GARY STARLIGHT SINGS THE BLUES
Orange Studio, 1063c Ferry Road, Christchurch
25/05/2017 - 27/05/2017
Production Details
Gary Starlight Jazzes up Blues Festival with Musical Comedy
Singer, songwriter, entertainer and massage therapist Gary Starlight is baring his soul at the Cavell Leitch NZ International Jazz & Blues Festival, with a three-night season of musical comedy show Gary Starlight Sings the Blues at Orange Studio at the end of May.
Gary Starlight is the alter ego of veteran improviser Jeff Clark, a member of The Court Jesters and performer in Scared Scriptless since 1996. Clark describes Gary Starlight as “a cross between John Rowles, Elvis, Michael Buble and Pepe Le Pew”.
In Gary Starlight Sings The Blues, Gary (accompanied by pianist Kris Finnerty and guitarist/bass player Brad Kang) recounts “the worst year of his life” and sings the songs that he wrote following each disastrous event. As Starlight, Clark creates a one-hour show filled with original songs out of thin air; inspired only by Gary’s interactions with the audience.
Starlight first appeared in 2012 as a wedding singer in The Court Jesters’ ensemble improvisation show The Early Early Late Show: the Reception. Falling in love with Gary’s “Enormous ego, complete lack of self-awareness and overwhelming love for his audience,” Clark knew Starlight was destined for great things. Since then, Gary’s solo career has gone from strength to strength: performing The Gary Starlight Christmas Special at The Court in 2013; and taking An Evening With Gary Starlight to the 2016 Nelson Fringe (where he won “Best of Fringe”) and the World Buskers Festival earlier this year.
“I’m thrilled to be taking Gary in a whole new direction,” says Clark. “Working with Kris and Brad has been great – they’re both incredible jazz and blues musicians so I’ve had an intensive crash course on the genre. Rather than just pop music, I get to explore a whole new style.”
Clark is thrilled that his comedic creation has been chosen for a music festival and is undaunted being surrounded by professional jazz and blues artists. “For Gary, at least, this is the artistic validation he’s been waiting for. For me as an improviser, I’m thrilled that a comedy act has a place in the Jazz and Blues Festival and feel confident I’m covered either way: if they don’t laugh, it’s music; if we stuff up, it’s comedy.”
GARY STARLIGHT SINGS THE BLUES
Orange Studio, 1063c Ferry Road, Christchurch
25, 26 & 27 May 2017
8pm (7:30pm pre-show audience interactions)
TICKETS: $25 through Eventfinda.co.nz
Part of the Cavell Leitch NZ International Jazz and Blues Festival
www.jazzbluesfestival.co.nz
REVIEW QUOTES FROM “THE GARY STARLIGHT CHRISTMAS SPECIAL” (The Court Theatre, 2013) “[Clark’s] years of experience as a Jester and talent for lightning-fast rhyming come to the fore in the very funny improvised numbers as he creates entire songs off the cuff. It’s an impressive feat – it’s not easy to belt out a mournful number about train driving or an acoustic guitar ballad about honey addiction at a moment’s notice, but he manages it without so much as dropping a rhyme all night.” – Cityscape
“Jeff Clark’s Starlight persona is inspired, and he accepts and incorporates the sometimes dubious ask-fors with absolute commitment…I hope to see Gary’s over-the-top musical stylings in other incarnations in the future.” – Theatreview
REVIEW QUOTES FROM “AN EVENING WITH GARY STARLIGHT” (Nelson Fringe Festival, 2016) “A masterclass of musical comedy… a fitting climax to a week of the Nelson Fringe Festival and a much deserved winner of the Best in Fringe award. It’s hard not to fall in love with Gary Starlight. It seems likely that this show will go on to conquer the far reaches of the universe. If you weren’t a Gary guy or Gary girl before you will be soon.” – The Nelson Mail
REVIEW QUOTES FROM “AN EVENING WITH GARY STARLIGHT” (World Buskers Festival, 2017) “The wit is crackling, the references many and varied, and the rapport that he establishes with the audience, thanks in part to a high number of in-jokes threaded throughout the performance, is heartwarming.
This is delightful, smart, laugh-out-loud musical comedy… For there to be any empty seats at all, would be a crime.” – What’s Up NZ
“If you ever see the name Gary Starlight, you’ve got to go” – James Daniels, The Breeze
Theatre , Musical ,
Impressive angsty improv
Review by Erin Harrington 26th May 2017
Schmoozy, sequined, cut-rate light entertainer Gary Starlight (improviser Jeff Clark) is here to expose the skeletons in his closet to his adoring Gary guys and Gary girls. While earlier shows (The Gary Starlight Christmas Special (2013) and An Evening With Gary Starlight (2016-7)) have focussed on Gary’s rise (and fall and rise) to glittering, middling pop stardom, this hour-long improvised show takes its cue from its context – the Cavell Leitch Jazz and Blues festival – to offer us an evening of mostly blues-inflected songs that chart the darkest and most vulnerable year of Gary’s life.
Gary is utterly, delightfully narcissistic and completely lacking in self-awareness, and his need for the audience’s love, participation and approval is a transparent way of reflecting his own importance back to him. This means that a confessional show about his worst year ever plays out as a sort of performative, transformative mea culpa, augmented by suitably maudlin projected images and faux-inspirational quotes, which can only end in his stunning return back to mild fame and average fortune. My angst is more ‘authentic’ and drenched in pathos than yours, and so on.
The series of improvised songs, each of which is based around a simple ask-for, has a clear and redemptive narrative arc. We learn about his fall from grace (a horrific incident involving Graham Norton and a candlestick), his self-exile to Antarctica, his attempt to find emotional clarity through a sledging job and time on his personal, cobbled-together swing set (cue exactly the sort of swinging jokes you might hope for), his subsequent expulsion from Scott Base, his traumatic hair loss and his eventual emotional epiphany.
One of the most impressive pieces of improvisation comes at the end of the show where Gary reaches into the ‘fedora of shame’ – a hat into which audience members have popped slips of papers outlining what makes them feel blue – and weaves them all into the ultimate blues number. There’s a great conceit whereby each slip is placed in front of the camera on a laptop and projected for all to see, although it’s a bit fiddly and the logistics need to be tightened up a little.
Clark is joined by talented jazz musicians Kris Finnerty (piano) and Brad Kang (guitar and bass), and the relationship is obviously a genuinely collaborative one. Their deft extemporisations in a variety of blues and jazz modalities is easily worth the price of entry – even if poor Brad occasionally gets a face-full from the smoke machine. Given the nature of the show and the intimate setting at Orange Studios, Clark also engages in a lot of crowd work, and he deals beautifully with regular interjections from a pair of drunken dirt bag dude-bros who perhaps represent the platonic ideal of bad improv audience members.
I have to admit that I have a real fondness for Jeff Clark’s creation, who has transcended his mock-wedding singer origins to become a fully-realised character in his own right. Gary is, perhaps understandably, a little more subdued in this show, and this has the effect of somewhat tamping the sense of raucous absurdity that has been present in previous iterations. This doesn’t get in the way of it being a successful and entertaining evening of improvised song and music, but it does nod towards the core dramaturgical challenge of the show.
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