The Needle and the Damage Done
Fortune Theatre - Hutchinson Studio, Dunedin
12/05/2009 - 17/05/2009
Production Details
So wrong, it couldn’t be any righter.
AT THE FORTUNE STUDIO THEATRE
May 12 – 17, 8.00 PM
Sold out hit show of the 2007 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Green Room Cabaret Award Winner
Appeared on ABC TV’s The Collectors
The Age – "A hoot" – ****1/2
"One of the funniest, and most awkwardly embarrassing nights you’ll have."
FIONA SCOTT-NORMAN in THE NEEDLE & THE DAMAGE DONE
There’s some bad music out there. Mesmerising, car-crash, can’t look away, bad music. Put out on vinyl by misguided christians, tv icons, footy players, racists, John Laws, Torvill & Dean, Bernard King, Abigail, and misogynistic soul singers to name but a few.
MEAP Online – "If you could remember just one of Scott-Norman’s scathing one line gags, you would be the funniest person at the water cooler."
The Needle and the Damage Done, from Fiona Scott-Norman and directed by Comedy Inc’s Paul McCarthy, is a joyous romp through a top ten of the worst music ever released in the history of the world, from someone who’s been collecting bad vinyl since she was old enough to shoplift a Rolf Harris record.
Funny Tonne – "Funny, tightly written and cleverly performed show which lives up to its sharp hook of a title."
Since selling out at the MICF, deejay and stand-up comic Fiona Scott-Norman has performed Needle at The Sydney Opera House, The Fringe Club in Hong Kong, The Famous Spiegeltent, The Woodford Festival, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and is taking time out from her current five month national tour of Australia to perform at the Fortune Theatre in Dunedin.
Geelong Times – "Needle is a perfectly timed emotional rollercoaster, with roaring laughter giving way to shock, embarrassment, horror and back to laughter again."
Part slide-show, part show and tell, part cabaret, part stand-up, The Needle And The Damage Done takes audiences on an hysterical journey through the appalling musical excesses of, to name but a few, William Shatner, Barbara Cartland, white supremacists, Tony Barber, and a Qantas inflight entertainment album. Two parts nostalgia, two parts cultural satire, ten parts shock and awe.
Beat Magazine – "Hilarious. Witty, incisive, a little bit wrong".
Fiona is a stand-up comic, satirist, journalist, broadcaster, and deejay, who hosted a radio show for 8 years called Trash Is My Life. Bad music, and the foisting of it on innocents, is a bit of an obsession. Before taking up comedy Fiona worked as a theatre and comedy critic for 15 years. Clearly she has more front than Dolly Parton.
Scathing, intelligent, well-researched and hilariously funny
Review by Sharon Matthews 15th May 2009
After seeing Fiona Scott-Norman’s one-woman show The Needle and the Damage Done I now realise how dangerous it is to enter your local op-shop. Hidden among the piles of tatty jerseys and broken backed books lie … piles of vinyl records containing behind their cardboard covers a new and dangerous horror.
Scott-Norman is a woman on a mission, her job is to go boldly where we mere mortals dare not in search of the top ten of the worst records ever released. She admits to being a collector of "hard-core musical kitsch" and is a former DJ, writer and presenter of a Triple R radio show called Trash is my Life.
Dressed in an extremely fetching 60’s influenced frock she makes us feel right at home as we set off to discover The Worst Ever Released Album in the History of the World. To aid our search Scott-Norman has handily sorted the world’s worst into categories: Christian, sexist, "Men with Stuff" and egoistical radio presenters singing motivational songs (no, not Holmes, an Australian called John Laws).
This includes a sub-category, "Men with Dogs". I should warn you that a projected image of "The Hoff" naked except for two strategically placed cuddly puppies is not one that will leave your imagination easily. And of course prominent among Celebrity albums: "Vanity thy name is Russell Crowe." But of course he’s Australian really.
Scathing, intelligent, well-researched and hilariously funny this show has the audience laughing as much in embarrassment as humour as we move from "Songs your Parents had Sex To" to the live album version of the sex musical "Let My People Come". As a result of this last album I find myself blushing today at the sight of a chocolate éclair.
But this is comedy that has a sting in the tail. Don’t forget that the title of this show is taken from a famous Neil Young song about heroin addiction. With a friendly smile and a razor-sharp sense of comic timing, Scott-Norman exposes the racism, sexism and downright intolerance hidden in the lyrics of white American Christian music disguised as jaunty toe-tapping sing-alongs.
I won’t forget easily the song from sixties girl group the Crystals, whose featured song contained the lyrics "And then he hit me/ But that’s all right/Because he loves me". If I have misquoted the song please forgive me, it was difficult to hear through the rush of blood to my head.
Nor will I forget the two blonde fourteen year old American neo-Nazi twins who sing under the name Prussian Blue, who cover World War Two German marching songs because of course, far too much music is "written by Jews and Blacks".
Yet the irony is subtle and Scott-Norman is such a warmly compelling performer that the predominant feeling is that of enjoyment. The music is truly appalling but so well presented that we can almost forgive the inaptitude of the performers, except possibly Leonard Nimoy for his double album Outer Space/Inner Mind.
This show comes highly recommended, The Melbourne Age gave it four and half stars, and I would whole-heartedly agree. This is a unique and professional show, should it come to a town near you, don’t miss it!
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