The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 21

THURSDAY 29 FEBRUARY 1996 THE AGE A 21 Arts COMEDY USIC No substitute for a bitch-fest Agony and energy Sandra Bernhardt show is called "excuses for bad behavior, part 1" and that is what the audience got, writes Elissa Blake. Jeff Buckley may not wish to be adored, but try telling that to Tuesday night's crowd, writes Wendy Tuohy. Concert Hall 27 February PERHAPS BECAUSE commercial I radio has elevated Jeff Buckley to the status of Rock God since he came here last year, perhaps because the fans who flnrk tn him JEFF BUCKLEY Palais Theatre 27 February ffin' bigger venues on this toVir eem groupie-iute, uus oiner-wonu- artisl has had less than favorable eviews this time. Sitting in the Palais Theatre. ing transported, riven, lifted and ashed by a voice as shimmeringly Hpthpral at thp nntpc that nmir nff a faw blade when it's played with a Violin bow, it was hard to under "OK, TURN THE lights up a little.

I want to see who's hot out there tonight," murmured American scene queen Sandra Bernhard. "Oh God, apparently nobody. lesus Christ wake up out there! Oo I have to come out and kick your asses?" Sandra Bernhard was looking desperate halfway though her act on Tuesday night. She was dying and she knew it. Watching Ms Bernhard sitting on a stool picking her scabs and babbling on and on about her cold was about as entertaining as a night at your local doctor's surgery.

Where was the glamor? Where was the energy? Where was the boisterous, funny woman the audience had paid $44.50 to see? Dressed in a long slinky black skirt that barely clung to her hip bones, Bernhard declared she didn't want to perform the usual "bitch-fest" that made her famous. It would be too predictable, she said. "I'm just being myself tonight. I'm not getting into any bags or trips. I'm nice and mellow and I'm feeling a lot gentler about things, not so judgemental, you know." Sure.

In 1993 Bernhard played to sold-out shows in Melbourne and Sydney with her nasty, sexy, cool comedy and cabaret routines. Her acclaimed show Without you Tm Nothing ran for six months off Broadway and her performance as Nancy on the cult sit-com Roseanne won thousands of admirers. But on Tuesday night the audience for the new show, excuses for bad behavior, part 1, was fashionably late and when Sandra finally loped on to stand how anyone who hears Jeff Jiuckley could be anything but moved. A fragile rigure with a boy's white Jrmfc told us wrenching stories of 2oss pain and aching. He used a jjnusical language so beautiful nd sang at times in a voice rich cut tortured as a male Nina Simone Jj that the pain became a thing of beauty.

We do not know the exact origins of leff Buckley's intensity, or what the stage, the Concert Hall was still only half full. After a lame version of Diana Ross's Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Bernhard perched on a stool and mumbled on about 24-hour weather channels on cable, actors who want to be actresses, rocket salad and koalas. No-one was laughing. She fell into the I-may-not-be-fun-ny-but-at-least-I'm-real routine, telling us about the hair stuck in her eyelashes and the bad combination of G-string and tampon she was enduring. It was awful.

"At least I'm awake and I'm wearing kinky tangerine heels," she pleaded with the audience. "Oh God, I think the queen in the front row is the only one who laughed at that." After another 90 agonising minutes of flat jokes and bad singing, Bernhard Anally gave up. "Let's wind up this ing infected follicle of a night." She finally relaxed, stopped caring about the audience and ripped into four smashing good songs You Make me Feel Mighty Real, Little Red Corvette. Janie's Got a Gun and Don't Let me Down. Excuses for a bad performance were all we really heard on Tuesday night.

The crowd was expecting a star. Instead it got a girl having a bad hair day begging to be loved. Like we care. his death by overdose, was also felt. Buckley modulated the emotional and musical tenor of the evening with waves of sound from gentle ringer-strummed riffs to crashing explosions of guitar noise.

Those who saw Buckley here last August say he has gained stage confidence and become more rockstar-like since then. This is not surprising since he has become used to larger audiences by playing many of the big European music festivals. It did not matter that this 28-year-old had nothing neuon show. With the exception of the medley he did around Bob Dylan's Just Like a Woman as an encore, and a cover of MCS's Writ Out the Jams, the material Buckley and his band played was from their lauded release of 1994, Grace. The sensation of being swept up by waves of leff Buckley's energy made the night new.

Contrary to his stated wish: "I do not want to be adored," Buckley wrote his name on the hearts of the people who saw him on Tuesday night. Jeff Buckley plays at the Palais Theatre again tonight. causes the compressed tension that I sometimes makes him rigid at the but the "lots of bad things" he speaks about to journal- the "lots of irreparable damage i. the agony of learning all over certainly came through in i his coiled-spring stage presence. il Ihe musical influence ol his father, the revered 19(i0s folk artist and poet, Tim Buckley, who met his eight-year-old son only once before jOlr.i'Jelf Buckley: a coiled-spring stage presence singing wrenching stories of loss and pain.

INTERVIEW Partners with the ghosts of old Berlin Graeme Murphy and Iva Davies collaborated on the Sydney Dance Company's latest production, reports John Mangan. JUST OVER A year ago Graeme Murphy rang Iva Davies asking him if he'd like to write some music for a Sydney Dance Company production. Davies, rock star with Icehouse and classically trained oboist, declined politely explaining that he and Max i.ambert were in the middle of a project recording cover versions of songs by the likes of Lou Reed and Frank Sinatra. "I told him was busy doing this project which was getting extremely complicated." Davies says. "It wasn't until we'd recorded about five songs that I suddenly realised you could choreograph it." Those songs, and Murphy's choreography, became Berlin, the SDC's latest production, which opens at the Comedy Theatre in the city tonight.

This is Davies's second significant sojourn into contemporary dance. About a decade ago he did the music for Boxes, an ambitious production that gained almost legendary status over a brief three-week season at the Opera House. Berlin is a much more intimate proposition with its theatrical staging, resonant themes and a modest "salon ensemble" modelled on chamber music ensembles from the time of Poulenc or Satie (though they never used electric bass guitars). The German capital seemed to provide a thread between the various songs on the soundtrack: just before beginning his choreography Murphy spent four days in the city. Murphy's original misgivings about the trip were soon allayed, he says.

"At the time I thought 'This is really pretentious, to think that you go to the city because you have to get the feeling of it'. But now I'm so glad I did go because I got so much out of it; I didn't realise how much of it would surface in the work." The choreographer booked into a hotel on the east side of the old wall, saw friends, checked out a cabaret, went to the circus and watched a few Leni Riefenstahl films. "There's certainly a darkness about the work although it finishes on a very optimistic level," Murphy says. "You can't get away from the ghosts of the past in that city. Yet there's this mad energy and escapism there too." A 60-strong group of Berliners caught the show in Sydney.

Murphy imagined what a group of Australians might think if they went to Germany and saw a show called Sydney, and feared the worst. Instead, they, were generous and even excited. -The result is that Murphy is planning a season in Berlin, probably next year. Murphy's pure dance credentials are rock-solid, but it is the theatricality of the work that may have appealed to the Berliners. "People want me to stop being theatrical and I wonder why," Murphy muses.

"Maybe it's because pure abstract dance is very fashionable, but I believe in consistency in your artistic endeavors. I've always been a theatrical choreographer so why should I change now? Berlin opens at the Comedy Tlieatre tonight. V- vji fv I Graeme Murphy and Iva DaviesBerlin is an intimate proposition with theitrical staging, resonant themes and a modest "salon ensemble" modelled on chamber music ensembles from the time of Poulenc or Satie. a mm To celebrate the introduction of Volvo Car Finance Australia Pty Ltd, the 850 range is being offered at low monthly payments for a limited period. So here's your chance to own the luxury Volvo for a very special price.

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