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Jun 23, 2019
ADELAIDE CABARET FESTIVAL 2019: UTE LEMPER - RENDEZVOUS WITH MARLENE at Thebarton Theatre
Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Saturday 8th June 2019
In 1988, Ute Lemper had a three-hour telephone conversation with Marlene Dietrich, recreated here in Ute Lemper - Rendezvous with Marlene for the 2019 Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Lemper tells Dietrich's life story, punctuated with many of the songs that we associate with her. Just as Dietrich was one of the biggest names and most respected Kabarett performers of her day, so Lemper fills that role in today's cabaret scene, whilst maintaining strong links to the seminal years during the Weimar republic.
The songs were wide ranging and eclectic, with Bob Dylan's Blowing in The Wind; alongside Frank Loesser and Friedrich Hollaender's The Boys in the Backroom, Hollaender's Lola, from her first film from 1930, Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), and, of course, perhaps her biggest hit, Lili Marleen (Lili Marlene), the Hans Leip poem that was set to music by Norbert Schultze. Fredrich Hollaender, naturally, featured again with Black Market and The Ruins of Berlin. Burt Bacharach, her occasional music director, and film director, Billy Wilder, featured in both the monologue and the songs, as did Edith Piaf.SHARE THIS NEWS ITEM