Skip to main content

A Piano Full of Feathers

Perth Theatre

Four stars 

 

Seasonal snow came early to Perth last weekend in this high-class tribute to the songs of Irving Berlin, who transformed the Great American Songbook with some of the twentieth century’s greatest showtunes. This was despite the fact that Berlin couldn’t read sheet music and only had limited piano skills.

 

White Christmas alone has become a tinsel tinged evergreen that graced two musicals in its first flourish, was picked up by all the greats, from Bing Crosby to Frank Sinatra and beyond. The song has since become a guaranteed showstopper at festive functions and family gatherings ever since. There is, of course, a story behind how Berlin came to write it. 

 

Writer Jane Livingstone and director April Chamberlain use this as the perfect excuse for a fantastical burl through Berlin’s greatest hits that sees the song itself show up in Berlin’s Tin Pan Alley office. This is occupied by Moneta, who may or may not be a gallus goddess who beamed down from on high to embody some of the Hollywood greats who interpreted Berlin’s back catalogue. The song, meanwhile, is embodied as a wannabe matinee idol who shows up like he’s hawking his own musical wares in a classic showbiz rags to riches yarn, only to run the gauntlet of the formidable Moneta. 

 

As elaborate an opening wheeze as it is, none of this matters much once things get going, as Frances Thorburn and Ross Forbes-MacKenzie form an all singing, all dancing double act to bring the songs to life in what is essentially a song-by-song by Berlin musical revue. 

 

The duo are accompanied by musical director Hilary Brooks on a white piano tucked into the back of Martha Lironi’s lavish boudoir styled set with a scarlet chaise longue at its centre. Illuminated by Cameron Squires’ multi coloured lighting as they leap their way through Ian West’s choreography, Thorburn and Forbes-MacKenzie vamp it up and hoof their way through a rapid-fire selection like an MGM clip show, from the comic duet of Sisters to a deeply affecting Supper Time before getting to White Christmas itself.

 

The songs are knitted together with a dot-to-dot anecdotal biography of Berlin that shows how a Russian Jewish emigre came to write God Bless America and a whole lot more before the songs themselves do the talking in a thoroughly modern reinvention of the sort of tribute act that could run and run. 


The Herald, October 27th 2025

 

Ends 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
1 comment
Read more

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more