Your table's waiting: laid-back legends put festival on a high

AFTER three weeks the 11th Adelaide Cabaret Festival ended with plenty to sing about.

In their third and final year as directors, David and Lisa Campbell have increased interest, with estimated attendances of 95,000 and 35 performances sold out.

David Campbell has proven a beacon to performers and composers, especially those from the US. Many are known to him, such as headliners Bernadette Peters, Natalie Cole and, amazingly, Wicked creator Stephen Schwartz, introducing his songs with singers from New York and London.

This year he welcomed legends Olivia Newton-John and Broadway singer and dancer Chita Rivera, the original Anita from West Side Story, in her late 70s and still spellbinding with songs from Sweet Charity and Cabaret.

Also, there was songwriter Jimmy Webb, who was barely 20 when he began writing hits for Glen Campbell, Johnny Rivers and the Fifth Dimension. Alone at the piano Webb reminisced with vivid accounts of Waylon Jennings, Judy Collins, Richard Harris and Frank Sinatra.

He told stories about being in County Cork with hellraiser Harris and driving up to Mullholland Drive in his battered VW beetle for an audience with Sinatra. From the many songs he could have chosen he chose well: The Moon's a Harsh Mistress, Galveston and, of course, we finished with the majestic chords of MacArthur Park.

David Campbell has brought his signatures to the festival, especially that neo-retro sharpness and precision that characterises current New York cabaret style.

Bryan Batt, known to television's Mad Men fans as insouciant art director Salvatore Romano, delivered an excellent show (splendidly accompanied by pianist Michael Lavine). Batt on a Hot Tin Roof is in part based on shows presented in his native New Orleans after the Katrina disaster.

Batt is a marvelous performer: witty, smart and most engaging. He told lively stories of his Southern Belle mother, sang familiar songs from Steve Goodman, Petula Clark, Cole Porter and Bacharach, and new work: Pete Mills's Way Ahead of my Time (The Caveman Song) and William Finn's Infinite Joy. The highlight was a funny but poignant letter from a young lesbian fan for whom he sang I am What I am from La Cage aux Folles.

There could have been no better closing show for the festival than Michael Feinstein's Sings Sinatra. With the 17-piece Adelaide Art Orchestra in hot form behind him, Feinstein was at his virtuosic best with a fresh, vivacious take on the Great American Songbook.

Luck be a Lady, All the Way, a Gershwin medley, naturally. The show was dazzling from start to its New York, New York finish. The Cabaret Festival is on a high.

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au