THIS perfectly designed show entertained us with singer Ruth Armishaw’s musical journey..

The pithy original lyrics by Paul Jenden, whilst ironically and humorously reflecting her life and personality, take on a universal quality representing the life for any musician or singer striving to build a career.

Her compositional has style has variety, and as a graduate jazz singer with choral and operatic experience, she has excellent resources to call on. She uses her strong voice eloquently and powerfully. She also has great musical chops on the piano which work well with the jazz trio of guitar (Jimmy Perkins), drums (Cory Champion) and double bass (Adrian Laird).

Jazz, Pop, Latin, Bossa Nova, Samba rhythms gave tonal variety, and her singing from belting and bold to softer, sentimental and excellent scat vocals had character.

To add visual interest, there were her retro styled dress and quirky visual designs by Sara Pattison, while projections of videos and photos behind the performers gave mood and context.

Retro, kitschy styled Meow proved an ideal venue.

These songs were memorable in a gig that would suit touring the festival circuit.

Thursday at 5.30 at Meow (our fabulous Fringe venue) the programme was made public. Click on the image above to go to the Fringe website and see the full programme.

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NZ Fringe Festival 2011
The Hooligan and the Lady
by Pauleen Hayes
Director: Susan Dugdale
Presented by Porthole Productions
at BATS, Wellington
From 24 Feb 2011 to 27 Feb 2011
Reviewed by John Smythe, 25 Feb 2011

Plucked from a century of obscurity, the story of Flossie LeMar – a formidable force to be reckoned with – is splendidly evoked in The Hooligan and the Lady, named for the vaudeville act she and show-biz pugilist Joe Gardiner, her husband-to-be, brought to Australasian stages in the 1910s.

We have playwright Pauleen Hayes (also a school teacher and former self-defence instructor) to thank for a decade’s dedication in researching, writing, revising and producing this highly entertaining – and instructive – celebration of a ‘women’s right to move through the world unmolested’ pioneer.

The Life and Adventures of Miss Florence LeMar, the World’s Famous Ju-Jitsu Girl by Joe Gardiner and Florence LeMar (privately published by the authors in Wellington, 1913) is the starting point. The other characters who bring it to theatrical life are extremely well conceived and crafted to manifest the prevailing attitudes and gender roles of Edwardian times while provoking us to consider how little has changed.

Impresario Quintus Penumbra, played with black-bearded bravura by Alex Greig, has a very limited view of a woman’s place but knows a good ‘novelty act’ when he sees one. His tussle between principles – or lack of them – and profits captures the essence of the misogynist business man.

Rachel More’s wonderfully phoney fortune teller, Madam Adamantine, represents the hard-line conservative who cannot abide women who attempt to rise above their class let alone ‘betray’ their femininity – and yet …

As the flimsy little ingénue Fanciforia Mooncake (I love these names!), Bailey McCormack epitomises the vulnerable single girl trying to stand upright on a deck were a man holds all the cards. And Patrick Keenan’s benign strongman Hubert Heft is a powerful presence.

Central to the whole conceit, of course, are Flossie and Joe.

Ailsa Kreft is determinedly un-theatrical in characterising Florence and because she looks decidedly un-athletic her adeptness at ju-jitsu is a revelation. Her focus on Flo’s purpose and determination largely transcends the odd shortcoming in vocal projection.

Allan Henry is brilliant as Joseph, vacillating between wanting to control and wanting to be part of a successful enterprise. His physical enactments of a range of vile predators are simultaneously fearsome and comical, and his prowess in this form of stage combat is worth the price of admission alone.

Director Susan Dugdale keeps the action moving along, abetted by Ruth Armishaw’s silent movie-style piano accompaniment – which the actors have to be more aware of and project above at times. And play to the back row, please, not the front row just because you can see them better. (As any vaudevillian will tell you, when you play to the back everyone in between feels included.)

Along with the strong social message embedded within a rollicking good entertainment, there is some apt commentary on theatrical priorities and notions of what the punters can stand, as when Florence is blocked from mounting a soapbox to deliver her polemical speech.

Congratulations to all who have worked so well to rehabilitate Flossie LeMar and her message into our consciousness – and thank you, too, for rehabilitating the adjective condign: (of a punishment etc) fitting; well deserved.

Given the short Bats season is sold out, we can only hope it achieves a well-deserved return.

From Sondheim to Swann; songs by Victor Herbert, Sondheim, Jonathan Larsen, A L Webber, Christine McVie, Bock and Harnick, David and Arthurs, Bizet, Puccini, Flanders and Swann.

For the last concert of the St Andrew’s free lunchtime series, a departure from the strict canon of classical music might be permitted. This time it proved especially permissible because of the polish and style that singer and pianist brought to the job.

Nevertheless, it’s not easy to bring off songs conceived for smoky bars, cabarets or even musical theatre in the severity of a well-lit church on a bright mid-day, with a stone-cold sober audience. Ruth Armishaw did extremely well.

Many critics and music lovers cherish an almost automatic aversion to anything that smells of ‘cross-over’, in both directions, and operating with particular PC force where ethnic music is concerned – in that case, condemnation is one-way, applying solely to the white presuming to sing black or brown music. Ruth Armishaw did not risk that censure.

She began with a song made famous by Kiri – ‘Art is calling for me’ from The Enchantress by Victor Herbert. With its feet firmly in the land of operetta, this splendid song suited her operatic voice perfectly and her self-confidence carried its story effortlessly. Its rhythm and infectious, hyperbolic lyrics were vigorously yet subtly backed by Jonathan Berkahn whose contribution Ruth called attention to, jazz or pop music style, half way through the concert. It’s one of the traditions that the classical world could usefully borrow.

Though I find Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (musical? operetta?) singularly distasteful, ‘Green finch and linnet bird’ lies charmingly without being besmirched by the gruesome story and Armishaw sang it in a way that made clear Sondheim’s affinity with Menotti rather than Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The next three songs came from a range of musical theatre pieces for which she reached for the microphone; her voice, the entire atmosphere, was transformed, not necessarily for the worse, though it’s salutary to recall that till the 1950s Broadway and West End singers sang properly, without amplification. This was crooning. ‘Come to your senses’ from a show called Tick, Tick, BOOM!, which I’d never heard of, became her rather affectingly; though I could understand few of the words and thus the repetitiveness of the music somewhat outlasted its interest.

Andrew Lloyd Webber does little for me, apart from the two or three favourites and so the song from Sunset Boulevard was an empty exercise in pseudo melody, handling trivial emotions: no reflection on the singer!

Her voice in ‘Songbird’ from a Fleetwood Mac album suffered through a too obtrusive piano part.

She put aside the microphone for the rest of the programme starting with a song from a 1960s musical called The Apple Tree, unfamiliar to me, but look it up in Wikipedia – sounds attractive. The song was gorgeous, reminding me of my belief that the musical hardly survived beyond the 1960s when rock and the microphone destroyed its charm, musicality, its ability to characterise and tell real stories.

After that came the successor song to the Victor Herbert at the beginning: a lovely waltz song from 1912 called ‘I want to sing in opera’ by David and Arthurs (whom, again, I’d not heard of) in which Armishaw’s real operatic voice came through again, rather impressively.

That reintroduced opera, naturally, and she sang the Habanera from Carmen and ‘Vissi d’arte’ from Tosca. They were well projected, attractively sung with good dramatic character, first sultry, then piously self-pitying (well, isn’t it?).

Finally came a number that surprised me – a Flanders and Swan song I didn’t know! – ‘A word in your ear’. It was another little ironical, singer’s song, this time from one who is aware of her shortcomings, to wit, inability to remember the tune, with carefully faulty pitch to prove it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch enough of the words, a pity in the case of a song by that inimitable English pair of the 1950/60s.

’Twas a delightful way to end the St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts for 2010 which have again been particularly enjoyable, varied and simply excellent: Wellington is greatly indebted to the church’s generous cooperation and to the unflagging, entirely voluntary efforts of organiser Marjan van Waardenberg.