Meltdown: Stand Bravely, Brothers, Royal Festival Hall, London
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Your support makes all the difference.This was a man, after all, who devoted his life to challenging the bourgeois conventions of the theatre, parodying the pomposity of opera, and dismantling the audience/actor divide .
Accordingly, there's a charmingly ad-hoc feel to the evening, which encompasses songs which have become standards ("Mack the Knife", "Alabama Song") and his lesser-known works.
A photo of the great man gazes down on proceedings as an impressive line-up of admirers (the Finn Brothers have flown all the way from New Zealand for all of 60 seconds' stage-time) are wheeled on and off in front of the London Sinfonietta, conveyor-belt style.
Sparks do Brecht in a Sparks style, which is neatly symmetrical because, on their finest album (Indiscreet), Sparks did Sparks in a Brecht style.
Antony (of The Johnsons) sounds impossibly cool, quipping "take that cigarette out of your mouth, you rat" in a duet with the Björkish Martha Wainwright. Antony's hero, Marc Almond (still recovering from a crash), is offered a chair. He declines. He's fine. And that is a fine sight.
David Thomas of Pere Ubu sings "Alabama Song" with an erratic, eccentric delivery which has several members of the Sinfonietta cracking up. Only at the end, when he begins slurring and staggering like a drunk on his way to the next whiskey bar, does it become clear: he's been acting the song! The Tiger Lillies, who deliver lines like "some anarchist who had lunch with the best wine on the list" in a hilarious Hinge & Brackett falsetto, are quite a find.
Amanda Palmer of the mighty Dresden Dolls - whose Kurzweil keyboard has been amended to read "KURTWEILL" - sings the harrowing prostitute's tale "Nanna's Song".
Patti Smith indulges in a little acting, using a mop as a prop during "Pirate Jenny", hoisting her skirt, and showing a bit of shoulder. After messing up, skipping several verses then having to recap the missing part with a precis, she invokes Brecht's own dictum herself: "the amateur rules."
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