Clap Hands, Here Comes Anna!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 8

Clap Hands, Here Comes Anna!

N our left we have that illustrious diva, Miss Anna Russell, the Divina Commedia of the contemporary stage. Despite (or because of) her Gainsborough manner, Miss Russell has flattened audiences from stages all over the world--and has fallen flat on stages all over the world likewise. But Miss Russell never gets in a flap (or flop) over this. Happily, gaily, she bursts the balloons of other people’s artistic pretensions, all over the place, with only a delicate shudder when they try to pin a libel label on her, Miss Russell is guaranteed pneumatic and quite indestructible. Anna is scheduled to make her initial impact on a New Zealand _ audience (under the auspices of the NZBS) at Auckland on March 31. Informed sources now advise us that she qualifies her statement "I’d be a Red-Hot Momma" with " .. . if I didn’t Have Those Varicose Veins." It is, however, felt that hurricane warnings are still in order since Miss Russell is to hit all four main centres in the course of her tour. Wellington concert-goers should be prepared for high turbulence on April 2, Dunedin will get it on April 5, and Christchurch on April 12. Not that Anna- though she is a big girl-invariably knocks °em down by force. At times she displays the ruthless, scalpel-sharp technique of the well-trained surgeon. Audiences not pinioned to their concert-hall seats while Miss Russell dissects them, or rendered helpless in the aisles with laughter, can eavesdrop on operations by radio from all YA stations at 8.0 p.m. on the evening of each concert. As Anna Russell’s programmes resemble the tenet of Anaxagoras (no relation) that "all is chaos" we shall note here just a few of the items she is likely to give out with. There is, for example, that song of the neo-Tchekhovians (picked up while snooping behind the Iron Curtain), "Da, Nyet, Da, Nyet"; and the unforgettable, unforgotten. "Schlumpf." There are the celebrated and unsolicited introductions to the French Aft Song in "Je n’ai pas La Plume de ma Tante" and to the contemporary tone-deaf school in "My Heart is Red"; and Miss Russell puts the full force of her towering personality into the melodic "Schreechenrauf." Besides these revelations we are to hear the "Guide to Concert Audiences," the Prologue to that grand old opera La Donna Buftona, "How to write Your Own G. and S. Opera," and the gen. on Siegfried and his aunts in Miss R.’s analysis of The Ring. It is confidently expected, too, that the Wellington audience will be knocked cold by her "Death Scene from the opera Anaemia,’ though the reaction may be mild compared with Sassenach Christchurch’s reception of "Music Appreciation"-a short talk which she will illustrate (with typical hardihood) on the bagpipes.