By Peter Maddern
It is hard to believe that 40 years ago Helen Reddy was the biggest female performer in the world, based in the US and in the midst of a string of international hits ramped in their popularity by her, well famous, anthem for women, I Am Woman, that so brilliantly tapped into their nascent movement of the early 1970’s.
Having given away performing a decade ago, we are fortunate she has decided to take to the boards again, this time with her four piece all male backing group, two with guitars, one on drums and the last on keyboards / piano providing the high pitched backing vocals.
The 90 minute show drew on a number of her favourite songs, a few written by Paul Williams, even those that never got much attention on her albums, evenly spaced out with most of her various hits.
In truth, this gig would have found a good home in the Playhouse in one of David Campbell’s Cabaret Festivals of a few years back and while this show has been touring for a while it still possessed some rough elements to it – a few missed words and timings, her constant breathlessness and a voice that struggled with higher notes on the register (still ailments may have contributed to that), and, in this reviewer’s mind a wasted opportunity to reminisce more with her audience about the glory days.
But for aficionados, what Ms Reddy delivered made them nothing short of cock-a-hoop and perhaps that is all that matters.
Not surprisingly, I Am Woman was her encore, spoken as a poem and then sung but she backed that up with a couple of others, including as a finale I Still Call Australia Home, perhaps a strange choice as memory recalls she once eschewed Australia forever in the 1970s. It just shows that even an ultra-attractive, firebrand and radical of her day can mellow with age.
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