Performing Arts

The Wharf Review: Pennies from Kevin – Cabaret Festival

PenniesPresented by the Adelaide Cabaret Festival
Reviewed Thurs 17th June 2010

http://www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com

Venue: Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
Season: 9:15PM nightly to 18th June
Duration: 1hr
Tickets: Premium 44.95/adult $34.95/conc $30.95
Bookings for all Cabaret Festival shows: BASS 131 241 or http://www.bass.net.au

This show was written by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsyth and musical director, Phillip Scott, and it is performed by these three with the assistance of Virginia Gay. Together these four performers create caricatures of a huge range of local and international political figures and lampoon them mercilessly. Nobody is safe, from Mike Rann to the Pope. In case you haven’t already guessed, the show is based around familiar tunes with new words, the title tune originally having been Pennies from Heaven.

After the opening series of numbers they switch to a Harry Potter inspired reworking of the machinations behind the scenes in Parliament House, entitled Kevin Potter and the Lower Chamber of Secrets, where we meet a range of characters including Swan Weasley, Hermione Gillard and, of course, their mentor, DumbleGough. They then move into the Canberra’s Got Talent! segment, featuring several politicians including a rather too life-like Penny K. D. Wong.

We then find out how Mother Mary McKillop really got canonised. Amanda Vanstone has had her hair freshly set in concrete and, pursued by an amorous Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, in turn pursues the Pope. This segment is entitled La Dolce Big-Eater! The Pope, of course, is the religious leader formerly known as Ratzinger, who is in denial of everything and cannot resist the impulse to raise his right arm in a Nazi salute, a throwback to his Hitler youth, rapidly pulling it down again with his left hand, a la Peter Sellers in the film Dr, Strangelove.

Michelle Obama is joined by two beehive haired backing singers in glittering red dresses, Biggins and Forsythe, in a Supremes inspired segment, singing the praises of Barack, the new black, in full Motown sound. This got a few toes tapping and even a few people dancing in their seats.

Global warming and new technologies have taken their toll, on colliery brass bands. We meet one that has dwindled to only four members, yet they still manage a rendition of the opening of the Richard Strauss piece used as the theme for 2001: A Space Oddyssey, Also sprach Zarathustra. Not a bad effort at all for an ensemble consisting only of cornet, trombone, euphonium, tuba and a bass tom tom.

It must be admitted, though, that this is not up to the minute topical satire. Instead it is referring to events that are, in political terms, ancient history. They say that a week is a long time in politics and the events mentioned here are far older. The recession we never had is all now but forgotten, along with much of the material on which the show is based, and Tony Abbott is too recent to get a mention. It is still extremely funny, for all that, and should come with a health warning about aching jaws from laughing and sore hands from applauding. If you are in need of a good laugh, you’ll get one here.

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor Glam Adelaide.

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