Striking Gold Review

Striking Gold

Broadly speaking banning smoking in public bars was a good idea; I no longer come out of the local tavern smelling like an ash tray, and my eyes are no longer filled with soot. Yet cabaret may never be the same again – all those blue hints of light filtering through a moody haze of smoke may be gone forever… Striking Gold is cabaret for the post-tobacco, sanitized age. Morgan Carberry take us on a musical journey from California to New York, Moscow, Paris, London and Glasgow, showing us her impressive array of talents ranging from flute to fiddle, piano to tap-dancing along the way.  All this made your reviewer feel suitably boring and positively pathetic in any talent stakes by comparison. Yet despite this obvious musical flair, we are not presented with a well rounded and entertaining show. I often got the impression I was the dorky high school reporter, perched on the back row, reviewing a six form talent show. Striking Gold is also painfully cheesy (it is inexcusable to sing ‘Moon River’ to a flute in public, for example) and as a result the potentially cool moody atmosphere cabaret can commands was lost. As a result we have a cabaret, but not as we know it. The show would benefit immeasurably by being plonked into a different venue. There it could create a mood, subtly swooning in the background, rather than attempting to hold our undivided attention through a fairly two dimensional and wooden performance in a theatre.