Retro Futurismus - Review

Retro Futurismus

Maude Davey, Anni Davey, Anna Lumb & Gabi Barton

With special guests

fortyfivedownstairs | 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

10 – 28 June 2015

Maude and Annie Davey are legends and just about everything they do is worth catching and Retro Futurismus is no exception. 

However be warned it is wild and rough around the edges and unsettling with its uneasy postmodern references to not to distant past.  Both women strut their stuff in a cabaret style performance intermingled with unexpected, and at times what feel to be unresolved and not completely integrated, items from Anna Lumb, Gabi Barton, Leah Shelton, Stella Angelico and Teresa Blake.  Each week there are to be another three special guests – it’s a variety show. 

So all in all it is a bit of an adventurous rag bag of contemporary cabaret with a retro feel both in content and style – it feels a bit subculture and dangerous – boundaries are being pushed.  And I think I can be forgiven for wondering if I wasn’t back in the late 1980s early 90s.

As shows go it is is slick and moves swiftly.  But on opening night the lights seemed to be lacking and the sound a little loud and brittle.   (Hopefully technical issues were resolved before the next performances.)

Edgy and out there kind of butch bricklayer/handyman/ bobs up with an number of surprising acts.  By contrast Stella Angelico delights as a burlesque songstress – rich and sultry.   Then there is the film diva who just keeps dying in more expressive and outrageous ways.  (If there was a program I would be able to be more sure of who everyone was and appropriately credit performers.)

The downstairs space at 45downstairs is used well so one can feel free to sit pretty much anywhere although I might be even better if what feels like the main-stage was slightly more elevated.

All climaxes with a ‘Golden Girls’ item that is lavish bright and great fun.

Maude and Anni Davey - photo Ponch Hawkes

All in all the ever adventurous the Davey sisters shine and yes the show has the power to surprise if not shock.  An opportunity for a fascinating night out being amazed, amused and challenged by these ever inventive performers and their cohorts. 

Guesting in Retro Futurismus.

Last Week of the run:  The sublime soprano Simone Page Jones and an awesome dance duo and solos from James Andrews and Bendy Ben Hancock and Teresa Blake will come back cos they can't let her go!

It will be memorable.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)

Review - My Life in the Nude

Maude Davey

in

My Life in the Nude

Maude Davey – Performer/Writer

Anni Davey – Director

Deborah Eldred – Stage Manager

fortyfive downstairs – 45 Flinders Lane

15 - 27   July 2014

Wicked?  Goddess?

Whatever - Maude Davey is a legend!

Maude Davey
Photo by Ponch Hawkes

This rich, curious, beguiling, camp and fun show is a memorable night of Melbourne Theatre History.  Don’t hesitate to book a ticket because you think you might feel awkward – everyone is probably thinking the same thing.  Davies unites the house by confidently asserting some ground rules, most particularly, she is to be the only one getting her gear off.  And with the disarming intimacy of her nudity, keen sensitivity and performed sincerity, bonds of shared experience are formed amongst the audience.  You can comfortably leave all prudery at home, relax and enjoy being, thought provokingly, entertained.

Fascinatingly Maude reenacts her famous Ms. Wicked ‘strawberry’ number.  The heat of youthful sexuality is remembered and portrayed, with just the right touch of irony, in an older less volatile body.  This one, I was there for, at the Club, at the ACT UP Benefit - Shed The Underworld.  I remember the astonishment and my own prudish shock at catching a glimpse of Ms. Davey mascaraing her pubes in the dressing room. 

With honorable mentions to other extraordinary performers such as Jeannie Little and of course Moira Finucane, Davey, mostly barely clothed, portrays a variety of wonderful larger than life characters from Liz Taylor to the disturbing, gender-bending, man who is beautiful - Agent Cleve.  (Is he a hermaphrodite?)  There are heaps of character and costume changes.  On stage Davey is supported by a very dour Stage Manager, (played by?), Deborah Eldred.

A man who is beautiful - Agent Cleve
Photo by Ponch Hawkes

I heard Maude discuss My Life in the Nude with Emma Ayres on Radio National and realized I was about to fit the standard audience demographic of a middle-aged woman with her two gay male companions. But bring anybody who is prepared to have their ‘cage’ rattled a little.

The concern Davey expressed, on air and in the show, that performing naked could be considered the territory of youthful bodies, bodies that talk of the future, is understandable.   But could she be underestimating the ethereal beauty of the more fragile aging (and yes decaying) body and the myriad of ideas that could be expressed with and through it?

There is such a fog of invisibility surrounding older and elderly women in our community.  We seem to be able to completely forget that they too once had sexual appetites in a way that dispossess them of their histories and legitimacy.   Surely Maude Davey’s nude shows will hold even more currency as she matures and only enhance our Cabaret and broader Culture.

Maude Davey
Photo by Ponch Hawkes

Audience members are called upon – have your glasses on hand, (if you are also aging), incase you need to read something in the generous spirit of spontaneity – ‘and oh what the hell’.   

A night you are unlikely to forget and a night that is liable to leave you campaigning for Maude Davey to keep performing without her clothes.

Marvelous!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)