Amplified, about Divinyls legend Chrissy Amphlett, at Belvoir Theatre
CABARET
reinforced
Belvoir St Theatre, 30 January
until February 8
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★½
Long after Chrissy Amphlett’s band, the Divinyls, ceased to exist, she dreamed of doing a one-woman theater show about herself and her songs. Having spent her Divinyls career playing a sultry, salacious, sullen, unpredictable schoolgirl, this time she wanted a character who reportedly settled into a crow. It would never happen. She died of breast cancer before the unfinished dream evaporated.
Enter Sheridan Harbridge, Glenn Moorhouse and Sarah Goodes. Together they imagined the ghost of the show Amphlett had envisioned and added captions to it. Chrissy Amphlett’s Delicious Rock and Anger. Harbridge wrote it, Moorhouse was the musical director, and Goodes conducted Harbridge’s performance. They did a stormy job.
Harbridge doesn’t become Chrissy, in the sense that the story is told in the third person, but Amphlett’s spirit is alive and dangerously alive in Harbridge’s performance.
The second one has such a wide range, from being the best Blanche I’ve ever seen. A Streetcar Named Desireuntil she bursts off the stage with a singing voice that can be brutally powerful when necessary, but also has a sweet emotion that I didn’t know I had.
Beyond the power of his performance and compelling storytelling, music and spoken word are intertwined; so a Divinyls hit can start, chill as Harbridge tells us more, start over, and repeat the process.
It’s so well done that you don’t curse the fact that they can’t keep up the song; you are caught up in a mounting tension that is finally released when the song comes to the fore.
Another strength is the music itself, with Moorhouse (on guitar) accompanied by Clarabell Limonta (keyboards), Ben Cripps (bass) and Dave Hatch (drums). I never considered the Divinyls as a band compared to their songs and Amphlett’s performance. Moorhouse and his friends removed some bricks in the sound wall and replaced them with nuances; Men in the City.
Meanwhile, the fearless Harbridge not only enters the audience, she invades it. He’s funny, too, and the humor provides the fullness of emotional impact, given the inherent sadness of a tale of excess about Amphlett having to shatter the same glass ceiling over and over again, and then suffering from multiple sclerosis before contracting cancer.
Perhaps the reason it’s so touching is because the show exudes such love for its subject.
If the intensity of grip is released a little in the last stage, it will certainly be restored when action is taken. I Touch MyselfThe song that made young Harbridge a fan.
I suspect Amphlett would approve. He appreciated the absence of hagiography and sugarcoating, and may have recognized a companion in the high-stakes game of being a daredevil on stage. He may even have finally stood up with the rest of us.
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John Shand has written about music and theater for more than 30 publications since 1981, including for Fairfax Media since 1993. He is also a playwright, author, poet, librettist, drummer, and winner of the 2017 Walkley Arts Journalism Award.Connect with: X.
