★★★★☆ Digging the dirt on Kurt with Bert (and others).

Robyn Archer
Space Theatre, Adelaide
June 11-12, 2016

The Weill File
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide
June 13, 2016

The return of Brecht specialist, Adelaide’s own Robyn Archer is always welcome at the Cabaret Festival, bringing her authoritative talent to bear on that short period of artistic freedom in Germany which flourished for merely a decade or so between the Wars. In fact this incredibly creative and experimental period would be over by 1934 when the Nazis’ persecution of Jews, homosexuals and their sympathisers began truly in earnest. Focussing on songs by the likes of Brecht collaborators Weill and Eisler, Hollaender and others, and with the unique resources and knowledge of pianist and period specialist Michael Morley, Archer presented a wide range of material in her familiar contralto so appropriate for this material. This ranged from the familiar (Bert and Kurt’s Mack the Knife and the faded glories and memories of ol’ Bilbao to Friedrich Hollaender’s immortal Falling in Love Again), thorugh her own ‘hits’ with Hanns Eisler’s oh so political songs to less familiar fare concerning the precariousness of the period.

All selections were delivered...