Adelaide Fringe Festival 2000
The Rosemont Hotel February 26 - March 19
Adelaide, Australia

Rip It Up Magazine Adelaide, Australia

Black Pearls and Strange Fruit  (The Rosemount Hotel, Adelaide Fringe Festival 2000) Reviewer:Richard Vogt

With the black pearl being the rarest and the strange fruit which completes the title being a reference to black people hung from trees by the KKK in the deep American south, you’re not going to get a smarter nor more fitting title for a cabaret show.  Conceived by local Paulene Terry-Beitz and Jackie Gordon (whose New York accent is barely noticeable), this show gives the impression of being a documentary. As slides of old photos and etchings are projected behind the three-piece band.

Jackie Gordon stands tall and proud on stage in her slinky white gown – equal parts preacher and seductress – moving her arms like a swan as she delves into her appreciation of black American singers of this century.  She purrs like Eartha Kitt, she bellows like Dinah Washington and she croons like Billie Holiday.  In fact, even though she herself to imitate the songs and voices of the most famous singers of this century she never falters once.  Her voice is so strong and forceful that you sometimes wonder whether her tonsils will snap from her throat.  And with each song that passes, the audience grows louder in their appreciation.

Stories of horror and demoralization are intercut with sultry jazz numbers so that you know, in the end this is a show of celebration rather than a memorial to those who came before.  And just in case you were sure of that fact, Gordon doesn’t end the show with the Maya Angelou poem ‘I Rise’, she ends it with a belting performance of Nina Simone’s Young, Gifted and Black.  The band play on as she is led from the stage, only to be forced to return for an encore by a roomful of shouting and applause