The Spiegeltent! French flavoured cabaret! Marsha Hines! It all sounded so promising…
Walking into the gorgeous Spiegeltent is always a thrill. I have very fond memories of performing, watching shows and spending magical evenings in the tent of mirrors in Melbourne, Adelaide, Edinburgh and here in Sydney. (If you’ve never been, it’s worth going for the tent alone that seems to have its own magical aura.)
We grab a booth and settle in as a funky French looking DJette is spinning tunes on the catwalk. Unfortunately for some reason the bar is closed and we’re told we will be locked out if we leave now but can go out in 15 minutes. Never mind.
The show begins and we meet Waangenga Blanco who performs an impressive rubber-leg contemporary dance. But are we in Pigalle? Is he a bum? No, too well dressed. A drunk? Perhaps? But as the show continues with iOTA as a type of frontman and a mishmash of cabaret performers, we realise that there is nothing much about Pigalle in this show, apart from perhaps a sex theme. It feels disappointingly like false marketing. But once you stop looking for anything Parisian, the show has many enjoyable elements.
Back up singer/dancers Chasa Halliday and Zachary Webster are slick, sexy and solid. Aerial artist Hugo Desmarais is cute and cheeky and erotical melds with poetics with his duo with Uammel Rodriguez. Kitty Bang Bang gets the biggest cheers with her fabulously wacky burlesque numbers including a feisty fire dance striptease. Lucas Newland’s disco choreography is sassy, punchy and sharp and James Browne has created simply stunning theatrical costumes fit for the catwalk.
It’s just a shame that there’s no real thread (iOTA prances about singing and dancing his butt off but we’re not quite who he is meant to represent) and Marsha Hines, at least on opening night, is hardly audible. She’s billed as the lead of the show and is an icon- we want to hear her. We should be jumping out our seats with classics such as ‘You Got the Love’, but we’re politely clapping along. ‘Don’t Leave me This Way’ indeed.
Photo Prudence Upton
End Note
I’ve just read Ben Neutze’s review in Time Out and would like to second his disappointment in the festival garden. I was with international guests and also bumped into friends outside and would have loved to stay for a drink, perhaps with live music or at least a DJ- but the garden was brightly lit with not much on offer and the tent wasn’t open for festivities. Hopefully this can come back to life later in the season or in 2020 as the magic of the Spiegeltent isn’t just about the show but the evening ahead with mingling and music, bumping shoulders with the performers and other creative types and festival goers. Luckily I am in the middle of researching a story on Sydney bars for an Australian travel magazine so we whipped off to explore one around the corner, but on such a beautiful Sydney night it was a shame not to stay out… ( I’ll post a link on the Ruby TV facebook page when the bar story is up!)
