Adelaide Cabaret Festival – Catherine Alcorn: Go Your Own Way

A relative newcomer to the world of cabaret, Catherine Alcorn is clearly embracing the Adelaide Cabaret Festival scene, and simultaneously enchanting audiences with her new show: Go Your Own Way. This timely production, coincidently piggybacking the 2013 Fleetwood Mac World Tour, provides a gripping insight into the inner workings, relationships and turmoil of Fleetwood Mac through the eyes of the bands ‘other singer’, Christine McVie.

The beauty of Go Your Own Way is not solely its relevance, but equally its superb construction. Written by Diana Simmonds, this production weaves through the life of Christine McVie, highlights relevant aspects of the Fleetwood Mac story and punctuates all of this with an array of musical numbers, all written by Christine McVie.

Catherine Alcorn is perfect as Christine McVie. The intrinsic challenge of this cabaret show is to take the somewhat unassuming life of Christine McVie, songwriter, keyboardist and singer (but not star), and produce an awe-inspiring performance that truly highlights Alcorn’s musical and theatrical attributes. She nails it. From the first number, ‘Little Lies’, the audience is musically engaged. Highlights include a beautiful rendition of ‘Songbird’, ‘Don’t Stop’, and ‘Go Your Own Way’ which had the audience on their feet and singing along.

The three-piece band, led by Isaac Hayward, is polished and provides energetic accompaniment. The occasional interaction with the backing vocalist gave the impression that this was not purely a solo show, but rather a well rehearsed ensemble.

There were a few shaky moments early on, but the production quickly built momentum and, from there, never looked back. The early breaking of the fourth wall was awkward but, in the end, left audiences feeling that they truly knew, understood, and liked Christine McVie.

As Stevie Nicks says “Christine wrote most of the hits – she was the major pop songwriter, not Lindsey or me”. Go Your Own Way is a celebration of Christine McVie’s life and success, and provides a comical and voyeuristic insight into the workings of Fleetwood Mac.