The indefatigable Barry Humphries, having finally said goodbye to his beloved creation, Dame Edna Everage after 60 years in the spotlight is now embarking on his 'most difficult impersonation' - himself.In this wonderful show he tells the story of his young self in Melbourne in the 1940's coming across a large stash of sheet music in a secondhand bookshop, all printed in Vienna, all by composers he had never heard of and, despite not being able to read music, decides to buy it.
So started his love affair with the music and art of the Weimar period in Germany and Austria that found its most fertile playground in Berlin after the First World War until Hitler and the Nazis banned this 'degenerate art', often produced by Jews. Though a lot of the paintings, prints and literature survived the Nazi onslaught, a whole generation of music makers were sent into exile and murdered in the camps, their art, reputations and careers successfully repressed.
Along with the impossibly glamorous 'post-post-modern diva' Meow Meow, and the astonishingly flexible and brilliant members of the Aurora Orchestra, Barry Humphries gives us a chance to hear a fine selection of music and song from this period.
Some of the composers will be familiar to a general audience - Kurt Weill, in particular, and Meow Meow's rendition of the famous 'Surabaya Johnny' from his opera 'Happy End' is one of the finest I've ever heard. Others, like Krenek, Eisler, Hindemith and Schulhoff (who died in in the Wulzburg Concentration Camp in 1942) are a bit more esoteric but produced wonderfully vibrant and accessible music, often jazz-influenced, infectiously played by the orchestra.
Stand-out moments, in an evening full of delights and discoveries include Ernst Toch's 'Geographical Fugue' for spoken chorus; Paul Abraham's cheeky 'Mousie' a duet sung by a pair of newlyweds which gives Barry plenty of opportunity for eye-rolling and double-entendre mischief and Mischa Spoliansky's lesbian anthem 'When the special girlfriend'. "Just last week her boyfriend had her in a whirl! That romance is over, she's dropped him for a girl!"
In that song Meow Meow is partnered with Satu Vänskä, the multi talented and busiest performer on the stage as she leads the orchestra, sings a solo as well as the duet and plays a Stroh violin in one piece (a precursor to the modern-day electric violin). She is extraordinary.
An honourable mention must be made of Meow Meow's show-stopping interpretation of Schulhoff's 'Sonata Erotica', written for 'men only', though during it the woman seems to be having all the fun.
It's not all so light-hearted. As the show proceeds, we learn of more tragedy, the plight of the exiled and refugees from the War. Friedrich Hollaender's 'The Ruins of Berlin', written after the War and sung in the four languages of the occupying forces leads to the most chilling and moving performance of the evening. Kurt Weill's "Benares Song", 'there is no whisky in this town'. Rarely performed, it is full of the despair of the dispossessed, the misery of the lost and homeless. Its contemporary resonances stunned the audience.
Part music lesson, part history lecture, part personal reminiscence, part cabaret, part stand-up show, Barry Humphries and his colleagues have created something unlike anything else on the London stage, I advise you to catch it while you can.
London theatre has already offered two theatrical marathons this year, THE INHERITANCE soon to return to the West End, and IMPERIUM, currently playing at the Gielgud Theatre. Both clock in at around seven hours. By comparison the LEHMAN TRILOGY at the National is a mere three and a half hours and can be viewed in a single performance.