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Show: Barry Humphries’ Weimar Cabaret – featuring Meow Meow
Society: London (professional shows)
Venue: Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Credits: Kurt Weill, Ernst Krenek, Erwin Schulhoff, Ernst Toch and Mischa Spoliansky. Produced by Fiery Angel
Type: Sardines
Author: Chris Abbott
Performance Date: 12/07/2018
Barry Humphries’ Weimar Cabaret – featuring Meow Meow
Chris Abbott | 13 Jul 2018 08:34am
This is a show with a fascinating back-story. As readers of Barry Humphries’ various volumes of memoirs will know, he was a singular child with particular interests, including visits to the second-hand bookshops of Melbourne. On one of his many trips to these palaces of printed delight, he came upon a stack of sheet music produced in Vienna in the 1920s.
The printed sheets contained music of the Weimar period in Germany, that brief interlude between two world wars when it seemed that there might be hope of a brighter future for a country and particularly for the Jewish community from whom so many of the composers came. Humphries later visited Vienna but found almost no recordings of the music existed, and he has striven ever since to preserve it and share its riches with others.
The latest version of Barry Humphries’ Weimar Cabaret can be seen at the Barbican Theatre for a short season, and what a glorious evening of delights it is. Accompanied by the sublime cabaret artiste Meow Meow and the idiosyncratic but superb Aurora Orchestra, Humphries retells the story of his discovery of the music and introduces much of it to his audience.
Although the familiar twinkle is still to be seen at times, this is a slightly more restrained performance by Humphries, now in his 80s and not always totally on top of the material despite the teleprompter assistance, but none of that mattered for his loyal audience; and his script for the show is both amusing and full of insight.
Alongside him are two phenomenal performers. Fellow Australian Meow Meow is a cabaret singer of great skill and delivers the humour and the lyricism of these songs to great effect. Musical Director is Satu Vanska, who also sings and plays violin and Stroh violin, the latter a fascinating instrument. The enterprising Aurora Orchestra even give us Toch’s Geographical Fugue, a spoken word piece which, as Humphries reminds us, predates current rap by 88 years.
The cabaret is presented on a stage framed appropriately by red velvet curtains and decorated with potted palms, and a large screen gives a flavour of the art of the period, another aspect in which polymath Humphries is expert and experienced. It is a privilege to attend Barry Humphries’ Weimar Cabaret, not just to see some exhilarating performances (including one from someone who has claimed to be planning to retire since 2012) but also to discover something of the lost riches of the music of pre-War Germany. It is proper grown-up entertainment, often hilarious, that makes you think of what has been lost as well as enjoying what has survived, thanks to enthusiasts like the irrepressible Barry Humphries.
- : admin
- : 12/07/2018