RocKwiz Salutes Eurovision

The masked audience roared as Brian Nankervis took to the stage to begin the proceedings, first with a quick-fire round of questions to six selected audience members, four of whom would become the panel for the remainder of the evening. They weren’t random: they knew their stuff, answering their questions rapidly, correctly – and often in full song or (River)dance. And so, with the remainder of the audience applauding loudly, Lynne, Con, Simone and Max were seated behind their RocKwiz desks.

Julia Zemiro arrived in a glistening gold dress with a huge tiara, a Eurovision Statue of Liberty, and in the RocKwiz way, asked each team member for their first concert (‘The Wiggles’ said year 10 Max, though quickly added ‘Kate Miller-Heidke’). Then came the team captains: first up was Montaigne, this year’s Australian Eurovision entry. The other captain, none other than the shiny-blue suited Alan Cumming, the current Artistic Director of this year’s Cabaret Festival (the host Zemiro having that role for the last time the festival took place in 2019). Halfway through the evening, Montaigne gave up her captaincy for Adelaide-favourite Hans, bringing his usual brash persona to the panel.

The questions were their usual mixture of obscure and clue-laden (‘which Icelandic country has never won…?’) and the panel were eager to show their knowledge, sometimes taking it far too seriously. ‘You know there’s no prize?’ Zemiro reminded the players.

Another question had the panel exploring the triggers in Eurovision party games – drink when the wind machine is first used, or an item of clothing is removed to reveal a different costume, or one of the hosts says ‘United Kingdom, null points’. Another tangent asked which perfomers didn’t enjoy the songs they had to sing (quite a lot of them, it seems). The audience cheered and laughed at every word from this knowledgeable panel and their captains.

The quiz is only part of the show: whilst Zemiro had hosted Eurovision for Australia for several years, so had her stories to share, the others on the panel had their own Eurovision stories from attending previous competitions. Cumming told us how he wrote a spoof Eurovision song ‘Pif, Paf, Pof’ for a TV sitcom, that has since became part of a campaign to be the first Scottish entry to Eurovision once it has independence from the UK.

The music was outstanding. Montaigne gave a powerful delivery of her Eurovision song ‘Technicolour’ and Cumming had every one of us smiling and clapping along to a brilliant rendition of Cabaret’s ‘Mein Herr’. Olympia, the talented guitarist from the band, stepped in at short notice to give a stunning performance of ‘Sound of Silence’, Australia’s runner-up song from 2016 from Dami Im (who was the wrong side of the border with recent travel restrictions). The Clio Renner-directed EuroWiz Orkestra was no less a star in providing superb sound from the tight-knit fivesome on brass, guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards. The finale performance of ‘Waterloo’ by the team captains was fantastic and had us all singing with them: Hans and Cumming nailed the ABBA moves, and even Montaigne momentarily forgetting the words could not detract from the moment: all of us in the auditorium sang for her, laughing with her.

And this was the success of the show: everyone in that theatre was enjoying themselves, letting go of what was happening outside, forgiving mistakes with tremendous laughter, forgetting we were masked up, and singing along, full of joy. Even in this large space, it felt intimate. RocKwiz gave us plenty of those wonderful, shared moments. Removing our masks outside revealed a smile on every one of our faces.

Mark Wickett

Photographer: Claudio Raschella

Read more Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2021 reviews