By Peter Maddern
Kate Ceberano’s three year stint in charge of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival came to an end last night with The New Score, the finale in the main Festival Theatre.
Led by Tamil Rogeon and Ryan Ritchie of Melbourne’s Raah Project, what was promised was ‘the world’s greatest songs re-mixed and reimagined’ but disappointingly the two hour plus show delivered a whole lot less than that. While their three backing / solo singers (of which Ceberano was one) added much when called upon, this was pretty much a self-indulgent display with Ritchie way short of the type of front man to carry off such a milestone event in a room of this type.
In fairness to Ceberano, this was clearly, as she said, an attempt to broaden the festival’s demographic reach with the Raah Project’s focus on hip-hop, ‘jungle’ and electronica. However, the call around the ‘world’s greatest songs’ seemed to fail in its quest with only her ‘seasoned’ festival goers seemingly prepared to take on the evening’s many challenges.
Fortunately, the night was somewhat saved by an unpublicised cameo by Darlene Love who lifted the roof with River Deep, Mountain High and Lean on Me with orchestrations that similarly outshone those that preceded it (bar 24 Hours in Lapa). That, late in the second half, may have suggested the Raah Project was somewhat out of its depth and a quick end would be a good move but still they ploughed on for another 20 minutes.
What we did also enjoy was the excellent Adelaide Art Orchestra that delivers so much across this festival each year and some solo work from the somewhat rare bear iOTA and Ceberano herself but spread around a somewhat painful on-the-hop hip hop word fusion thing and anything much would have shone.
Kryztoff Rating 2.5K
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