Putting it together - cabaret

Been working hard on a new cabaret with Suanne Braun, for the Lauderdale House cabaret season.

It’s a great blend of stand-up comedy and songs. We’ve had a huge amount of fun putting it together. Suanne already has experience as a stand-up, and I slotted in various songs that seemed to come out of the topics she was talking about.

I really enjoy helping people to put together cabarets or concert programmes that reflect their strengths – it’s one of my favourite things to do. It helps if the artist already has a fairly strong idea of what they want, or a “database” of experiences that can be worked into a scenario. It’s such a joy when the instruction “give me something to work with here” is met with a torrent of ideas. It doesn’t matter to me whether the ideas are fully formed or just wistful thoughts, it helps me to know what is really going to fit.

Ironically, the cabaret has come at a really busy time for both of us. Suanne has just been promoted in Mamma Mia from first cover Tanya to take over the role. She’s the first person in the history of the show to move from cover to leading role, and that happened earlier this week. On top of that, the cast had two extra performances, at Planet Hollywood, and live on ITV’s The X Factor in the ABBA night.

I’ve been racing round the country doing Hatstand opera gigs in Berkshire, Wiltshire and Lincolnshire, publishing the fourth video Endoscopy ebook (Modal to Falsetto 2 – Breathy Speech), writing an eZINE update for Vocal Process, and fitting in new coaching clients when I could. So I’ve been doing crazy hours, working from 9:30am to 11:30pm, and then wondering why I’m a little tired!

We had been discussing the idea of a cabaret for many months, and this one focussed on some of the more extraordinary moments in Suanne’s career, working on three continents. Suanne arrived at our first cabaret meeting proper with lots of ideas, including three songs from Dillie Keane’s album Back With You. Dillie writes excellent songs - catchy, funny, and VERY wordy. As time was short, and as I needed to transcribe the songs, we settled on two, Let’s Hear It For Fake, and Joyce.

I had decided that this was the moment to learn how to use the Sibelius music-writing programme. Dillie sings her songs in very low keys, and Suanne has a higher voice, so for this job a combination of transcription from the CD and transposition of the transcription was needed. The joy (and I do really mean that) of Sibelius is that once the music is inputted, you can do anything with it, including transposition and printing at the touch of a button. In fact part of our rehearsal was deciding in which keys to perform the songs.

Incidentally, when it comes to singing songs in published or non-published keys, there is a difference between musical theatre and cabaret. If you are working towards an MT audition, and singing an MT song, I usually want to hear you sing the songs in the original key, as the writing in that key will often be a “key” to the characterisation. Also, if you are going into the show, it’s no good singing a signature number in a lower key (for example) because (a) the band won’t have the parts, and (b) changing the key may throw the musical and harmonic structure of the show. However, with cabaret, you yourself create the structure and the rules, and indeed the subtext of each song, so original key becomes less important.

We added other songs to the mix including Funny Girl as a poignant number, I Can Cook Too as the finisher, and a snippet of a Robbie Williams number as the opener. The fun part of the cabaret structure is that almost anything goes (as long as it works), so we included musical underscoring, linking completely unconnected songs together, and one-liners woven into the song vamps.

Thankfully, Suanne is organised about her standup material, so it was relatively easy to shift information and stories around to make the sense of story flow. Ultimately, standup (and to a lesser extent cabaret) only really works when it’s being performed, and by gauging the audience’s response you can discover what works in general and in detail, and what needs altering or removing from the script.

Lauderdale House is an interesting venue, with beautiful art exhibitions housed in two main rooms. We were in the upstairs room, which is long and thin. The audience for this series is very warm and open to just about anything, and they took to Suanne’s particular brand of standup immediately. This series is such a good vehicle for musical theatre singers, and I recommend that you go if you are in London. Each Sunday afternoon contains two separate artists, the headliner and the support. Our support act on Sunday was the funny and talented James Adler, giving his first cabaret performance.

Our set went well, with Suanne staying on top of all the material, including the incredibly wordy new songs. We have always seen this performance as the debut of our “work in progress”, and Lauderdale House is an excellent venue to try out new material. We’re meeting in a couple of days’ time to discuss what worked and what needs changing.

I’ll keep you posted.

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