THE PIANO DIARIES

Funny, fierce, sexy and sassy Joanna Weinberg

Actress and singer-songwriter Joanna Weinberg returned to Camelot on Sunday 27 May with her acclaimed show THE PIANO DIARIES. THE PIANO DIARIES is the story of Joanna’s life written on the piano, instead of in a diary.

Her father, a Jewish musician, her mother a blue stocking, eloped to Paris in the early Sixties. Their passion produced progeny pretty quickly and from there they take the toddler Joanna to live in South Africa where she experiences appalling apartheid. One of the most affecting songs in the show bears tragic witness to this.

At 14, Joanna flees J’berg for Durban, infatuated by a rock star boy god, lead singer of the Cosmic Snails. dropping piano for dramatics, she appears in a groundbreaking production of Othello playing Desdemona to the first black performer to take the lead role.

Migrating to Australia, she takes up the piano again and commences composing and performing. THE PIANO DIARIES is the proud and prodigious product of that reunion, an intensely personal account of a life drenched in music and art, love and disappointment, escape, migration, joy, despair and an indomitable belief in the power of music!

This ninety minute musical maelstrom includes a multitude of memorable songs including an hilarious harmonic homily concerning domestic husbandry attributed to her grandmother, and an ode to art and artists that is inspiring and whimsical.

Funny, fierce, sexy and sassy, it’s a story that crosses continents and decades and dances its way across musical genres- Klezmer, Cabaret, Soul, Jazz. The show features Joanna herself on keyboard and vocals along with accompaniment of cello, percussion, guitar and wind.

Joanna is also performing at Katoomba’s Winter Magic festival on June 23 and then at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre in Canberra on the 28th and 29th of June, 2012.

Just as a footnote, something about the venue. Camelot is a boutique venue that is a home in Sydney for home all manner of World, Jazz, Cabaret, singer/songwriters and other Acoustica.

Part of the radical facelift and reinvention of the space is presenting 2 stages: the music stage (featuring a German Grand Piano) and the sideshow stage (for smaller musical acts, as well as burlesque, magicians, contortionists, hula-hoopers and other carnivalesque offerings!), and the dance-floor will ensure many a fun foot-stomping night!

Camelot, corner 103 Railway Parade & 19 Marrickville Road, Marrickville (directly opposite Sydenham Train Station, a short 2 minute stroll away!) is well worth a visit soon!

© Richard Cotter

29th May, 2012

Tags: Sydney Theatre Reviews- THE PIANO DIARIES, Joanna Weinberg, Camelot, Klezmer, Cabaret, Soul, Jazz, Katomba’s Winter Music Festival, Tuggeranong Arts Centre, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter.