| 03 August 2009
Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome
Hard to define but easy to love, cabaret is opening its arms and taking over the city this year.
Along with the Spiegeltent, Le Clique cabaret show isn’t coming to Edinburgh this Fringe. However, despite the absence of the show that did much to spark the current cabaret boom, there is no shortage of unconventional acts ready to step into Le Clique’s spangled spats.
While there are 81 different mentions of cabaret in the Fringe brochure, many have but a whiff of cabaret about them and pinning down an exact definition of the genre isn’t easy. It’s tempting to go along with the American Associate Justice, Potter Stewart, who sagely noted that hardcore porn was difficult to define but ‘I know it when I see it.’ Cabaret performers themselves have more fixed ideas about the ingredients needed to mix a good cabaret cocktail.
From the comfort of her onstage chaise longue, opera singer and cabaret MC Ali McGregor is hosting her Late Nite Variety Nite Night at the Assembly Rooms. She has definite views on what makes a cabaret show.
“It is something that cannot be singly defined by comedy, music or theatre,” she reckons. “It is an element of two or all three of those things. A lot of the time it will mean re-interpreting and singing other people’s songs in either a funny or theatrical way. Also, importantly, cabaret has a late night, slightly seedy or naughty feel.”
Until 2005 and a pivotal night performing in an Australian cabaret show, McGregor would have had no hesitation about calling herself an opera singer. Now singing arias in cabaret is a much larger part of her career, and McGregor is well placed to weigh up the differences between the two genres.
“Cabaret has an underground culture whereas opera is very above ground,” she reckons. “Generally, nothing goes on in an opera house that you would hesitate to tell your parents about. Maybe that’s the key difference.”
Playing the louche, French raconteur Marcel Lucont, Alexis Dubus is hosting Cabaret Fantastique as well as doing his solo comedy shows Sexual Metro and A Ruddy Brief History of Swearing. For Dubus, cabaret is a welcome example of the way in which comedy can evolve.
“Cabaret is in that gap between theatre and comedy. It’s a forum in which acts can be amusing or quirky rather than laugh out loud funny. It’s for a more discerning than the tell-us-a-joke crowd. An act can be funny without having to be gags, gags, gags.”
Working as Shoo Shoo Baby, singers Tanya Holt and Anna Braithwaite take a different approach with their show, The Entire History of Cabaret, which draws a line from cabaret’s birth in Belle Epoque Paris all the way through to Britain’s Got Talent. Holt points to the interactive nature of cabaret as a key characteristic, along with its tendency to feed off mainstream cultural developments and present them in a new, thought-provoking way. By way of illustrating what she means, the Shoo Shoo Baby set ends with a four minute spoof opera called Britten’s Got Talent.
Whether any of this brings us closer to nailing down the DNA of cabaret is debatable but that might not be a bad thing. “One of cabaret’s big selling points is that people can’t make a clear definition of what it is,’ says Holt, ‘and that in itself makes it more alluring.”
Ali McGregor’s Late Nite Variety Nite Night at the Assembly Rooms, Tel 0131 623 3030, 6-30 August (not 10,17) 10.30pm.
Cabaret Fantastique at Nicol Edwards, 17, 24 August, 11.45pm.
The Entire History of Cabaret at Assembly Rooms, 6-16August, 4.50pm.
| < Prev |
|---|
