{"id":1614,"date":"2018-05-29T16:46:49","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T15:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1614"},"modified":"2018-05-29T16:46:49","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T15:46:49","slug":"odd-ducks-and-different-buds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2018\/05\/odd-ducks-and-different-buds.html","title":{"rendered":"Odd ducks and different buds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018You must have been quite an odd duck as a boy,\u2019 I said to Barry Humphries<\/a>, as the entertainer described his unusual devotion to Berlin cabaret artists, fostered in stuffy suburban Melbourne. \u2018Yes, I was,\u2019 he replied. He gave me a look. \u2018I expect you were too.\u2019<\/p>\n

Guilty as charged: part of my duckery was also an interest in the sauce and swoon of Weimar performance \u2013 from Cabaret<\/em> to Brecht\/Weill to Ute Lemper: mission complete. The songs and the stories that surround them \u2013 about Weill, Dietrich and less familiar names \u2013 are hospitable to anyone piecing together an identity on the edges. For a Jewish gayboy, they might help you feel seen, and seen by a tantalising past.<\/p>\n

I spent Saturday night with some of these songs at the Gate Theatre\u2019s Effigies of Wickedness<\/em><\/a>. It\u2019s a great title. Maybe a cheeky twitter biography. You\u2019d lay claim to the description just as you might embrace snark directed at you, to de-fang the offense or display your winning self-deprecation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the phrase used by the Nazi censors of \u2018degenerate\u2019 music, including cabaret songs and their liberal attitudes, jazzy inflections, flouts to sexual and racial purity. The tiny Gate Theatre \u2013 the smallest space with the biggest ambition in London \u2013 becomes a dark, mirror-walled cabaret cupboard (designed by Ellan Parry) for a four-piece band, two big-voice opera singers (Peter Brathwaite<\/a>, who initiated the project, and Katie Bray) and two big-personality fringe stars (Lucy McCormick and Le Gateau Chocolat). Some of them might even be odd ducks. In our faces, occasionally in our laps, they sashay chronologically through songs about queer doings, dissent and defiance, amid a welter of prop-box exuberance in Ellen McDougall\u2019s smart production.<\/p>\n

Later this summer, Barry Humphries\u2019 Weimar Cabaret<\/em> <\/a>will play the Barbican, featuring cabaret star Meow Meow. He, like Effigies,<\/em> suggests the audience needs context \u2013 both shows explain the background to what you hear. However much they advocate for neglected music, both also sense the songs are historical documents. They argue that history matters \u2013 that we should learn from the past, that it parallels our present. As Humphries told me: \u2018we\u2019re living again in an age of anxiety. Big time.\u2019<\/p>\n

Reverse engineering<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pleasure as well as anxiety heightens the ambiguity of this material. Hollaender, Weill and Spolinasky play double-edged games \u2013 in songs like I am a Vamp or A Little Yearning you first register the jaunty or lilting melody, then the barbed lyrics. Maddy Costa<\/a> riffs rewardingly on a series of questions in her Effigies<\/em> review \u2013 principally, \u2018what exactly is it trying to achieve as a piece of theatre?\u2019 Good questions, and needling responses: but I was left scratching at another one \u2013 what did, or could, this material do in the world? How much do we need to know about how the work was originally received, and how much can we want it replicate that reaction?<\/p>\n

And who could reverse engineer a theatrical event\u2019s original impact? Audiences aren\u2019t monolithic, so different Berlin spectators would have been shocked or seduced, titillated or tripped into reflection. We might detect flurries of unease even in the earlier songs here \u2013 but also the excitement of singing in public what would once have been secret or shameful.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a scaredy kitten in stage interaction, but even I didn\u2019t flinch when Le Gateau Chocolat\u2019s gold lame number landed on my lap during the first casual costume change. No one purrs a bass note, works a frock, beard or glitter-freighted eyelash with such molten style as Le Gateau Chocolat<\/a> \u2013 he has moved from burlesque treats like La Soir\u00e9e<\/em> to singing Mack the Knife at the National Theatre or We Are Family at the Globe (where Meow Meow has also appeared). So what\u2019s to be scared of? Lucy McCormick\u2019s \u2018cabaret interactions\u2019 edged into personal space (a hug, some help with a zip), but mostly turned the discomfort on herself. These performers might embarrass, but they\u2019re not trying to shock.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, why let someone else\u2019s definition of wickedness, or at least provocation, be your starting point? The Berlin cabaret songs retain potency through musical sophistication and theatrical spark \u2013 the misfiring aspirations of Sex Appeal, the exuberant Life\u2019s A Swindle<\/a>, or the lulling melancholy of The Munchausen Song<\/a>, which deflates idealism in a regretful chorus of \u2018liar, liar, liar\u2019. McDougall stages an inexorable mock curtain call, the cast bowing on and on, as laughter and applause die on our hands and lips. The woman in front of us chirruped \u2018this is funny,\u2019 and clapped and cackled on alone, making the whole thing even chillier. And the evening finally ended with a desolate reprise of Spoliansky\u2019s 1921 anthem<\/a> of queer identity \u2013 \u2018we are the buds that grow a little different.\u2019 What first was brandished, now is branded. It might be fun to claim a description like effigies of wickedness \u2013 but as the Gate team showed, it\u2019s more likely that the label will be pinned on you.<\/p>\n

Photo above by Helen Murray<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018You must have been quite an odd duck as a boy,\u2019 I said to Barry Humphries, as the entertainer described his unusual devotion to Berlin cabaret artists, fostered in stuffy suburban Melbourne. \u2018Yes, I was,\u2019 he replied. He gave me a look. \u2018I expect you were too.\u2019 Guilty as charged: part of my duckery was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[523,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-music","9":"tag-theatre","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1616,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614\/revisions\/1616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}