Tuggeranong
Arts Centre,
June 29 and
30
Reviewed by
Bill Stephens
 |
| Joanna Weinberg |
Joanna
Weinberg’s first visit to the Tuggeranong Arts Centre was as the
author/director of a musical called “Every Single Saturday” which has since
gone on to have a full professional production. This time with her one-woman
cabaret show “The Piano Diaries” for which she wrote all the songs, Weinberg has
revealed herself as a consummate cabaret performer and a fascinating
singer/songwriter.
Though born
in London, Joanna Weinberg spent her childhood in South Africa. She has had an
interesting life, much of which is only hinted at in this compelling cabaret.
From the
moment she took her place at the piano, elegant in a figure-hugging long dress,
long gloves and a red flower tucked in her hair, Weinberg intrigued and enthralled
her audience, both as a superb singer and gifted raconteur, gently, and
sometimes disconcertingly, revealing significant moments from her life story, most
often through the playful, thoughtful, funny and moving lyrics of her tuneful
and catchy songs.
The piano
was the connecting thread, and she sang of hiding under her grandmother’s
African rosewood piano, as a two-year-old, while her grandparents played piano
duets (Benjamin and Penelope). As an eleven-year-old, while sitting at the same
piano, she witnessed a man being murdered. No one took her statement, so she
wrote a haunting song about it, (Witness).
She
describes her first boyfriend when she was a thirteen-year-old (Freckled
Angels) and tells of running away to America where she worked in cabaret (The
Piano at the Cabaret) and played Desdemona in a production of “Othello”.
Her journey
eventually brings her to Australia (The Winds of Fear) and she is frank about the
difficulties she faced initially in finding work as an entertainer. But it
was the song with which she closed her show which most strongly resonated with
her Canberra audience, still reeling from the effects of the recent School of
Music controversy. Weinberg prefaced her song by asking the audience to imagine
a world without musicians, artists, singers and actors. Then painting such a
picture with her song “The Artists are leaving”, quietly stood-up and left the
stage. The effect was stunning.