Cabaret - in 12 Easy Steps
Cabaret - in 12 Easy Steps, Statement Cabaret Lounge, (beneath the State Theatre, 49 Market Street); three shows only: Saturdays 13, 20 & 27 October 2007; ph: Ticketmaster 136 100 or www.ticketmaster.com.au
Queenie van de Zandt scored a bit hit with Statement Bar and Ensemble Theatre audiences in 2005 with her one-woman show I Get The Music In You. It featured assassin of the human spirit, otherwise known as suburban music therapist, Jan van de Stool, and a supporting cast of victims, aka pupils. It was clever and funny in equal parts.
Now van de Zandt, rather than continue to hang out for a role in a production that may actually make it to the stage for more than a handful of performances, has again come up with her own show: Cabaret - in 12 Easy Steps.
The irrepressible urge to combine education and entertainment is once more to the fore and that she manages to do both - simultaneously - is a measure of an exceptional talent. She wrote and performs the show (accompanied by Bev Kennedy on piano) and it is as cunningly observant, wicked, subtle, amusing and subversive as I Get the Music, to whose final, full-length form she co-opted comic genius script doctor Tony Taylor.
In 12 Steps, rather than simply sing a bunch of cabaret standards, big belting ballads, the requisite heart-wrenching song of lost love, a comic number and tie it all together with a bit of patter, van de Zandt has, as before, constructed a storyline. Instead of a character, however, in 12 Steps she introduces her younger self - via a screen and some priceless footage of the most successful cabaret show in Queanbeyan's history: The Essential Lloyd Webber. It starred the 17-year-old Queenie and an equally youthful Peter J Casey.
The immediate result of viewing the snippets of b&w footage is to marvel at how old you had to look in 1987 to be a teenager; the second realisation is that the raw talent on display in that (perfectly dreadful) show is now a fast-maturing yet still developing star of the Australian stage. If Judi Connelli does go ahead with her threat to hang up her microphone in the next year or so, here's a magnificent successor.
The two women have little in common physically but they do share a rare sensitivity in performance and a self deprecating sense of humour; combine those qualities with acting ability and great voices - plus the musical taste to know what to do with them - and you have the extremely appealing stage presences fans have come to know and love. Van de Zandt's voice is still growing - and has become richer and fuller than it was a year ago - so it will be fascinating to see what she does in the next few years. Twelve Steps is a great idea, pretty well realised, to keep her out of trouble in the interim.
As any recovering cabaret artiste would recognise, the theme of the show is how to do it. And how not to do it. It is both painfully truthful and slyly knowing. One of the steps is "don't be self indulgent." This means, van de Zandt explains, that you should refrain from doing the big number from the next big show in which you are longing to be cast. She demonstrates what you shouldn't do by singing a beautiful version of one of the hit ballads from Wicked (due in Australia, September 2008 - she would be great casting!)
She also risks audience alienation by subverting the pathos (or bathos, as it often becomes in lesser hands) of an anthem such as "Memory" (furball anyone?); and most of all, she never slides into stereotype or complacency and the result is an object lesson in provocative and really grown up entertainment. (Even if she does look 20 years younger than her 17-year-old self nowadays.)
Twelve Steps is a work in progress and is unlikely to be the same two nights running; that's part of the van de Zandt schtick and talent. It's also a measure of how far she's come and how much further she wants to go. Going along for the ride is mandatory for all lovers of the live experience.
