Too Darn Hot!
16/03/2011 - 24/03/2011
Production Details
Harking back to the era of cabaret in its original nightclub setting, Too Darn Hot! plays at Mighty Mighty in Cuba Mall, with its walls draped in red from floor to ceiling, its luscious palm trees, and its rowdy, dimly-lit bar.
A meek yet masterful guitarist from the Middle East (Tane Upjohn-Beatson) accompanies two vocalists, a smooth-talking ladies’ man with a certain swaggering charm, and then the morose, smouldering and devastatingly elegant Marta (both embodied by Robert Tripe).
Come sip your favourite bevvy and join Rudy, Marta and Mahmoud as they relive some of the 20th Century’s greatest love ballads, jazz standards and torch songs made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Nina Simone and Peggy Lee.
Where: Mighty Mighty, 104 Cuba Mall, WellingtonWhen:
Wed Mar 16th 9pm
Thu Mar 17th 7:30pm
Sat Mar 19th 7:30pm
Wed Mar 23rd 9pm
Thu Mar 24th 7:30pm
Tickets: $10 waged, $5 unwaged (door sales only)
Reservations: custardsquares@gmail.com or 021 490 358
Featuring: Robert Tripe and Tane Upjohn-Beatson
Playing in the ironic gap between aspiration and fulfilment
Review by Michael Gilchrist 17th Mar 2011
Too Darn Hot, a cabaret-style show kicking off this week at Mighty Mighty, features the singing talents of Rudi and his ever so elegant alter ego Marthe (both manifested by Robert Tripe).
Whether the mercury is rising or falling in Wellington, we are all just happy to be standing on solid ground and there is much to enjoy in this nicely selected and sequenced range of standards and surprises from the pre rock ’n’ roll era.
Neither Rudi nor Marthe is secure enough vocally to sustain a recital –not yet at least – but that‘s not what this show is about. Cabaret works in the ironic gap between aspiration and fulfilment and this performance is right at home in that territory.
The banter has a bittersweet tang and Rudi understands that the audience is likely to have private lives every bit as complicated as his own, encouraging them to use their cell phones and generally let off steam any time they need.
The singing is beautifully accompanied by the electric guitar of the cheerfully Mahmoud (Tane Upjohn-Beatson) and there are flashes of real musical insight, like Marthe’s rendering of Billy Holiday’s ‘Don’t Explain’.
Some digressions into blues don’t work at all but they are mercifully infrequent and, with a suitably robust atmosphere in place at Mighty Mighty, Too Darn Hot is worth a mosey – especially for those who like to be reminded every now and again that, as the late great Ubie Blake put it, “The lyrics are the soul of a song.”
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Comments
Adam Costello March 27th, 2011
This show was definitely not ‘Too Darn Hot’. From start to finish I sat cringing at both Rudi and Marthe’s inexplicably terrible French and what I presume was a Russian accent.