Expect a different take on cabaret from Adelaide festival performers
Some of Australia's brightest cabaret stars are on a mission to change our perception of the art form, writes Sue Green
alone in your room, come hear the music play," sang Liza Minnelli in the musical Cabaret. It's a message Torben Brookman wants Hong Kong people to take to heart. While Brookman hopes they will embrace the spirit of the cabaret, he offers some comfort for those who consider it an art form that's a little too, well, risqué.
"The way we treat cabaret is the broadest possible definition," says Brookman, producer of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, the highlights of which are coming to Hong Kong.
"It is traditionally looked at as red velvet curtains and late-night, sometimes burlesque-type performance and the chanteuse around the piano." People in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia perceive cabaret as being risqué, he says. "In Korea, one man said, 'That's where people having affairs go.'"
But at the Adelaide festival, the biggest cabaret showcase in the world with 411 artists in 161 performances this year, "the main purpose for what we do is any performance where the performers are having a conversation with the audience".
That doesn't mean audience members are at risk of being hauled into some sort of cringe-making participation. It simply means the performers notice and respond to the audience. This is unlike plays, which are performed as though there is no audience - where there is an invisible barrier known in the theatre as the fourth wall.
