New wind beneath cabaret star's wings Catherine Alcorn
JO LITSON• The Sunday Telegraph• Australia June 09, 201312:00AM
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/new...-1226660508393
AFTER playing Bette Midler for several years in her hit cabaret show The Divine Miss Bette, Catherine Alcorn decided recently that the time had come to create something new.
"I'd had the itch for a while. I felt it was time to move on, even if I just shelved Bette for a little while, and I wanted to play another rock chick," says Alcorn who, as Fidel Cathro, fronts electro-dance band The Gauge Breakers. "I'm a rock chick at heart."
She was on a plane to Santiago when the right idea hit.
"I was listening to Fleetwood Mac and one of my favourite songs on the album - Christine McVie's As Long As You Follow - came on and I thought: 'This is perfect'," Alcorn says.
"She's so interesting. There was all the trauma and excruciating times they went through recording Rumours (due to the relationship break-ups of band members Christine and John McVie, and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham) and (questions like) why she left the band and is she coming back? All those things lend themselves to a really juicy story."
Arriving in Santiago, Alcorn did some research and discovered that Fleetwood Mac was planning a world tour without Christine and that a biopic called The Drummer about the Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, with whom she had a relationship, is scheduled for release this year.
"You know you are on to something good when those other things happen to support the idea," Alcorn says.
The resulting show, Go Your Own Way, premieres at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival on June 15. It then comes to Sydney on June 26 as part of the Slide Cabaret Festival which runs from June 21 to July 4, including New York's Joey Arias, Phil Scott, Michael Griffiths, Christie Whelan Browne and Ursula Yovich.
In Go Your Own Way, Alcorn will tell McVie's story from the singer/songwriter's perspective.
"I won't be trying to look like her, it will be more a channeling with a slightly lower voice," she says. "I only perform the songs she's written but there are a couple of other Fleetwood Mac songs in there and a Beach Boys track."
Alcorn is passionate about cabaret. Alongside her performing, she works as Slide's creative director in order to help develop the artform and build audiences for it in Sydney.
"It's the intimacy, the closeness," she says. "As an audience member you can nearly have a conversation with the performer on stage and that's exciting. I think fans love being close to the stars. Everyone wants to meet the artist afterwards and in a cabaret environment more often than not you can do that."
Keeping a cabaret venue open in Sydney is tough, Alcorn admits, "but we just have to keep our wits about us. Given that we don't have any funding, I think we are doing incredibly well. We are still here and we are doing better and better than we ever have".
Bette meanwhile, has not been entirely sidelined. Alcorn performs The Divine Miss Bette at Glen Street Theatre next month.
"We're moving from a four-piece to a full band for Glen Street. We've got some additional songs and the show has been extended. It's going to be bigger and Bette-er," she says with a laugh.
Go Your Own Way, Slide Cabaret, June 26. Bookings: 8915 1899. The Divine Miss Bette, Glen Street Theatre, July 23-28. Bookings: 9975 1455