Cabaret
By Bettylou Rose
Deville’s Pad
28th of January
Review by Zoe Kilbourn
Decked out like the Kit Kat Club via Liberace, Deville’s Pad was made for Bettylou Rose’s brand of Tex-Mex cabaret. Walking in to Chuck Berry, dimly lit diner booths and a bunch of blokes in identical blue plaid at the bar, for a second I have to check that the show hasn’t started.
Plaid shirts aren’t back – those barflies are the Banditos, and soon they’re on stage working a Lone Star gee-up vamp. Bettylou Rose, the Yellow Rose of Texas, is decked out like a Tracey Turnblad in wranglers. The hair is up to here, and her cheekily demure rendition of Deep In The Heart Of Texas is immediately likeable. A practically audible wink on the verse about cacti, pants and chaps promises a lot.
It’s the perfect set up for sex comedy: faux-naif country girl taking a swing at showbiz. Unfortunately, the show never really capitalises on its character. Bettylou Rose can’t decide how old she is, what decade she’s from, and what kind of act she’s trying to achieve.
Aside from a throwaway (or shaken off?) joke later in the show, there’s nothing in Bettylou’s schtick resembling the perversity of Miley Cyrus or the perverse niceness of Taylor Swift. And while the occasional Texasism does creep in – Washeteria’s a pretty good one – they’re all based in tired-out stereotypes of a faux-genteel, mid-sixties South.
There’s no incisive comedy where there’s ample room for it. Where Bettylou could’ve bumbled through a string of sixteen-year-old Southerner observations on “Tony Rabbit”, the topic is introduced and ditched with a disingenuous “Let’s not talk politics”. Bettylou also seems under the impression that Mirrabooka is a small town – if only because the syllables fit Harper Valley PTA.
Even the raunch is medium-rare. Bettylou swigs tequila, but she’s a perennial schoolgirl who gawks at “Monica Lewinsky stains”. Musical innuendo is nudge-nudge-wink-winked, but often it’s surface level (as in the highlight of the night, a particularly infectious rendition of I Touch Myself). There’s a very funny bait-and-switch joke hinting at BDSM, but it’s abandoned way too early. And this might be nitpicky, but there’s a glaring absence of hoedown gags.
Bettylou waters down to what is essentially a musical revue, and an inconsistent one. While wavering between genuine performance and musical comedy, there aren’t enough overdone Texan vocal scoops or comfortably delivered phrases to put it in one category or another. And while she works very well with the Banditos – the guitarist’s intermittent but excellent MCing reveals he’s an Aussie – she’s flying solo, and doesn’t have a foil or a partner who might ease some of the musical tensions.
To her credit, Bettylou can work a crowd. For opening night at Deville’s, she’s able to share an intimate moment with everyone on the floor, and earns their love and some unrewarded calls for an encore with a triumphal kazoo tribute to INXS. If she could just trust them enough to really go out on a limb, to really deliver some biting jokes, they might just stand by her.
Bettylou Rose: Good Clean Fun runs from Sunday, February 1 until Sunday, February 22 at Deville’s Pad.
