Meow Meow purrs into Berkeley Rep
If you accept Berkeley Rep’s invitation to attend An Audience with Meow Meow, you’re likely to be glad you did. You’re likely, too, to laugh helplessly at times at Meow Meow’s antics (I did), to admire her stunning legs (I did) and to be thrilled by a throaty voice that can both soar and murmur expressively (I did), but you’re also likely to find yourself scratching your head as you try to figure out what in the world Meow Meow thinks she’s up to (I did that often).
She’s a provocatively puzzling pussycat.
So who exactly has Berkeley Rep invited onstage to launch its 47th season? She’s Melissa Madden Gray, a prodigiously talented, Aussie-born singer, dancer and cabaret provocateur whose vivid stage persona, Meow Meow, looks a bit like Joan Collins just past her wonder years. She wears her dozen provocative costumes with brazen élan, though toward the end she strips down to her slip. Thus is the real Meow Meow revealed, I presume, free of the false trappings of performance: the naked, the vulnerable, the longing-for-love-and-connection Meow Meow. And, boy, does she make connection. In one of the most astonishing and daring moments I’ve seen in any theater, she asks the audience to raise its arms in acceptance, and it does (I did, too), then to take her body into its embrace (on opening night I did that as well). As she fell forward from the stage into a willing crowd, it passed her overhead to the very back of the Roda Theater.
Eat your heart out, Lady Gaga.
Though Meow Meow is smashing–a looker and a go-for-broke performer–I had my doubts when her show, directed by Kneehigh Theatre’s Emma Rice in its world premiere, began with Las Vegas-y blare, followed by a strained, over-obviously choreographed number in which two hunky dance partners get kneed in the crotch and abandon her. A parody of phony set-ups? Hard to tell, but it introduced the conceit of the show: Meow Meow as desperately willful rebel who refuses to follow the script, though a couple of lackeys keep showing up to tell her the producers are increasingly unhappy. Insisting on making it up as she goes along, she commands audience members onstage, encouraging them to grab at her, and she does bizarre numbers– one in English, French and “Eastern European” for example, with a big white bouncy ball. Yet as she wandered frantically farther and farther off base, I liked her better and better. She’s one of the nerviest performers I’ve seen (who else would dare to ask patrons, “If I died would you remember me?”), and she gives her energetic all to every moment.
In short, she made me purr.
I’m pleased to note that our own Geoff Hoyle is listed as Meow Meow’s “physical comedy consultant.” Other worthy members of her creative team: Lance Horne and Martin Lowe (music), Neil Murray (scenic and costume design), Simon Baker (sound), and Alexander V. Nichols (lighting). Sturdy and graceful, Michael Balderrama and Bob Gaynor are her dancers.
Director Emma Rice shrewdly shapes Meow Meow’s talents without blunting their edge. As Rice has said of her star, “Meow Meow knocks my socks off! She is everything–sexy, surprising, talented and funny.” Everything? Maybe not that, but if you consent to an audience with her, you may find she’s the nearest runner up.
An Audience with Meow Meow plays on Addison Street until October 19th, followed by the musical, Rock People. For tickets/information call 647-2949 or visit www.berkeleyrep.org.
–ROBERT HALL