Flying in my gondola

Renown South African singer  Belinda Davids , opened her Australian tribute tour,  The Greatest Love of All – The Whitney Houston Show , at the Athenaeum Theatre this weekend with a passion and talent which channeled the late great Whitney Houston so well that, if you were to close your eyes, you’d swear that the diva herself was belting out her award winning songs for her Melbourne fans in attendance. At the beginning of the concert, as the lights dimmed and images of Houston flashed onto a screen, the energy in the theatre was simply electric. The audience was extremely pumped and enthusiastic… maybe, too much even. I overheard someone say: “They do realise that the  real  Whitney Houston is not going to come out on stage, don’t they?” But, within minutes of the concert, the same person was as enchanted by  Davids ’ performance as the rest of us, and by the end she had moved many to tears.  Self-taught and blessed with a four octave vocal range,  Dav...

This review was published on ArtsHub.com.au . By Gordana Andjelic-Davila | Monday August 12 2013 Two men stumble into an apartment, seemingly inebriated. One is quite brash and opinionated, the other somewhat whiny and unable to manage his booze-induced condition. A dialogue, evolving between the two men, gives hints as to their identity and the era they live in; they are none other than Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and they are living in the Roaring Twenties, alternatively known as the Jazz Age. Amadeo Astorino’s  Jazz Angel  is a theatrical vignette focusing on the fascinating yet torrid relationship between Hemingway and Fitzgerald during their expat stint in France. The American literary icons are depicted as self-indulgent and somewhat confused by the direction of their careers. Even before the shoe dropped as to the identity of the two characters on stage, it was apparent that the brawny one was Ernest Hemingway, embodied by Lliam Amor, who w...