At last year’s Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Bernadette Robinson astounded audiences with her sell-out smash-hit Songs for Nobodies. Robinson returned to Adelaide earlier this year for an encore run of the one-woman play Joanna Murray Smith wrote for her. At this year’s Festival performance, her new show, entitled Bernadette Robinson in Concert, enables Robinson to extend beyond the confines of that superb play.
Accompanied by a grand piano, and performing on an otherwise bare stage, the evening began with Robinson evoking Judy Garland. Her renditions of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and ‘Rock-A-Bye Your Baby’ set the mood for an evening of fine singing and exquisite mimicry.
This mimicry allows Robinson to imagine how Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady classic ’I Could Have Danced All Night’ may have sounded (and looked) had Barbra Streisand, Maria Callas, Dolly Parton and Shirley Bassey been cast instead of the combination of Marni Nixon’s voice and Audrey Hepburn’s body. The hilarity this induced almost overshadowed the fact that a rare talent is required to perform such feats so convincingly. Her vocal skills were further demonstrated when Robinson imagined a Julie Andrews’ disco version of Alicia Bridges’ classic ‘I Love the Nightlife’ fuelled by hilarious new lyrics.
Robinson tempered the levity of the evening with stunning performances of two Billie Holiday songs; ‘Lady Sings the Blues’ and the hauntingly beautiful yet horrifying ‘Strange Fruit’, Abel Meeropol’s poetic protest about southern lynching.
Robinson’s voice alone smoothly transports the audience across the physical and musical world; from the opera halls of Europe to the smoky jazz and blues clubs of New York to the farms of mid-west America and back to the streets of Paris with familiar classics from Maria Callas, Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline, Judy Garland and Edith Piaf among others. As Songs for Nobodies demonstrated, Robinson is at her best when combining her dramatic talent with her ability to mimic famous singers.
Her own voice is a fine instrument and songs sung in her own voice throughout including Burt Bacharach’s ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ and ‘(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me’ were excellent.
Robinson is a charming, engaging and confident cabaret performer who was warmly rewarded when she engaged with her willing audience. Her anecdotes, including what transpired when she met Audrey Hepburn, added to the performance.
Robinson was accompanied on piano by Paul Noonan, her husband. Throughout the performance it was evident that the accompaniment lacked the depth, texture and nuance that Robinson’s voice deserves.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Bernadette Robinson in Concert
Accompanist: Paul Noonan
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
14 – 15 June
Adelaide Cabaret Festival
www.adelaidecabaret.com
7 – 22 June
