An Evening With Amanda Palmer

AMANDA PALMER is a major American chanteuse. Her songs are like a cross between Tom Lehrer and Kurt Weill. The emphasis, however, is on the lyrics, which (by her own admission) are ‘morose’ – endlessly ‘morose’.

She performed for over 2.5hrs to a devoted audience, mostly women, some of whom (a little annoying at times) sang along with her. I was a novice, and frankly, I started to become less interested in the songs but more in what she had to say about recent experiences, including her own artistic freedom as well as being a new mother.

At the end of the show I overheard a comment from a young female fan, ‘She wasn’t as angry as before’. It would seem that her strong appeal is partly due to a kind of collective affirmation of female anger – but perhaps this is changing.

In retrospect, I started to think that what one had observed was an artist in transition, a thirty-something song-poetess who is re-inventing herself. An example of this was her performance of Harry Chapin’s ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’, essentially inspired by being a new mother. For someone who says she’s anti-sentimental, this, however, was a very sentimental version.

My favourite moment was the encore, in which she sang ‘off mic’; an extraordinary thing to do, with the non-amplified natural voice having the effect that the audience collectively leant forward. The only other major music artist I have seen do this was Barbara Cook. A sign of a truly exceptional theatre artist.

Thank you.

Tony Knight

Photographer: Kyle Cassidy.

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