(Pic: Godfrey Johnson)
Godfrey Johnson in “Flirting with Coward”. (Review by Clinton Marius)
Only in Durban would a diversely talented, award-winning performer like Godfrey Johnson have to play to a half-empty house. And for those who have not seen Johnson’s latest production, I suggest they book immediately, as he will only be presenting four more performances of the show this coming weekend at the Rhumbelow Theatre.
In Flirting with Coward, the Cape-based pianist and singer pays homage to the wit and musicality of Noel Coward. With just a piano, a mike, and the occasional and hilarious use of a tiny portable keyboard, he delivers 16 of Coward’s songs ... the popular standards, as well as some of the more obscure pieces. It is in these little-known songs that the performer‘s talent truly shines, particularly in the slower ballads, which highlight his ability to create an air of melancholy, fragility and tenderness.
Stand-outs in the evening’s repertoire include a quirky Any Little Fish, during which he hauls that toy keyboard out of the inside of the baby grand piano, and tinkles away on his lap; I’ll Follow My Heart, which gives him room to present his vocal range to the fullest; a very funny Don’t Let’s Be Beastly To The Germans; and a frenzied Mad Dog’s & Englishmen.
A lightning-fast version of The Minute Waltz is also highly amusing. Also worth mentioning is his poignant cover of Mad About The Boy and Senorita Nina, which he renders in a screamingly funny South African kugel accent. It is in this latter piece that Johnson’s piano skills take flight ... it’s easy to forget that, while he is bewitching the audience with his wonderful voice, he is simultaneously teasing the most delicious arrangements on the piano.
It is these arrangements that make Flirting with Coward so interesting, because Johnson reworks each song so that it sounds new. This is Coward that one hears ... but Coward through the lens of Godfrey Johnson.
After the interval, Johnson played an impromptu selection of songs chosen by members of the audience, including Kurt Weil’s I’m a Stranger Here Myself, Nature Boy, I Love Paris in the Springtime, A Hymn to Love, and Jacques Brel’s torch song, If You Go Away. His sense of playfulness and sardonic wit surface in tongue-in-cheek re-workings of Madonna’s Like a Virgin, which he rewrites as Like A Chicken (“plucked for the very first time”), and Britney Spears’s Hit Me Baby (One More Time) in which he gives a new, and darker, meaning to the Pop Princess’s otherwise vacuous lyrics.
‘A diversity of misery and wit’, wrote Coward ... and that’s exactly what you’ll hear in this show. With masterful re-arrangements of the material, and tight, uncluttered direction by Sanjin Muftic, Flirting with Coward is worth seeing. This coming weekend ... four more performances only. Come on Durban ... don’t wake up when it’s all over.
Bookings through Roland on 031 205 7602 (h) or 082 499 8636, or email roland@stansell.za.net
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