AUDIENCE CONVULSED BY FREBERG SHOW

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28889, 8 May 1959, Page 7

AUDIENCE CONVULSED BY FREBERG SHOW

A tall, plump-faced man with, a turned-down mouth, a stark quarter-inch crew-cut and severe horn-rimmed spectacles—Stan (“The Man") Freberg—last night convulsed a Christchurch audience with the strangest antics ever seen in this city. To the initiated he showed just what they had missed by

merely listening to his records, and to those who did not know

him he gave an insight into the delightful satire he applies to all that is worst in “pop” singing. Most of the numbers had been heard before from what Freberg called “that jim-dandy little group—the New Zealand Broadcasting Service,” but with his dead-pan delivery and agile impersonations of such celebrities as Elvis Presley, the Platters, the

Mitch Miller orchestra and Johnny (“Cry") Ray he brought new spontaneous life to each familiar recording. He went in to bat fervently for the State of Texas in his rendition of “The Yellow Rose of Texas,’’ co-operated with the N.Z.B.S. censoring buzzer in “Elderly Man River,” showed an amazing capacity for sudden changes of tone in his one-man dialogue with the “Abominable Snowman” and swooned damply and energetically over the maltreated microphone in his imitation of Johnny Ray. Freberg’s pale face is as mobile as it has to be for his lightning changes of role, but the most striking thing about him is his hands. In his famous parody of the “Dear John Letter” song—- “ John and Marcia”—his spiderlike. long-fingered hands, like those of a hula-dancer, tell the whole story. They have to—because there are only two words to the song—“ John” and “Marcia.” His conversation with Orville, the little green man from the moon—a hand puppet which he handles with all the dexterity of a professional ventriloquist—was one of the most popular acts in

i, the show. Both the puppet and ; Freberg gazed reverently sky-

wards as they sang the moonman’s national anthem—“ How High The Moon.” Freberg’s act never lags. In his last song, “Try,” he weaves, cries and crouches over the microphone until in a last frenzy of emotion he tears his shirt to shreds and the last forlorn wail finds both he and the microphone horizontal on the stage—exhausted. The best of Stan Freberg’s supporting cast were undoubtedly the Howard Morrison Quartet (who unneccessarlly assured the audience that they were Maoris, but explained that they would sing a “horri-fied” song) and the Australian Jazz Quartet whose leader’s performance on the vibraphone entitled him topbilling in his own right.