Velvet

Its makers describe Velvet as a party ("with an exhilarating disco soundtrack"), and as a show bursting with disco, cabaret, dance, glamour, and circus.  The show opens, continues, and closes with soundtracks to which performers dance or sing or perform aerial acrobatics.  It's certainly an unusual mix, though in fact I saw no cabaret.

Having watched it, I'm still unclear what Velvet is.  The only evident connection between all the performances was the set they all appeared on.

Whatever the show is, though, its cast members put their all into it.

As the show's star, Marcia Hines delivered her usual impeccable performance, despite recent injury that clearly confined her movements.  Her two backing singer–dancers disco-danced for much of the evening, always with admirable energy and style (even if the choreography could have done with greater variety), and the aerial acrobatics of Emma Goh and Stephen Williams, if they displayed little new to today's audiences, were accomplished and even moving.  And the show's opening with an act by handstand acrobat Mirko Köckenberger was a welcome novelty.

Stealing the show to an extent were the personalities of natural comics Tom Oliver and Craig Reed.  Oliver had a flair for wearing outrageous costumery as though born to it, and moved with real style.  Reed's ability to bring the house down through sheer confidence that everybody will enjoy his antics took second place only to his hula-hooping genius.  The largely silent Joe Accaria's DJ'ing, air musicianship, and excellent percussion playing were worth watching too, whenever there was a moment, for their sheer cool.

The show was let down somewhat by the poor balance of its sound.  It was sometimes difficult to hear Marcia Hines singing over the instrumental soundtrack, and frequently almost impossible to hear the backing singers.  The poor overall balance unfortunately drained many of the performances of their energy.  On top of that, the sound was too loud altogether.  Possibly being unable to hear it properly explains the audio engineer's inability to correct the other problems.

More fundamentally, what the show could use more of is surprise.  Certainly it offers a few bursts, from Tom Oliver's unusual rendition of "Staying Alive" to every moment that the inimitable Craig Reid spent on stage.  The Bee Gees song and one other were inherently interesting in enjoying a different arrangement from the usual.  The remaining songs could have benefited by musical arrangement that introduced something musically fresh and powerful; instead, the vocal harmonies on a couple of the songs were positively insipid, not through any fault of their performers, but due to their regrettably pedestrian arrangement.

In its time, people found disco exciting: energetic, fast, sexy, daring, occasionally even — as rock 'n' roll too could be — dangerous.  It was exhilarating because it was being created at the time, new songs introducing new rhythms, fresh harmonies, and changing song forms, not to say glitter.  The freshness with which disco infused both music and dance was due to the creativity in these elements.  The songs are very well-known now; replaying them as they were, even 40 decibels louder than ever before, can’t recapture that freshness, and giving them new but lacklustre arrangements can’t regenerate it.  That would necessitate reinvigorating the songs with new surprises — which requires artfully enriching them through musical imagination.

Despite those limitations, Velvet may restart your inner disco and even inspire you to take up gymnastics or hula-hooping.  And if you're raring to hear an albumful of the old dance numbers; if you’d like to see some fun, glittery costumes; if you’d like to be reminded of nights spent under disco lights, then grab a ticket.  You'll even be invited to dance.

Review and photos by John P. Harvey