Hell, Man is witty, warm and wonderful.

By Rod Biss, writing for

In the battle of the sexes we men have just been wickedly out-womanoeuvred. And yes, you’ll agree that that is the right word when I tell you that Helen Medlyn, who we all think of as the most female of singers, the perfect operatic Carmen, the innovative cabaret explorer, the mezzo who Gustav Mahler would have written symphonies for if she’d been alive at the time, yes that Helen Medlyn, has dressed up as a man, and a very dashing man at that, and she/he has sung all those songs which we sing to ourselves, which reveal our innermost thoughts, which tell how we love women, why we love women, how desperate we are without them and how we make plans, which always seem to go wrong, to trap them into our lives.

If you’re a man and worry about these things you might therefore think it’s a terrible show, but the real truth is it’s wonderful, witty, warm and as far as the battle of the sexes is concerned is not actually war-mongering at all.

“Hell Man” is the latest, and sadly they say the last, in a long series of two woman shows put together and performed by Penny Dodd on the piano with Medlyn singing, acting, dancing, providing the spoken links between items and just occasionally, reciting. The shows have explored every sort of vocal repertoire and themed it together with beautiful ingenuity. In this last show Ms Medlyn has poured herself into a dinner jacket and black tie and they have found more than two dozen songs that tell the story from a man’s point of view.

Many of the songs are from Broadway and Hollywood written in that vintage period mid-last century; you’ll hear songs like the Frank Sinatra number Come Fly with Me, Irving Berlin’s My Defences are Down and My Time of Day from Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls. There are songs that in Penny Dodd’s poised arrangements move slightly away from jazz or pop and sound almost unexpectedly classical – I’m thinking of Lennon and McCartney’s Norwegian Mood and Bob Dylan’s Emotionally Yours. It’s not that Dodd ever sounds academic; it’s her ability to make us hear the songs in a new light that reveals their beauty, provides a perfect backing for Medlyn’s voice and at the same time ties together what could seem a strange mix of material into a coherent show.

Tucked between Sondheim’s Good Thing Going and James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James was Schumann’s Ich Grolle Nicht and to make sure that we saw the dark, grumbling point of it Medlyn read a translation of Heine’s poem before she sang the song. When she sang Handel’s Caro Sposa it made me think how perfectly a baroque opera in modern guise might respond to the Dodd/Medlyn treatment in a setting just like this. It was a light-hearted show with cynical pieces such as Jeremy Nicholas’s I can’t quite remember her name and Tom Lehrer’s Masochism Tango. And there was Billy Collins’ wise and witty poem Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes.

The all-important lighting was by Vera Thomas and the design, as much black and red as you would expect was by Roger Joyce.

It was a non-stop show, both Dodd and Medlyn on-stage without a microphone the whole time. Of course we wanted encores, first was an x-rated song in an xx-rated performance of Handyman by Ethel Waters. Then as a final encore Helen sang Hoagy Carmichael’s sensuous, dream-like, late-night song, The Nearness of You and her hushed voice floating over the gently flowing chords of Penny Dodd’s piano gave the whole show away; Helen actually does love us all and even when she was pretending to be a man it was just so that we’d end the wonderful evening a little bit wiser and a great deal happier. Sometimes there are shows when everything seems so apt, the right song at the right moment in the right setting; this is one of those shows, don’t miss it.

Hell, Man starring Helen Medlyn and Penny Dodd, on at the Herald Theatre until August 19.

Click here to contact Helen, Penny, and the team at HellHQ.

Thursday 9 August 2007