Lady Rizo - Unescorted

Lady Rizo - Unescorted
Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre. 17-19 June, 2015.

Sometimes a performer will take your breath away with the manner in which they joyfully push against the conventional boundaries of cabaret tradition. Lady Rizo is just this kind of exhilarating fresh-air blast, and you owe it to yourselves to put her name at the top of your list.

With the wardrobe of a typical diva, yet a thoroughly unpretentious and winning personality, Rizo sweeps you up and along with her for a wild night of fantastic fun! Her sense of humour is hilariously vulgar and impolite, yet creative, without ever resorting to mere lazy crudeness. Adelaide residents with an ability to laugh at themselves should get a kick out of her good-natured digs. In any case, what she contributes to the life of the city and its cabaret festival is surely its own form of flattery.

Rizo is clearly in possession of a powerhouse vocal ability, with as much of a knack for gritty blues styling as for tenderly vulnerable lullabies. Signing off with To Love Somebody, done in a sing-along with her appropriately adoring audience, was the sweetest possible cherry on a richly satisfying cabaret cake!

This is apparently not the first visit by Lady Rizo to these parts; one can only hope that there are more to come…

Anthony Vawser

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