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Review: A Nightmare on Baden Street at Fremantle Prison

A Nightmare on Baden Street at Fremantle Prison
Saturday, October 19, 2024

It is spooky season, and the ghouls, ghosts, and goblins of award-winning local collective The Baden Street Singers presented a Halloween-themed performance at Fremantle Prison, one of the genuinely spookiest locations in the entire metro area.

When thinking acapella barbershop and choir, one did not generally associate those with hard time historical incarceration, but the troupe had made a fantastic choice of venue for A Nightmare on Baden Street, which immediately made obvious sense, with any more than a moment’s thought.

Fremantle Prison’s four-storey internal ceiling is not much shorter than most concert halls, and, with the performers perfectly placed to project their voices down the wide internal corridors, far beyond where those watching were seated, the acoustics produced were stunning.

Staged in a corner of the New Division prison block, the singers on the second-floor walkways against the cells, the audience on the ground level below, and the conductor behind yet also above, the performance could best be described as an inverted in the round, with the artists and viewers switched from their regular, expected positions.

‘Nightmare’ contained an eclectic, horror-adjacent playlist, introduced by an occasional MC giving their best Vincent Price. The players were attired as a menagerie of monsters, a real-life third act, Cabin in the Woods. From zombies, vampires, witches, and even Frankenstein with bride, placing the costume references was at times almost as entertaining as the songs themselves.

These aural selections encompassed mainstream familiars, such as Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, some slightly forgotten favourites—Tom Waits, for one—all the way to a couple of surprisingly deep cuts, with all the expected musical theatricality one could shake a jazz hand at.

From the literal wall of sound as the bridge swelled during Radiohead’s Creep to the gradual dropping away of voices to a solo ending for Wuthering Heights, almost pin drop perfect, every song was a fabulous exhibition of choral arrangement and harmony across the vocal range. It was spine-chilling in the most positive of ways.

A Nightmare on Baden Street literally flew by, with one of the few regrets that it was not longer nor contained space for a well-deserved encore. The audience’s desire to sing along was undeniable, while knowing any such interjection could throw the wider show off kilter.

Overall, it was an unabashed delight—rollicking, foot-tapping, and highly entertaining.

PAUL MEEK

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