Introspective

Introspective
Eddie Perfect. The Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2021. Dunstan Playhouse. June 18-19, 2021

Given Melbourne’s current Covid status, we were fortunate to have Eddie Perfect on stage this week, with only appropriately restricted ‘escorted travel’ from hotel room to stage and back again.  And in fact, it is the epic history of that city’s lockdowns that helped form this show, first performed in February at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre.  Perfect reflected that tedious lockdown conditions provided the precise opportunity for introspection as he crafted this cabaret performance.

An honest telling, this show is a reflection on Perfect’s recent life working on Strictly Ballroom The Musical, Vivid White, Beetlejuice The Musical and King Kong; Alive On Broadway. Many of the songs have never been heard or recorded, but tales surrounding the songs are told with gusto. With spare stage, grand piano, Xani Kolac on violin, Anita Quail on cello, a scattering of the F word and hilarious anecdotes, and Perfect’s brilliance as a lyricist on show, Introspective is a delight.  Inviting us to picture ourselves at midnight in creepy locked down Melbourne, the first whimsical song, ‘Taking Out the Bins’, is a gentle look at midnight raids to empty your excess rubbish into neighbour’s less-than-full bins - but not your immediate neighbour because that would be rude!

After long harbouring a desire to write for Broadway, Perfect finally moved his wife and their two children to Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 2018 to work on TWO shows at once.  Having just finished writing songs for Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, he had heard that the producers of a proposed musical version of Beetlejuice were accepting pitches. This marked the start of an intense two-year period of adventures in the US writing for Beetlejuice and King Kong. As he quips, “I had some success, and I had some pretty epic public failures.”

The song ‘Dead Mom’ secured him the Beetlejuice gig and tells the story of Lydia Deetz, a strange and unusual teenager obsessed with the whole ‘being dead thing.’  Another song (included in Perfect’s original pitch as an ensemble opening number) ‘Death’s Not Great’ was sadly cut from the musical but is a comedic winner performed by Perfect. 

With a crazy schedule, being new on the scene and scoring two Broadway shows in one season, ‘and with a stupid name’, Perfect relates the whole candid New York reception he received: ‘Who the f..k is this guy, Eddie Perfect? Who the hell does he think he is?’  The remarkable thing about Beetlejuice (based on Tim Burton’s comedic 1988 film) was its unexpected success after a Washington Post critic dubbed the out of town opening ‘over-caffeinated, overstuffed and virtually charmless’ and The New York Post’s headline complaining that it was a ‘coke-snorting, f-bombing disaster’.  In spite of these colourful reviews, Perfect tells of cosplay audiences dressed to the nines and queuing around the block, then returning time and time again as per the Rocky Horror phenomenon, plus TikTokers dressing the part for thousands of videos set to his Beetlejuice songs.

As a cheeky dig, ‘Death to the Critic’ tells of a fictional Shakespearean actor who loses his mind and plots to rid the world of all critics.  Perfect, not at all worried about the critics in the audience laughs a lot at this one.  As Beetlejuice soared, albeit for a short time, King Kong tanked, and many amusing anecdotes abound.  Another song was a reflective stance on the starlings of New York that when they fledge and cannot yet fly properly often end up on the sidewalks and roads and it is a fairly grim time as many of them don’t survive.  One more wistful song ‘A Little More of Your Time’, also cut from Beetlejuice, is a contemplation of fathers and how they often don’t get to spend as much time as they might like, or indeed should, with their offspring.

Back in Melbourne, apparently rescue dogs have been a thing - many folks adopting animal companions to get through the stress of being forced to stay home.  Perfect sings ‘Rescue Dog’, a tongue-in-cheek examination of the phenomenon : ‘she’s a failure, I’m a fool… Now I’m stuck with a rescue dog, and the feeling’s mutual’.  Another Australian debut, airing in 2019 was ‘Matesong’, sung by Kylie Minogue and a host of other famous folk for Tourism Australia.  It was originally meant to tempt British visitors to our shores but was pulled when the bushfire disaster escalated as its picture-perfect jollity was felt to be in bad taste juxtaposed against the images of those tragic weeks.  Sung by Eddie Perfect as a finale, now titled ‘Australia’, it was sweet and funny and simply another testament to the talent this man possesses.

Of this show Perfect has said ‘With Introspective, it’s quiet storytelling, no running around, just me at the piano. I’m still building up my social stamina. I think most Melburnians are.’  And it is storytelling at its best, with brilliant songs and a performer at both a peak and perhaps a crossroads in his career.  I can’t wait to see and hear what comes next.

Lisa Lanzi

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