The Banquet Room. Adelaide
Festival Centre. June 16 2022
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
From the moment Brendan Maclean’s
white teeth flashed their charismatic smile I knew that has his Cabaret
Festival show Alone at Last was going
to be a highlight. And I wasn’t wrong. I have seen the immensely talented
Maclean in Velvet and L’Hotel but this is the first time I
have seen his solo act, away from the circus and the ensemble. Alone at last on the Banquet Room stage of
the Adelaide Festival Theatre, Maclean delights his audience with a brilliant
repertoire of original songs, covers of artists like George Michael and Lady Gaga
and sparkling repartee . With a touch of camp, a lot of panache and a ton of
talent, Maclean opens at the piano with George Michael’s Older. It’s an original fiery rendition, thumping out the regrets
and letting go. From the very start the piano man is on fire.
Maclean then introduces his own
composition, Tectonic in which the
long distance relationship shifts and Gravity
can pull us down. Tectonic plates tear us apart. Passion pulses through the
piano keys and into the song. It is personal, coloured by the voice of
experience..
The show is interspersed with
anecodote, sometimes bizarre like his luncheon with the Drag Show’s Rupaul and sometimes fortuitous like his offer from
last year’s Artistic Diector of the Cabaret Festival to play at Alan Cumming’s Club Cumming in New York. And then there
is the plug for Marcia Hines’s Gospel
According to Marcia at this year’s festival. Three hundred performances of Velvet with Marcia Hines is
qualification enough for his recommendation.
The audience is lapping it up when Maclean changes tempo and instrument to do a stand up segment with the ukulele at the standing mike. Maybe it was the dig at Scott Morrison’s ukulele playing that jinxed the electric uke and Maclean resorted to acoustic accompaniment with the Bee Gees’ Staying Alive. It was a lucky accident with a far more natural sound, ideal for the intimate Banquet Room. And the stories kept on coming. Tim Minchin gets a serve for his comment about gay men with eyeliner from “ the straight gay man who wears more eyeliner than anyone”. It’s all in good humour with that special Maclean frivolity. Offence is not an option.
For an artist with supernova
bright talent, there is a strain of self-deprecation in his account of his
encounter with Aria founder Peter Rix and Rix’s compliment “I’m so proud of
you” and his response to Cumming’s comment at the Artist;’s Bar , “You’re sexy”.
It is impossible not to warm to Maclean’s rapport with his audience as well as
his undisputed talent as an entertainer. “Sharing music is beautiful” he tells
the audience as he continues to praise covers for the opportunity for invention
and imagination. He cites Billie Holiday before launching into Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.
A final word for the critics
“Don’t give me a 3. That’s boring. Give me a 1.1/2 or a 5. Don’t give me a 3!”
No need to worry. Alone at Last is a golden 5 and Maclean
is a star of the cabaret.
Photos by Claudio Raschella