PLEASING: Candice Michelle has a powerful voice. PLEASING: Candice Michelle has a powerful voice.
MUSICOLOGY. Directed by Alex Tops, with Candice Michelle, Kevin Abbott and Jethro Stange. At The Kalk Bay Theatre until Saturday. RAFIEK MAMMON reviews.
IT IS never a good sign when one leaves a show feeling unfulfilled. Musicology promises more than it delivers, much like a meal that sounds scrumptious on the menu, but upon tasting, is bland: palatable, but bland nonetheless. One just knows that it lacks a punch or a certain ingredient that could raise it from mild to spicy, from insipid to magical.
Unlike the usual high standard one has come to expect of Kalk Bay Theatre productions, Musicology is tepid and inconsistent. The set design is unconsidered, messy even, with audiovisuals that are hardly visible on a poorly designed home-made little screen. Aesthetics aside, the visibility problem is easy to remedy by merely darkening the venue slightly when they use the screen.
Costume changes are indiscriminate, even distracting at times and for the most part the changes are superfluous.
Vocalist, Candice Michelle has a powerful enough voice and pleasing enough presence and charm to pull off the songs without those interferences.
Then there is the paltry script, penned by Michelle: a largely Google/Wikipedia-based spewing of facts about music through the decades. It is something anyone is able to research easily for themselves.
So, if you are interested in some obscure facts, such as which artist was the first to release on CD (and in which year), this show might be of interest to you. And on opening night (with the usual jitters and all) one could almost hear Michelle thinking about her script, stumbling over a sentence or three.
What Michelle and her duo of musicians – Jethro Stange on guitar and Kevin Abbott on keyboard get right, is the music, and perhaps more tersely put, the musical choices. Often with tribute-type shows the repertoires can be quite predictable especially when the artists they have chosen to cover are so immensely popular.
When one hears Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel and Billy Joel are some of the artists the singer is going to cover in a show, one already has one’s favourites in mind. This can prove to be a hit, a miss or a bonus.
It is a hit when your audience come to your show expecting to hear their favourites, and you give them exactly that. It is a miss if you don’t give them what they want; and it is a bonus when you give them both and they love your choices, despite themselves.
Fortunately Michelle chose the latter: to do some of the favourites and to throw in the ones just left of centre. Her opening night audience seemed to enjoy that.
Another saving grace is the use of backing tracks with the addition of the two musicians – giving it that semi live concert feel.
And, make no mistake Michelle is no two-bit singer, having trained as a performer since she was 12. She may not always display the versatility or the dynamism to pull off the androgynous gusto that is Mick Jagger, or the guttural soul that is Freddie Mercury – but then again, who can?
That is why Musicology pays homage to their music.
The show is jam-packed with music spanning five or six decades – from power ballads to throaty rock to funky soul, including a long Beatles medley and a pleasing finale set including Lady Gaga and Queen.
While the direction is mostly sleek, director, Alex Tops should have had a firmer hand on this one and perhaps have injected it with more creative directorial choices and his individual brand of quirkiness.
l 021 788 7257, www.kalkbay theatre.co.za.