Presented by the Adelaide Cabaret Festival
Reviewed Fri 11th June 2010
http://www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com
Venue: Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
Season: finished
Duration: 1hr 45mins
Bookings for all Cabaret Festival shows: BASS 131 241 or http://www.bass.net.au
Natalie Cole, the headline act for the 2010 Cabaret Festival, was supported by several of her own musicians on keyboards, piano, guitar, drums, bass and trumpet, and two backing singers, supplemented by the superb Adelaide Art Orchestra, all conducted by her musical director. She opened the show with Twilight Time, to the delight of the audience, moving on into daylight with Hey, Summer Sun and, with a quick change of weather, into a driving rendition of Come Rain or Come Shine. There was only a minimal gap between songs all evening, just allowing enough time for a short introduction. This was a concert packed solidly with music, one song following hot on the heels of the one before.
A lively version of The Man That Got Away led to a more gently swinging song associated with her ‘Uncle Frank’ Sinatra, Nice and Easy, and then a sultry version of the song made famous by Peggy Lee, Fever, led on to Dinah Washington’s hit What a Difference a Day Makes. Route 66 proved that it has lost none of its popularity over the years and featured some brief breaks from guitar, piano, bass and drums. A very fine version of The Very Thought of You came next, then There’s a Love in my Life, As Time Goes By, and suddenly we were listening to her sing a duet with Nat ‘King’ Cole, her father’s recorded voice coming in unannounced on Walking my Baby Back Home. That, of course, brought huge applause. It was nothing, though, to the applause when a screen dropped down and she went into Unforgettable, singing and interacting with her father’s image, interspersed of images of her as a child. It would be complex enough doing this in a recording studio but the technical difficulty of doing this on stage with a live orchestra and getting the synchronisation perfect must have been enormous. This was a real show-stopper and she wisely stayed with her father’s music a little longer with his song, L-O-V-E.
Personally, I would have preferred that she had stayed with the style of the major part of the concert but, towards the end, she suddenly decided to jump forward several decades, stating that there is “a little rock ‘n’ roll in everybody”, and assuring us that we would “know the title of this one”. She was wrong on both counts, in my case. This did, however, give the backing singers something to do, as they had spent the entire concert waiting, singing only a few notes in just two of the preceding numbers.
A first encore saw her scatting in an extended musical interchange with her trumpeter on Let There be Love, a popular number with the audience. It did seem rather a shame that she did not come full circle and end, as she had done the night before, with one of her father’s timeless songs, on the Saturday she had closed with Mona Lisa, nonetheless, the audience seemed happy enough to rock along with her to a number recorded by B. B. King with the Irish band U2, When Love Comes to Town, with a standing ovation throughout the number and extended applause to follow. The evening just flew by and it was a surprise to find that we had been treated to an extra 30 minutes. This was a terrific concert, filled to the brim with great music.
Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor Glam Adelaide.
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