Tainted Love (At Beefcakes) Sunday nights


Christine Weir and Godfrey Johnson’s Tainted Love is the perfect cabaret show for this tiny, new basement venue on the fringe of Green Point’s alternative ghetto; it feels like an underground club in Berlin during the Weimar Republic.

With songs such as Masochism Tango (Tom Lehrer), Hanky Panky (Stephen Sondheim), Tainted Love (Marc Almond) and Fuck you very much (Lilly Allen), they explore love in its kinkier dimensions, from playful sadomasochism (Have you waxed your crack? by Johnson and Weir) to Sapphic love (I Kissed a Girl by Katie Perry). It’s on the light and funny side, and you’d have to be quite a prude to be offended.

Choreographer Fiona du Plooy, who made an impression in the camp country and western cabaret Angels on Horseback last year, directs. The fingerprints of that show are evident here.

Johnson and Weir make a superb double act. They are top-drawer performers, with Weir’s exceptional vocal talents and Johnson’s (who sings too) musical versatility. On stage, they have natural comic reciprocity, their witty repartee carried with aplomb into the cheeky and sometimes tricky choreography.

One hopes this will be the start of wonderful duo and great things to come.

April 23, 2010 | Tags: , , | Comments Closed

The Shadow of Brel (Tabula Rasa)

Godfrey Johnson

Godfrey Johnson


Tackling another of his muses with his latest one-man revue, The Shadow of Brel, Godfrey Johnson once more replicates the success he enjoyed with Flirting with Coward. Again, accompanying himself on piano, he summons the spirit of the great artist and makes it his own.

Apart from the costume, Brel’s signature white shirt and black necktie, there is no attempt at mimicry. The translations from French are those approved by Brel himself. But the phrasing is all Johnson; where Brel was impassionedly angst-ridden and melodramatic, working himself to frenzy, Johnson can give as successful a take on the song, with chilling detachment. His fresh arrangement of Au suivant (Next) is something inspired.

Don’t get the impression that Johnson is all calm and collected, on the contrary, his Valse a mille temps (translated as ‘Carroussel’) is a centrifuge of emotion that pins you to your seat.

Opening with Amsterdam and closing with Songs for old lovers, this is a well-balanced selection that includes Brel’s best-known works (Mathilde, Jacky, Ne Me Quitte Pas), with a couple of lesser know songs, such as Funeral Tango.

Director/producer Sanjin Muftić has ensured a quality production; Jon Keevy’s lighting does wonders with a handful of lanterns; subtly enhancing the mood, turning black drape into purple velvet.

Tabula Rasa is a new and eccentric venue; a laundry by day, an attic theatre at night. One feels very off-off-off Broadway here, and that is part of its great charm.

February 26, 2010 | Tags: , | Comments Closed

Flirting with Coward (The Carvery)

Noel CowardGodfrey Johnson

“Success took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor”, Noël Coward once quipped. A prolific playwright (over 50 works), composer, librettist, songwriter, letter writer, poet and what is perhaps less known, a painter, Coward’s prodigious output is daunting. He has had innumerable imitators, camp copycats and sundry raiders of his songbook too. Selecting an appropriate balance of material for a 60 minute cabaret is not an easy task. Making it work, without becoming another ham mimic or producing yet another ersatz cabaret of popular covers, is tricky.

Godfrey Johnson, assisted by director Sanjin Muuftic, gets it right in Flirting with Coward. As the title implies, Johnson is not attempting to imitate The Master. Rather, he playfully summons the spirit. With his poignant interpretations and phrasing, and his own arrangements, Johnson creates the distinct impression that each of the Coward songs has a specific personal meaning for him. One hears them all anew, allowing Coward’s lyrics to show off their artful brilliance.

Full of wit and lyricism, the songs range from the 1920s to the 50s, from the celebrated Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Mrs Worthington (“. . .don’t put your daughter on the stage”) and Mad About the Boy, to the satirical Twentieth Century Blues and the mischievous Don’t Lets Be Beastly To the Germans.

December 13, 2008 | Tags: , | Comments Closed

Kissed by Brel (Intimate Theatre)

Kissed by Brel

Local chanteuse, Claire Watling, after a noticeable absence as a cabaret soloist, makes an inspired comeback with Kissed by Brel.

After Jacques Brel’s enormous European success spread to the English language countries in the late Sixties and early Seventies, Brel is somewhat off-Broadway these days. His lyrics are perhaps too complex for popular tastes, though the raw emotion they convey and the striking images he uses are apparent to Everyman, the intelligence behind them is subtle, layered and poetic. Brel is quintessentially theatrical – compassionate, even when viciously sardonic. Notoriously difficult to translate, the English lyrics do him fair justice – some more so than others – but it allows local audiences to enjoy Brel’s wit and insight.

From the hundred songs the Belgian genius left at his premature death, director Geoffrey Hyland has chosen well. Kicking off with the lyrical Carousel, the running order is perfectly judged, with finely timed shifts between darkness and relief, hinging on three climactic numbers, evenly spaced – If you go away (Ne me quitte pas), Marieke and Amsterdam.

Hyland has ensured this is a tour de force. Godfrey Johnson is a rare piano accompanist whose distilled musical arrangements heighten Brel’s pathos. Luke Ellenbogen’s masterful lighting design accentuates Watling’s performance, and Dicky Longhurst’s striking silk satin costume and chiffon scarf gives her the star quality she deserves. Hyland’s simple, elegant, black set is cunningly sympathetic to the edgy theatrical space the Intimate Theatre has become for Cape Town audiences.

Watling is spellbinding. An extraordinary vocal range, superb timbre, and
a riveting dramatic presence, add up for a potent combination. It is uncanny how as a female singer, Watling makes Brel’s virile masculine songs work flawlessly. Having heard Ute Lemper’s rendition of Amsterdam sung in English, Watling need take no prisoners.

February 7, 2007 | Tags: , , , | Comments Closed