[CABARET/Comedy ~ WORLD PREMIERE ~ South Australia]
The Jade, Sun 19 Feb, 2023.
American Tom Lehrer was something of a child prodigy. He studied classical music from the age of 7, and was admitted to Harvard at the age of 15. He did eventually become a Maths professor and taught at Harvard and MIT but somewhere along the way he got distracted by musical theatre and started writing his own tunes.
Satire was his chosen genre and for 20 years from the mid-fifties onwards Lehrer’s songs were part of American popular culture. Nothing was off limits for Tom Lehrer – he poked fun at everything: war; religion, social mores, politics – and made people laugh in the process.
Adelaide’s own Dr H does a great job of bringing Tom Lehrer’s songs to life for Adelaide audiences. He is an accomplished pianist, and got the balance between telling the stories and playing the songs just right. Even though many of Lehrer’s songs are as much spoken as they are sung (they are chock full of clever lyrics) they do require a vocal dexterity that Dr H is quite at home with. The Elements, a song about the periodic table as its subject is a case in point!
Tom Lehrer wasn’t overly concerned with political correctness and his songs were often banned. His ilk would have even more trouble getting airtime these days. But it was great to hear gems like The Vatican Rag and National Brotherhood Week again. A song from 1954, I Got It From Agnes, gets a new lease of life if you replace the term VD with COVID, and could be a candidate for the anthem of the times!
A really enjoyable show. Though there is a plethora of tribute acts on the Fringe program again this year, if the story is worth telling and the songs are worth hearing, then it’s worth putting on shows like this for those who missed artists like Tom Lehrer the first time round. And for the many who know and love Lehrer’s work and want to hear it again – It was a full house. Lots of interaction and singing along available for those who wish to express themselves in the ‘safe space’ of The Jade!
We went all home happy after a rousing singalong ending of We Will All Go Together When We Go. (Yep – an end of the world ditty!)
(This review also published on The Clothesline.)
