Gobsmacked: Showbiz and Dating
Music, lyrics and book by Jamie Burgess
Additional music and lyrics by Nikki Aitken
With musical excerpts from Les Miserables and Dreamgirls
In Aotearoa New Zealand a part of Auckland Pride and the New Zealand Fringe Festival
Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre
Saturday 9 February to Sunday 17 February, 2013 at 8.00pm
From Tuesday 12 February until Saturday 16 February, 2013 Gobsmacked is paired with Pollyfilla’s Kitsch in Synch at 9.30pm. See either or both shows.
Reviewed Saturday 9 February, 2013
Published at http://www.theatreview.org.nz
Auckland is crazy busy over the next two months with all things artistic.
Three large festivals – Auckland Pride (8 – 24 February), the Auckland Fringe (15 February – 10 March) and the Auckland Arts Festival (6 – 24 March) – are scheduled to soak up our every disposable dollar and attempt to satisfy that unquenchable human need we have for celebration, reflection and entertainment.
Add to this Pasifika (9 – 10 March), Auckland Lantern Festival (22 – 24 February), Auckland Summer Shakespeare’s 50th anniversary production of King Lear (1 – 30 March) along with the regular concerts and movies in parks provided by Auckland City and you have a wonderful illustration of a mature city celebrating the arts – and an awful lot else besides
Auckland Pride and Auckland City are to be congratulated for finding their way clear to providing a good number of free events the largest of these being the return, after a decade’s absence, of the fabulous Pride Parade (Ponsonby Road, 16 February, 2013), because with all the big ticket items that we arty-fartys lust after we certainly need the freebies as well – and not just for the well-heeled! Even the sternest critics of ATEED (Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development) might now be silent as this still fledgling organisation has done a brilliant job in ensuring that these important events are not only sustainable but that Auckland is, and will continue to be, one of the world’s most livable cities.
It’s fair to say that, looking at this summer of excitement, artistic ecstasy and seemingly endless variety, one might easily feel Gobsmacked!
It’s certainly how I felt throughout Jamie Burgess and Nikki Aitken’s seventy minute show of the same name played before an almost full opening night house in the impeccably decked out Musgrove Studio. Gobsmacked describes it perfectly – and if you happened to attend the Auckland Pride Festival Gala or the Big Gay Out ~ and tens of thousands of people did ~ you’ll know that Gobsmacked has ‘a show at the Maidment’ such is the sublime brazenness of these two extraordinary bravura performers – and unabashed self-publicists.
For those who didn’t, Burgess and Aitken entertained at both events beginning each with a rollicking number containing that very phrase ‘Gobsmacked has a show at the Maidment’ repeated ad infinitum – and we got the message.
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I nicked the following from their excellent – and helpful as there was no programme – website http://gobsmackedshow.com/ and feel no guilt about this as Aitken and Burgess are themselves consummate – and highly successful ~ magpies.
I’ve changed it a bit (but not much):
‘Gobsmacked: Showbiz and Dating is an all original musical-theatre-meets-cabaret showcase, a ‘heartfelt and sincere’ celebration of the fabulous-darling single life, and a ‘love letter’ to that unique relationship that exists between the gay man and the single straight girl who are more than friends but less than lovers. Witness the duo as they tackle the funny, sometimes sad but never boring, life of a single girl trying to make it in show business whilst searching for a relationship that lasts.
It’s also – as the website concludes – a shameless celebration of all things Musical Theatre (or as Jamie likes to call it ‘Gay Church’).’
I, for one, sing ‘hallelujah’ to that!
Plot-wise this pretty much sums it up but it has to be said that the narrative is largely a rack on which to hang Aitken and Burgess’s exceptional talent and even without it we’d have been bowled over by the utter élan of their performances.
Which is not to say that Gobsmacked: Showbiz and Dating is all shallow virtuosity because it’s not. Aitken, in particular, scales the heights and plumbs the emotional depths in rather spectacular fashion and to such an extent that, in one of those unique stunned silences we all love so much, Burgess whispered ‘you didn’t think we’d go there, did you?’ – and we hadn’t.
Burgess is an astonishingly good pianist.
He seems comfortable in any genre and as accompanist his work is sublime. Even given that there’s a lot in the script that is conveniently borrowed from real life – the couple actually live together – it still doesn’t fully explain the seamlessness of their collaboration and identifying just who was leading who in the amazing array of eleven numbers was never an issue. It’s a pairing made in whatever heaven you may believe in and the audience instinctively knew this and responded accordingly throughout.
Not that Burgess waited to be asked. Seconds after the show began he identified a suitably qualified candidate in the front row, welcomed him with a delicate wee kiss and maintained a fairly constant dialogue with the audience for the remainder of the show which included a mercifully brief sing-along and some elegant arm-waving.
While Burgess holds an impish, almost improvisational connection to the audience Aitken stuns us with her versatility, her ability to move from diva to desperate housewife in the blink of an eye and her simply magnificent voice. In a word: fabulous!
The set is simple. To the left is Burgess’s powerhouse keyboard fronted by a rainbow flag, to the right a table for two all set for dining, at centre back a coat stand, and central on the floor a fabric heart in red. Just about everything is red, in fact, a colour that Aitken wears as though the ruby palette was designed especially for her.
The whole is, of course, a musical theatre burlesque, and it’s based on Tipsy which Burgess describes as ‘a loving parody of the musical fable Gypsy’ and which we all know (but I didn’t ~ just what sort of queer am I, after all?) was created by Jule Styne, Steven Sondheim and Arthur Laurents – to give them their due. I mention this because there’s more than a hint of Sondheim at his darkest in some of Burgess’s songs – both lyrically and musically – and I sincerely hope he’ll take this as a compliment because it’s certainly meant to be one. ‘Being Alive’ from Company and ‘Losing My Mind’ from Follies immediately come to mind.
There are some cracker lines – especially for the theatrical types – ‘of course I’m making a scene, that’s what I do’, ‘masticating by yourself isn’t that much fun’, ‘my lasagna is the food of love’ – and both Aitken and Burgess have exquisite comic timing but, when all is done and said, there’s only the music, both vocal and played, driving, sidling, oozing, stomping, soaring and it’s this, and its sublime production, that leaves the most powerful mark. It’s everything an audience could ask for – and there’s cake for everyone at the end.
Chocolate cake, of course.
The show has an R18 rating – or R16 depending on where you read it – but ignore that. Our ten year old joined us as he usually does and he loved every minute. He saw bits at the Pride Gala and bits at the Big Gay Out and still he wants to see it again. It’s risqué, sure, and it’s a bit rude but it’s never vulgar or, as my old Mum would say, ‘unnecessary’. As performers Burgess and Aitken are too clever for that. They could turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse if they had to but they don’t because this show is class all the way.
So, if you’re a bit blue – and even if you’re not – and you’re looking for a musical theatre pick-me-up, make your next concoction a Burgess and Aitken Gin and Iconic because Gobsmacked: Showbiz and Dating will give you just the lift you need.
dykiegirl 