That evening I asked Barry and Carole to join me at another dinner theatre show downtown. The venue was a club called On Broadway. It’s a long room with a row of tables on a raised dais lining each long wall and many more tables in the central well of the room. We were about three tables back from the raised stage and had an excellent view. The show was called “Strictly Come Jazz”, a play on the title of “Strictly Come Dancing” which is the UK and SA version of our “Dancing with the Stars”.
The food was on a par with the other dinner shows. I had a snoek pate to start. Snoek is a fish which I have only heard about in the South African context. I don’t know whether it is just the local term for a fish that is also found elsewhere. I guess I should google that if I really care!
The show consisted of three singers, two men and a woman with a voice that ranged from a smoky honey timbre to a pure sweet tone. The show was loosely constructed around the idea of audition, production and performance but they could have dropped that idea. It added nothing to the production which consisted of simply choreographed jazz evergreens, beautifully sung by all three performers. Standout songs were Francois Lliam’s “Mack the Knife” and just about everything sung by Monique Hellenberg. The third performer Jaco Norval was also a good singer but seemed to be a trifle distracted by a table of 4 next to us, who may have been friends as they laughed and applauded excessively loudly at everything he did.
I enjoyed the show – the choice of songs was perfect for our generation. They ended with a cheesy shtick of getting three women from the audience to join them “dancing” on stage with ostrich feather boas around their necks. It was tolerable until they played a cha-cha and none of the women had a clue! That finished it off for me. The show would have been good enough without the “audience participation” which turned it into a cheesy non-professional gig. Pity.
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