Micheline Sings Brel, Famous Spiegeltent
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Worbey and Farrell, Assembly Rooms
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Die Roten Punkte, Assembly George Square
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NOT even the flypast that's been carefully timed to drown her out about five songs into her show can throw MICHELINE VAN HAUTEM off course as she celebrates her fellow Belgian, Jacques Brel.
She's been singing Brel's songs for many years, and has form as a Herald Angel winner for doing so, and while other performers on the Fringe will offer a similar repertoire, this is the Brel show that you need to experience.
Van Hautem doesn't so much perform Brel as inhabit the narratives and dramas he created, so that not speaking French or the Ghent dialect of Flemish in which she confides Marieke's story will hinder the listener's understanding.
She can be desolate or playful and sound like she means every beautifully enunciated syllable, every superbly crafted vocal line. Accompanied by guitarist-pianist Bert Verschueren, she takes exhilarating risks with tempos, becomes an all-too-convincing, piano-lid-lolling devil on Ca Va, and adds a mischievous, provocative whistling solo to Les Flamandes and a flute solo to an unspeakably gorgeous Ne Me Quitte Pas.
This is full-strength Brel, bewitchingly full-strength Van Hautem, making Next scarily intense - and if you think she's exaggerating Amsterdam's status as Holland's Sodom and Gomorrah, just wait till you witness her interpretation of Brel's graphic portrayal. Unmissable.
And bear with WORBEY AND FARRELL as they come on like a piano-duetting Ant & Dec, because they are talented and entertaining, and on a Fringe where the term eclectic has become overused, they genuine merit the term.
Let's face it, where else are you going to hear - and be able to watch on an overhead screen - four hands interpreting the works of Khatchachurian, Coldplay and Russ Conway with skill, style and feeling for the music?
Their big number, 24 of their own "deviations" on a Paganini caprice is both admirably varied and a mite variable success-wise, but as a whole this is a very enjoyable and informative hour spent with two musicians who wear their considerable keyboard gifts lightly and fortunately slam down the piano lid with the same expert timing as they articulate the notes.
Meanwhile, a guitar-playing brother and drumming sister can't agree if they're playing punk rock or art rock, among other topics for sibling rivalry, and end up creating a genre of their own: slapstick power pop.
Mayhem, tears and some rather deceptively well-crafted, riff-driven songs about unlikely topics ensue, with the central set-piece, a mini rock opera that's a kind of retelling of Hansel and Gretel the local social work department might want to investigate, as the lunacy is ramped up to laugh-out-loud proportions, emphasising the possibilities of electronic looping as very loopy indeed.
DIE ROTEN PUNKTE is nuts, but the timing and underlying talent behind the outrageousness makes for great Fringe entertainment in the Fabulous Poodles and beyond tradition.
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