Monique Brumby
Monique Brumby [ MySpace ] @ The Spiegeltent
10:00pm, Sun 20 Feb 2011
As regular (ha!) readers may be aware, I’m usually up for anything come Fringe time… I just have to be enticed, whether by word-of-mouth or (more often than not) a nicely-written précis in the Fringe Guide. And there’s one phrase that drew me to Monique Brumby – a storyteller considered ahead of her time. On the basis of that line, with no knowledge of her musical style whatsoever, I slotted her into The Schedule.
But when it was time to wander towards the Spiegeltent for the show, I was torn – because Marcel Lucont’s Chat Show was scheduled to feature Stevl Shefn and Fatima… and I felt a monumental longing for that show event. But the FringeTIX ticket in my hand weighed heavy with obligation, so I joined the SpiegelQueue instead of heading off to the TuxCat.
I was somewhat surprised at the truncated length of the queue when I arrived; next to the flood of Cantina patrons leaving the Garden, those dutifully in line for Monique Brumby looked comparatively lonely. A camera crew scoped the line, plucked out the girl standing next to me: what have you seen so far at the Fringe? what do you want to see? isn’t the Fringe/Garden awesome? My elitist hackles raised, I stepped out of the camera’s eye-line. Chatting with the girl afterwards, though, was a delight: she was an avid Fringe-goer, too, and – more importantly – knew of Ms Brumby, and tried to assuage my growing fears that I’d made the wrong decision this evening.
Once inside, with a fantastic seat secured, I turned around to discover that the crowd had filled out nicely; the Spiegeltent, whilst not packed, was certainly well populated. And when Brumby and her band – Sophie(?) on accompanying guitar, Nik on (wonderfully) sloppy bass – appeared, it was to much applause.
Now, Brumby’s banter is pleasant and friendly – there’s a few callbacks to the lack-of-drummer (“Shane didn’t have time to set up… so he’s out back, getting drunk”). And she’s got a great range to her voice, and an intriguing gravelly texture… but this performance just didn’t do it for me.
At all.
There were a bunch of people in the Spiegeltent that loved this show, and were utterly enraptured by every song they played – but I wasn’t one of them. I found her country-and-folk-tinged original material to be unengaging (where was the storytelling I was expecting?), and her covers left a lot to be desired; Luka wasn’t given enough air for its delicacy and poignancy to take hold, and Boys Don’t Cry was just plain ordinary – over-paced and under-emotive.
I left the Spiegeltent feeling really, really negative about this performance – which is why I’m glad to be writing this with over four months’ hindsight (since time seems to temper my negativity somewhat). Brumby and her cohorts are obviously great musicians, and their more uptempo tracks (like As Sweet As You Are) worked really well within the bounds of the trio onstage. But it was clearly the wrong gig at the wrong time for me; my head was at the Tuxedo Cat, and their music wasn’t enough to entice my thoughts back to my physical location. I guess it was a unique experience – and, after all, that’s really the point of all this Fringery – but it wasn’t really one that I’ll cherish.