Review: "GOING IT ALONE", Dale Burridge accompanied by Andrew Ross at the piano. School of Arts Cafe, Feb 11 1998. Reviewed by TONY MAGEE

Dale Burridge

Australian actor and singer Dale Burridge comes to the Cafe with an impressive list of credits in many major productions and his show Going It Alone certainly presented a nice overview of some highlights from his career to date as well as some personal favourites not connected with shows.

Dale was accompanied at the piano by Andrew Ross who is excellent in this field, creating wonderful orchestrations and colourations to support Dale. 

Dale Burridge is very relaxed with an audience and also very charming. There were a few opening night glitches in the show and even one point where Dale thought that his voice was giving out. As so often happens in Cabaret presentations in a small intimate venue, it actually took a mistake to humanise the performance, which endeared the performers to us and us to them a whole lot more.

Some specific highlights from the show were a great version of Don't Cry Out Loud as a tribute to Peter Allen and an excellently constructed and performed medley of songs by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley - On A Wonderful Day Like Today, Once In A Lifetime and What Kind Of Fool Am I. These are great songs and as Sammy Davis Junior often said, they're singers songs. Dale Burridge really did them justice - wonderful stuff.

Andrew Ross

Act II of the show opened with the revelation that Dale thought he was losing his voice. I really couldn't hear any evidence of this at all. What I did sense was that the show was perhaps just a touch underprepared in places and therefore Dale's confidence was slightly down - a small audience in an intimate venue is often much harder to play than a big one. 

For the second half, the show was presented with a much more casual approach - both in dress and in the manner in which the audience was addressed. Nothing wrong with that, except I do feel it is the domain of the young and up-and-comings - trying to make a statement - putting the new youthful slant on performance. Dale is well past that. He is an established theatre performer and I think that the show structure in this regard needs to be looked at.

One or two oddities in vocal production also need to be addressed. Dale's vowel formation is unusual - "ay" sounds often becoming "air", "ent" sometimes delivered as "ont" (ie: This is the Momont). A few pitching problems now and again were also surprising, however Dale has the most fantastic breath control - never seen anything like it.

Dale also displayed a beautiful soft falsetto voice - something that he used to great effect throughout the show and in fact his vocal dynamic range is quite extraordinary. The show finished very strongly with fabulous renditions of Listen To My Heart and This Is the Moment (from Jekyll and Hyde) and then a stunning encore, returning to what is obviously a serious composer/singer love affair - Bricusse and Newley's Who Can I Turn To.

Originally published in Muse Magazine (Canberra), March 1998