Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 6. April 4 1977

Das Kapital On the Strut..

Das Kapital On the Strut...

Not only me. Idi Amin and Piggy Muldoon were there too. A sort of international weight-watchers for hysterical heavies. And the Queen. And the queens, for that matter. In fact every heavy in town and his consort were there, dragging away, till the air was thick. Smoke, spunk, and spots. Red Mole country. Cabaret country.

Cabaret as a theatrical genre used to enjoy a tremendous popularity in the twenties. Probably one reason was that years before its time it was breaking down barriers between actors and acted at. Cabaret was practising 'Total Theatre' long before anyone thought about formulating it. For cabaret simply cannot function without a continuous and tangible dialogue between the performers and the immediate surrounding human milieu. Perhaps it was because of this close dialogue that cabaret came to articulate a very immediate social and political consciousness. Whatever, this direct socio-political articulation became one of the hallmarks of cabaret, and is, I think, the essence of the genre. Perhaps the most accessible example we have had of this in recent years is the Lenny Bruce story, and on the local scene, certain student revues.

Gil Fraser

Gil Fraser

In Cabaret Strut Red Mole have rediscovered this sort of vitality. They are in their element riding the tension between entertainment and socio-political comment, for they have developed a high degree of excellence in performance skills with which they match their equally high powered attack on all that represents and supports the status quo. Mediums and messages. Obvsiously in cabaret they are mutually dependent. And where the Strut is strongest is when they fuse, such as Alan Brunton's "Liberty Bus."

But the problem with the Strut is that Red Mole are too good for the rest of the show, and too few to carry the entire show themselves. There were times when the performance took on a somewhat desperate 'for God's sake do something to entertain them for a while' tone. In fact had the patrons not been so determined to be entertained by this so welcome departure from the traditional theatrical ennui, there could have been nasty lulls in the cabaret spirit. But this is not the problem of the conception of the Strut, nor of the artistic excellence of the Mole itself. Merely organisational. They need good supporting acts. So if you have a good cabaret number take it on a Strut. The show runs weekly and never the same. The Mole is a vintage Red. It can only improve week by week.