Popular cabaret performer Michael Griffiths is back in town this weekend with his new show ‘Adolescent’.
Griffiths new show was inspired by his 40th birthday when he realised he wasn’t ready to stop being an adolescent yet.
In the show Griffiths talks about falling in love, having an identity crisis when he discovered he wasn’t conceived the way he though he was, and his life as part of the cast of a big touring jukebox musical.
Through the show he performs songs he knows all too well from Jersey Boys, Priscilla and lots of his first love, 80s pop.
Adolescent is self deprecating hour of humour, song and personal revelation and it won the Best Cabaret Adelaide Fringe Weekly Award 2015. If you liked Michael’s previous shows about Madonna and Annie Lennox, don’t miss this show where he talks about his own life experiences.
Speaking to OUTinPerth Griffiths shares that his love of ’80s music is what sparked the idea for a show about that takes him back to his teenage years.
“The first song which made me think that I could do a show about adolescence was ‘Karma Chameleon’ by Culture Club. I was just doodling at the piano and thought ‘this is fun’ and then decided that I wanted to so a show with ’80s songs.”
Griffith’s said turning 40 last year also had a big effect on the way he thought about himself.
“I turned 40 last year and when you turn 40 and you kind of think that you’re supposed to be a grown up and I just felt like I hadn’t grown up yet. The show is all about how I thought I’d feel different as I got older, I thought I’d feel like I had it together, and I don’t. I still love the songs that I grew up with.”
In his teenage years Griffiths said the band that got his attention was Norwegian trio ‘A-ha’.
“A-ha was my first crush, ‘Take on Me’ was a bit of a watershed moment, just falling in love with pop music and that’s a very special song. They were so cute and I liked the keyboard player Mags, the broody sandy blonde. I thought he was the best thing I’d every scene and I hadn’t even figured out that I was gay yet – I just knew I liked him.” Griffiths said.
Griffiths confesses that his love of the band went far beyond buying their records and watching their videos.
“A girlfriend and I, when we were in year seven, went to a leather goods store and used to buy little pieces of leather and then wide them together to create little leather wrist bands like [lead singer] Morten Harket would wear. We were entrepreneurs, we sold leather straps.”
Griffiths recently shared his experience of discovering that he was donor conceived for a documentary that aired on ABC-TV. The singer said when he discovered that his birth wasn’t what he’d always thought it was, he had quite an adolescent reaction.
‘Discovering as a twenty eight year old, that I was donor conceived I responded with classic adolescent petulance and just got really angry, and really huffy and I just didn’t talk to anyone. I just let it brood.
“But that’s not how we’re supposed to deal with problems as adults, we’re supposed to talk about things, you’re supposed to face them and be an adult, and that is everything I wasn’t.”
Griffiths said he talks about the experience in the show, but uses a good deal of humour. “There’s a little bit of gentleness and melancholy, it creates a quiet moment in the show, because it’s very personal.”
‘Adolecent’ starring Michael Griffiths has already sold out it’s opening night show, limited tickets are available for Friday and Saturday’s shows.
Graeme Watson
