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

Sunday Mail, Adelaide March 5, 2000

Black Pearls and Strange Fruit. Jackie Gordon. Rosemount Hotel

Jackie Gordon is young, gifted and black.  In this elegant cabaret show, the beautiful New Yorker traces the history of female forbears through the great African-American singers of the century.  Backed by a jazz trio, the songs, from legends including Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Eartha Kitt, are superb. Some numbers positively raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Gordon delivers the narrative, with its shameful litany of slavery and segregation, its triumphant evocation of civil rights advances, with passion and poignancy.

The Bottom Line: Lady sings the blues with mastery and a message – JACKIE TRACY