By Ernest Kearney — At first Clive Kennedy, with his distinctly patrician profile and aristocratic airs, seems out of place on the stage at the Complex as he suavely reminisces about a childhood divided between his family’s London manor and their farm in South Africa.
It seems more appropriate that he should be secreted away in a suite in Monaco, plotting an elaborate jewel heist with David Niven, rather than plucking the guitar he embraces as he recounts tales of lost loves and encounters with Dali; all the while drawing mementos from his past out of the old brown travelling case sitting on a stool next to him. It is a piece of Revelation luggage from the legendary line his grandfather designed, and from which his presentation draws its name.
Kennedy stands on a single stage, but occupies two striking incongruous realities; the one is an urbane and dapper doppelganger of Noel Coward, who quips, “My memory is going. The only thing I can seem to remember is that my memory is going.” And the other is “the International Cowboy,” Kennedy’s alter ego seemingly channeling the astral spirit of Hank William.
Kennedy has sailed the tumultuous headwaters of the international music scene for some decades, starting from his first band the Dead Sea Fruits and riding the surging thunderpeal of that industry into his chosen safe harbor of country music.
And make no mistake, Kennedy before an audience is the “master and commander,” for between the jolly japes of this natural raconteur are melodic woven narratives with strains shifting from the poetic to the satirical; from a lament for the transient fame of the terrazzo stars on the walk of fame to the tuneful taunting of the blatantly corrupt former sheriff Lee Baca.
Kennedy’s performance and his music are indeed a revelation, and one can’t help feeling they are in the presence of a bona fide legend that somehow, in the cruel machinations of the universe, has been unjustly overlooked.
A PLATINUM MEDAL
Revelation!
Playing during Hollywood Fringe Festival 2022
AT
Venue
The Complex Theatre and Studios
6476 Santa Monica Blvd
Schedule
FINAL PERFORMANCE
Thursday June 23 2022, 7:00 PM
For Additional Information and Tickets Go To:
www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/7521
Learn More at Clivekennedy.com
PLEASE NOTE: HFF & The Complex Theater require either:
1) Proof of COVID Vaccination
Or…
2) A negative COVID Test within the last 72hrs (home tests not accepted)
Masks are encouraged.
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