Everything in Showbiz is 20 Minutes Too Long - Belinda Wollaston

It is ironic that a show entitled Everything In Showbiz is 20 Minutes Too Long is too long? I’m not sure if that was some very clever intention (if it is it was a daring stroke of genius) but I’m more inclined to believe that it was just an unfortunate coincidence. It’s not that the show is long, it runs just over an hour, but it just feels like it is, which is worse.

Where to begin? It surprised me that Belinda Wollaston, a performer with a considerable resume both in cabaret and on stage, should appear nervous. Yet at times she seemed out of breath and unsure about her own abilities. Cabaret relies on conviction and selling your story to the audience, when this doesn’t happen it can often leave everyone with a sort of empty void.

I feel that the song choice here was the biggest problem, it was poor. Belinda is undoubtedly talented and when she connects with a song she really connects. I just felt that most of them weren’t her. Belinda is a performer who needs that outer layer of a character to really help her sell a song, without it she’s just a girl with a decent voice. I only say decent because at the performance I saw Wollaston was consistently off vocally. Not only that, she acknowledged the fact when thanking the sound guy.

I can’t wait to see more from Belinda, she has something. However next time I feel it needs to be packaged into a more streamlined box. She needs to have more of a story, more of a focus to her show and it wouldn’t hurt to snag the talents of a good director, loose the electronic keyboard that reared its ugly head during the show and pick better songs.