her comic shtick felt deflated in the unforgiving short-spot format.

Drew Downing’s Ultimate '90s Playlist showed the downside of eccentricity. Despite a large live band and back-up singers, the song selection proved relentlessly mediocre: neither catchy enough to be “bangers”, nor shit enough to be cult classics. They came across as pleasures so guilty they should probably only be indulged alone. In the bedroom. With the lights off.

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