Jane Keller is two years short of getting a Gold Card and her entertaining cabaret Yep, Still Got It! is about her recent attempts to branch out into a new career as a Life Coach. 

Her original intention was to create a cabaret (her forte) about getting old and how women of a certain age cope with it. While there is humour to be found in nearly everything, the people she comes across in her life coaching (she did a course on the internet) are also a gold mine for laughter.

The prospectors Jane Keller, Sandy Brewer and Michael Nicholas Williams have mined for comical musical nuggets and come up with 20-odd songs by the likes of Stephen Schwartz, Victoria Wood, Mel Brooks and Dillie Keane of Fascinating Aida.

They are songs you may remember laughing at in the theatre or cabaret but you don’t take them away with you to sing in the shower. The lyrics, the rhymes and the comic truths and the timing are the thing and the intimacy of a cabaret or small theatre, with a comic singer/actress in command, is their best setting.

The pitfalls of being a Life Coach are amusingly illustrated in most of these deftly chosen comic songs which she sings with characteristic brio. Most of her subjects are women but there’s Rupert, her first male client, and there’s Richard “who never did that before.”

A Life Coach seems to be your latter day personal agony aunt who has to cope with problems like Freda’s who is on “fire/with desire/I could handle half the tenors in a male voice choir” while her Barry just wants to watch the telly.

There are one or two songs that make the show seem momentarily like an old-fashioned revue because they are full of pathos (If I Have to Live Alone) but it’s the Cole Porter-like innuendo and one or two songs that don’t bother with innuendo that reign supreme.

Jane Keller is supported by Michael Nicholas Williams on piano and together they provide ninety minutes of sleek, sophisticated entertainment.

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Those who are approaching the retiring age are faced with many a question. Not only, “Do I want to retire?” but, more pertinent, “Can I afford to retire?” 

In Yep, Still Got It, Jane Keller is faced with this modern dilemma. 

She discovers the thing to do is to consult with a life coach, figure out ones personal statement, fit a career around what you like to do and there you have it…. Or maybe not.

After a few dubious job trials, she finally finds her ‘encore career’ as a ‘career coach’ herself.

Jane Keller is a wonderful storyteller-singer, sharing her encounters with the low self-esteemed, the obsessed, the overweight, the worn out, the shy, the menopausal, the delusional, the under or over sexed, and the lonely, with wit, frank humour, and poignant moments.

The linking dialogue bubbles along effortlessly as she – Jane, the life coach – introduces the audience to her ‘clients’ and sings an eclectic collection of songs portraying them through both her physicality and her character-filled voice.

The staging is uncomplicated with draped red curtains framing the backdrop. The few chairs and the on-stage piano (adroitly played by Michael Nicholas Williams) are put to good use during the life coaching sessions; the lighting design by Deb McGuire is nicely unobtrusive and all that is needed because everything is told through the dialogue and the fabulous song lyrics – all of which are delivered with expert clarity of diction.

With a superb team of collaborators – Michael Nicholas Williams (pianist /composer /arranger), Alan Palmer (director) and Sandy Brewer (co writer) – Yep, Still Got It has something for everyone as the appreciative audience shows through their snorts of laughter, mesmerised stillness and huge applause and cheers. 

Jane has a talent for finding lesser known repertoire and many of the songs which are full stories in themselves have us in fits at the comical delivery and the brilliant lyrics.

However within the laughter I hear a real sadness in the characters and just when I’m wondering if we are starting to laugh at the expense of others misfortune, Jane dials it right back and performs the most beautiful medley of heartfelt pieces including ‘If I have to live alone’ by Stephen Schwartz and ‘Out of Practise’ by Dillie Keane.

This brings the whole evening around to the very real fact that Yep, Jane Keller still has it and there is a lot more of her own ‘encore career’ to come I’m sure.

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