Mikelangelo as Balkan Elvis. Photo by Claudio Raschella.
On a wintery night in Adelaide, the versatile Space Theatre is transformed into an intimate cabaret venue for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s Eastern Bloc Rock, Mikelangelo as Balkan Elvis. It’s a dark and simple tale of isolation and music, the story of an unloved Bosnian boy, deserted by his father and left in the care of a nanny. Johnny Presley drinks in flickering images of his idol Elvis Presley as he dances. It’s Johnny’s first television experience and this unforgettable sight alters the course of the young man’s life. Conscripted, sent to fight in a conflict he doesn’t believe in, (overtones of the man himself) Johnny escapes into a landscape beset by war and hardship, and heavily accented Mikelangelo is here to sing about it.
Seasoned cabaret personality Mikelangelo personifies his protagonist Johnny Presley in a white smoking jacket with black velvet piping, he’s clean shaven, neatly mutton-chopped and armed with a small comb he uses from time to time to right his carefully constructed ‘50s coif. He ‘holds a skewed mirror to the American Elvis’ in this hour and ten minute show and he does it with style, cheese and ease. He and his tight, talented five-piece roll from one slightly-culturally-revised Elvis rendition to the next with cheeky enthusiasm, producing musical gems one after another like islands in the storytelling.
Co-musical director Dave Evans on accordion and piano is a rare treat; hat wearing, concentrated, expressive, the ease with which he manipulates his difficult instrument is a happy study in musical pizazz.
The evening’s highlight is most definitely Viva Dubrovnik, a Balkan take on the Elvis classic Viva Las Vegas, only in this version the dancing girls are four smiling, twirling belly dancers, swathed in material, bedecked by bangles, jangling, swaying and generally adding conviviality to an already joyous romp through Elvis songs, both celebrated, and some more obscure.
Mikelangelo spins the magic of his show almost seamlessly, until at one point he swears, albeit without dropping his Bosnian accent and not directly into the microphone. He’s skipped a bit of his vehicle from-song-to-song story line, he tells us, but it’s not important, the song next up is out of place (Elvis’s Edge of Reality) but the banter afterwards is brief and genuine as he winds his way back to the script. Suddenly we’re off again, tripping through the little tale of a young man and his aspirations with barely a whisper of a hiccup.
All too soon the show’s fantastic, light-hearted finale is upon us, Mikelangelo having won over even the audience members among us who began the show with crossed arm’s and vacant expressions. They, alongside appreciative fans, are carried along by the moment as Johnny Presley descends into the crowd, thanking his audience, encouraging us all to dance. Overhead an ostentatiously large mirror-ball scatters pinpricks of light whilst larger-than-life Balkan belly dancers reprise their celebratory twirling.
This is feel-good, well-executed fun; musical storytelling at it’s tongue-in-cheek best.
Rating: 4 stars ★★★★
Eastern Bloc Rock
Mikelangelo as Balkan Elvis
Musical Direction Mikelangelo and Dave Evans
Adelaide Festival Centre’s Space Theatre
Adelaide Cabaret Festival
7.30pm June 13, 6.30pm June 14, 2018
