ELISE McCANN
EVERYBODY LOVES LUCY
The Banquet Room. Adelaide Festival Centre. June 2. 2014
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
 |
Elise McCann in Everybody Loves Lucy |
If you are old enough to have loved and laughed at I Love Lucy with Desi Arnaz and Lucille
Ball, you would love Elise McCann’s sparkling incarnation of Hollywood’s
screwball Queen of Comedy. If you are too young to have tuned in to the ten
years of Lucy’s madcap antics, sharp repartee with husband Arnaz and satirical
swipes at the treatment of women in the fifties and sixties, then McCann’s
tribute show with Musical Director, Nigel Ubrhbien also taking on the roles of
Arnaz and Hollywood television producers is must-see cabaret fun. Acclaimed
Australian music theatre performer, McCann has been touring Everybody Loves Lucy, so if it arrives at
a theatre near you, indulge in some hilariously funny nostalgia or grab a
glimpse at what made their final show more popular than Dwight D Eisenhower’s presidential inauguration.
Imitation is a risky art. Lucille Ball was unique, and yet
McCann makes her impersonation her own. The routines are down pat, the patter
timed to perfection and her quick changes executed with lightning effect. I am
a little apprehensive as she flies into her opening Be A Clown Routine. This is
try-hard Lucy, the slightly clumsy clown, and it is soon apparent that there is
purpose in her awkwardness. Here is a comedienne, who is never afraid to play
the fool. But it is when she is as sharp as a tack that we see the real Lucille
Ball.
The years have passed on, as has Lucille Ball, and we now see
her and the highly successful I Love Lucy
through different eyes. What network could now screen an advertisement for
Philip Morris or show a pregnant woman smoking one of their brand? McCann also
gives an hilarious impression of Lucille ball’s advertisement for health juice
Vitameatavegamin. She has obviously put in the hours, studying episodes of I Love Lucy and it shows in her quick
repartee, her ballet barre work and her witty play on language with Ubrihien’s
Arnaz. Lucille Ball would have killed to
have a voice like McCann’s, as she beats the blues with pick-me-up songs, Don’t Give In To A Frown from Harold
Arlen and Ira Gerschwin’s Someone At
Last” and Jule Styne’s Make Someone
Happy.
Lucille Ball’s complex private life was hardly all sunshine
and roses. We are privy to the rocky relationship with Arnaz leading up to
their divorce, the battle with the studios, her struggles as a woman in the
fierce world of Hollywood entertainment and her championing of the feminist
cause through the character of her head-scarfed housewife.
Everybody Loves Lucy is more than McCann’s skilfully
observed display of Lucille Ball’s comic routines. We are introduced to a
woman, who could make the world laugh while the actress was crying inside. We
meet a woman, who was much more than a clown, but a voice for independence. In
an hour, McCann, Ubrihien and her musicians revive the early years of American
TV comedy and the talent of a comedienne whose shows still have the power to
make us laugh, to make us think and
sometimes to make us cry.