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By Renee Gerlich, NZ Festival 2014

Last week I saw Power Plant's sound and light expo at the Botanic Gardens, and Brel: Words and Music at the James Cabaret. It surprised me which one turned out to be the punchier sound and light show, and all the energy got me thinking of old Len Lye.

Lye is of course famous in Wellington for making the harbourside Water Whirler that goes wiggly-splash on the hour.

Lye must have had a penny-drop moment one day at his Wellington art school back in the twenties. Perhaps he was poring over reproductions of John Constable's cumulus clouds, or Turner's turbulent storms at sea. They would have been black and white, but seeing the oil layered thick on the canvas with its ageing patina, perhaps Lye thought: why multiply entities? To express the movements of an energetic world, where energy is sound and light, why not make your art from just those elements? That way, nothing is extraneous and there is no intimation. Such art would burst like a wave and glide like clouds, waggle, wallop and play, shimmy with energy that waxes and wanes. So Lye made A Flip and Two Twisters, Fire Bush, Universe, and of course Water Whirler. Works elemental as the world, as sensual and goofy as its people.

On Saturday while wandering through Power Plant's sound and light expo at the Botanic Gardens, I started wondering what Lye, or even a local successor, might have done with Power Plant's commission. With the cable car moving through the tunnel, the Gardens' sloping paths and sleeping birds, the trees of course, the soundshell, the glow-worms and the duckpond. I wondered this because for a show that was technically and aesthetically interesting, it was creatively underwhelming. I felt I would have enjoyed it more if I was a film producer or perhaps a bar owner scouting for some snazzy FX; or a small child hearing the crunch of twigs and stones underfoot walking after dark through a spectacle.

There were some beautiful installations. The row of benches lowlit under lampshades, the trees glowing green and purple to the warm wind sound of a horn, the branches skitting with fireflies, and fire popping from lanterns in the duckpond. Yet there was relief on escaping to the park with just breeze and starlit trees ('those poor trees', said my companion), admittedly against strict instructions from security not to “go off on your own little adventures”. Perhaps the neon and repetitive clanging of adjacent installations was a bit of an assault at times; or perhaps we are just getting old.

I didn't feel old the night I took my mother to see Brel at the James Cabaret. We wanted to sit up on the mezzanine, but it had been privately booked; so we just glimpsed the seated crowd from the top of the stairs before finding some seats among them. Constable or Turner could have painted the view down from the mezannine. A puffy cloud of white, a haze of seafoam. My mother pointed out that if Brel were still alive he'd be 84, just like my Dutch grandmother. Recalling the crowds at previous shows, we wondered for what audience these Festival events are actually intended.

I settled into my seat feeling young, and without expectations for what was essentially to be a covers show. We wondered before the opening act about the choice of Brel – why him? Why Brel in 2014 in Wellington with Jon Toogood? Curious.

Then out he burst, speak of the devil. With Julia Deans, Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Tama Waipara and a startling account of the day monsieur Lucifer (speak of him too) came to Earth. According to the devil's report everything is in order:

                the mighty extort their dollars
                From countries that are poor...
                Ca va!
                And man has seen so much of it
                That his eyes have become grey
                Ca va, hey hey!

The subject matter is painfully pertinent. Immediately too, I feel corrected as it seems that this is not a 'covers show'. Far from intimation, that biting, bitter sarcasm belongs unquestionably to Julia Deans. In the group's rendition of Carousel too, the thrilling, dark cackle is unmistakably Jon Toogood's. Each performer claims these songs for themselves, and so spotlights another aspect of Brel, allowing us to see and know him better.

It helps that Tama Waipara's French is immaculate singing Ces Gens-La, as is Jennifer Ward-Lealand's Flemish in Mijn Vlakke Land. This song of the flat lands had to be sung in Flemish, so as not to disappoint my mother, and it was infallible. Ward-Lealand's perfectionism is also clear in her rendition of Ne Me Quitte Pas.

When not singing, she is a femme fatale poised long-legged in a little black dress on the centre stage chaise longue. Deans takes a swig from the adjacent mini-bar, Toogood drags his cigarette. The cigarettes, as well as the dry ice wafting in the blue light are essential: Brel could smoke 100 cigarettes a day, apparently. He does look pretty suave doing so in the black and white photo hung on the red velveteen back wall, beside the drummer's cymbals and the big cello making those soft, sultry sounds.

This wholehearted interpretation, with its polished French and Flemmish and sexy set was met with a lukewarm reception. Perhaps, a bit like me at the Gardens, the audience just felt a bit too stiff in the joints for a cheering applause. Yet I thought that was a shame, and that Brel deserved at least my mother's solitary standing ovation. Where Power Plant's show seemed more a technician's tribute, Brel was a heartfelt work of integrated stories, sound and light, sensuality and setting. It did burst and glide, cackle, glower and play, and it simmered with energy that thrillingly waxed before it softly waned.