Amelia Ryan is Lady Liberty
Musical direction by Matthew Carey. Artspace. Adelaide Festival Centre.
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. June 17-19. 2015
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
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| Amelia Ryan. Photos by Lloyd Harvey and Spencer Harvey |
The stirring sounds of the
Marsellaise blast through the Festival Centre’s Artspace as chanteuse charmant,
Amelia Ryan appears, wheeled through the audience by musical director, Matthew
Carey, on a trolley and heaved, still as a statue, and flourishing a bottle of
champagne, onto the intimate stage to introduce her latest show, a sparkling
effervescent and high octane explosion of song, anecdote and audience
interaction as a salute to the wonders of liberation. Feisty and forward,
throwing aside decorum or discretion, she fills the small upstairs cabaret
venue with the power of assertion and the free-spirited abandon of the
liberation of head, heart, gut and the nether-region. As bubbly as the champers
she liberally pours into a glass between her re-written version of popular
songs and tales of her travels to New York after the heart-wrenching break-up
of a long-term relationships, Ryan lets rip into the mike and sweeps her
audience along on a wave of sheer joi d’vivre.
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| Amelia Ryan is Lady Liberty |
Her jubilant journey of
liberation all begins on the Staten Island Ferry in sight of the towering
Statue of Liberty, an inspiration to all in search of freedom. A chance selection in an International Cabaret
Festival competition as a wild card and subsequent success as runner-up sets
the feisty Ryan on a trail of self discovery. What is the liberated woman? Is
it to be found in her hilarious mish mashed lyrics of Disney’s Under The Sea, as two unsuspecting
audience members help her to play the mermaid of her song? Is it to be found in
a booze befuddled night with a stranger in Las Vegas? Or is it in her freedom
to reveal the salacious, embarrassing or downright funny/sad experiences of a
life, spent in searching for the answers to her quest?
Ryan had to work hard to rouse a
rather unresponsive and wary audience to adulation, but she got there in the
end with the help of Matthew Carey on
piano, her dazzling effervescence and an enthusiastic group of women who enthusiastically heeded the call of liberation. One could only like this
talented, free and high spirited artist, now proudly Adelaide’s own since her
return from the Big Apple with her Adelaide born partner. She is a talent worth
cherishing and Lady Liberty blasts forth her song of liberation for all.
Perhaps she occasionally pushed too hard, playing a space far larger than the
Artspace and coming on too strong at times. A nervous fiddle with her dress
caused momentary distraction but nothing would halt her rollercoaster verve, or
the joy of taking risks with her audience by testing the truth of the liberated
soul. It takes courage to lure and be
lured as three unsuspecting audience members are taken onto the stage to play her version of Truth
and Dare with Never Done That Before, a game of honesty, in which the audience
members are invited to admit to their sexual experiences with a sip of that
liberally poured champagne. One night
stands or ménage a trois – nothing was sacred and for those who answered the
questions in their heads, they had fallen under the spell of this Lady Liberty
and those icons who had helped her roar, such as Madonna and Helen Reddy.
I didn’t see Amelia Ryan’s highly
successful earlier show, Storm in a D
Cup, but after Amelia Ryan is Lady Liberty all I can say is “Give me more!”