Cabaret - The Carpenters From Kempsey - Will & Toby's Supper Club
Darren and Sharon Carpenter are a couple of country hicks from Kempsey, NSW and last week they packed the crowds in to Will And Toby’s Supper Club for their Carpenters tribute show. We laughed, some of us cringed at the dagginess of it all – but in a good way – and some of us danced up a storm at the bar. But one thing was for certain, everyone loved it and had an absolute ball!
Everyone knows the tragic story behind The Carpenters. A brother and sister group, Richard and Karen, they had a string of hits from the late sixties through to the early eighties. They were also the subject of more than a few made-for-TV movies, due to Karen’s death in 1983 after struggling for years with anorexia. They are one of those groups that your parents may have listened to and that you always secretly liked as well. You know all the songs, and may have even sung along to the records or stolen them for your own private concerts in your room.
This show pays homage to their hits – Superstar, Ticket To Ride, Yesterday Once More, Rainy Days And Mondays, Calling Occupants, Close to You, Goodbye To Love, Only Yesterday, We’ve Only Just Begun – all of them were fun and had the crowd fully engaged. The winners of the night though had to be Jambalaya, which brought huge grins to everyone’s faces around me, closely followed by Top Of The World and Please Mr Postman. Sharon invited the room to sing along for these songs and they did – at the top of their voices!
Sharon and Darren themselves were terrific – bantering in between songs, sounding like they’d just walked off the set of Kath & Kim. They also fought, the only way twins born six months apart can do! Darren called Sharon a slut and talked about her exploits in the back of a ute at the County Fair and she called him a poof, revealing her knowledge of his “special friend”. There were also some spectacularly bad segues to songs but that only added to the charm of the show.
The worst thing about this show was that it only ran for a little over sixty mins and that certainly wasn’t nearly enough for most of us, who had clearly settled into our roles for the night as adoring fans of one of the daggiest groups in history.
The Carpenters from Kempsey only did two nights at Will & Toby’s as part of the Mardi Gras Festival unfortunately, but with Will & Toby’s recently launching their Cabaret On Sundays series, hopefully they’ll be back soon!
Check out all things Mardi Gras at our Mardi Gras All About page.
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