Cabaret Festival

Steppin’ Out with Ben Vereen – 2012 Adelaide Cabaret Festival

Presented by the Adelaide Cabaret Festival
Reviewed Friday 22nd June 2012

Ben Vereen walked out onto the stage and began to sing Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries. Immediately, one could almost feel the waves of energy coming from him. He gave his performance everything that he had, seemingly enjoying it even more than the audience, if that was possible. Ben Vereen is one of the great names of Broadway, with an impressive list of shows in which he has appeared. Like Sammy Davis Jnr. before him, he is a genuine song and dance man. He and Davis were actually good friends and were often both competing for the same role.

With a Song in My Heart, his second number of the night, could quite reasonably be taken as a description of the man and his approach to life. The next two and a half hours was filled with smiles, laughter, huge bursts applause, tapping feet, and the greatest of music. The twelve piece band, the Adelaide Art Orchestra Big Band, provided some phenomenal accompaniment, and they were acknowledged by Vereen very early in the evening and numerous times during the show.

To list even the highlights of his career would run into pages, starting with his first appearance at the age of about ten in the King and I, from which he sang one of the king’s songs, through to now, and his recent Broadway appearance playing the Wizard of Oz in Wicked. One thing became clear; if you are sitting in the front row, centre, a late arrival is a bad move. He gently welcomed the late comers and briefly brought them up to date on his story, while the audience laughed along. Quickly, he returned to his tale, with anecdotes, insights and humour and what, for anybody else, would have been name dropping, was impossible for him to avoid.

After talking about his first meeting with the great Bob Fosse, he launched into Blue Skies. He rang his mother to tell here that he was sure he would get a part in a show. This gave him a cue for some comedy. He took a poke or two at modern technology, asking at intervals who remembered such things as: phone boxes, when dial up meant using a rotating dial, telegrammes, record albums, and even cassettes. Every time he mused on one of these old technologies, there were lots of laughs.

There were many of the standards from the Great American Song Book, lots more from the major musicals, and some from recent shows, including Defying Gravity, from Wicked. Age of Aquarius, from Hair, included a brief quote of the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, before moving into Hair itself, segueing into the title tune from Jesus Christ Superstar, and a passionate version of I Don’t Know How to Love Him. The show had only just started!

He continued with his fascinating career story, some of which is well known, and some of which is more obscure, but just as intriguing. He even jokes about having lived long enough to have been a Negro, coloured, black and, now, an African American.

His version of Memory, from Cats, was indescribably powerful and would surely have brought tears to quite a few eyes. Then Frank Sinatra’s name came up and, naturally, that was a cue for a few songs closely associated with him, closing the medley and the first half with My Way.

The second half took a directional change, as Ben Vereen paid tribute to his good friend Sammy Davis Jnr. Opening with a short section of video of the two of them together Vereen and the orchestra then took over, seamlessly moving from the soundtrack and the live performance. Once in a Lifetime by the English cabaret and musical start, Anthony Newley, became a big hit for Sammy, and Vereen kicked off the second half with a lively rendition that rocked the place. Newley wrote the song with Leslie Bricusse for their musical, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.

Then came so many of the familiar songs that Sammy, Sinatra, and Dean Martin would sing in their Las Vegas shows, like That Old Black Magic, Hey There (You with the Stars in Your Eyes), At Last, and Mr. Bojangles, the song that Sammy refused to sing for many years, fearing that he might end up like the character in the song. It became, of course, one of his biggest hits, and a trademark part of his repertoire. Vereen more than did it justice and Sammy would have been pleased to know that another great song and dance man was keeping the song, and the tradition going. His percussionist, whom he later revealed was his son, joined him in a snappy duet for drum and vocals on Somewhere, Over the Rainbow, which worked surprisingly well and he then reprised Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries.

Vereen then came to the point at which he explained the car accident that put paid to his dancing, and almost cost him his life, then eased his way into Changed for Good from Wicked.

At the end of the show the entire audience leapt to its feet as one, clapping wildly, a fitting tribute to this member of Broadway royalty who, on his first trip to Adelaide, had brought so much pleasure to those present. Such is the devotion of Ben Vereen to his art that he even gave up several hours of his free time here to present a master class, arranged at short notice, to a big crowd of local cabaret and musical theatre practitioners.

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor, Glam Adelaide.

Cabaret Festival web site – Ben Vereen

Venue: Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, King William Road, Adelaide
Season: one performance only
Duration: 2hrs 30mins

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