Kreveld, an acting and musical theatre grad of Brunswick’s Showfit, felt that Winehouse’s spin on events was an important part of the narrative that had been overlooked in other works exploring Winehouse’s life and death. “You never really got her side of things,” Kreveld says. “Even in her interviews, she still didn’t really give that much away. This is why I think my musical is unique – all of the dialogue in the show is actually pulled from interviews with her and lyrics.”
Kreveld doesn’t purport to be a dead spit of Winehouse for her one-woman show, but she gives it a bloody good nudge – right down to the pinup girl tattoo on her arm and beehive (which is a wig for this run, although she’s dyed her hair and built a beehive out of stockings before). Naturally, Kreveld’s an alto too, like Winehouse, rocking a lower range and mimicking her vocal stylings to a tee. Plus, she has the steel to tackle the more troubling aspects of Winehouse’s life, like bulimia and addiction.
“Her life was tragic and that comes through in the show,” Kreveld explains. “For instance, I depict her Grammy performance where she said that nothing felt as good as being high. Not even the Grammys could compete, even though she still gave a slick, incredible performance. I don’t shy away from any of that.”
Kreveld packs a lot in to Frankly Winehouse, which has now enjoyed sell-out seasons during Perth’s Fringeworld and Melbourne’s Fringe Festival. Audiences can expect 13 of Winehouse’s songs and covers, as well as anecdotes that Kreveld has collected from meticulous research in preparation for the show. All of which means that Kreveld now has encyclopaedic knowledge when it comes to Winehouse’s life – including the fact that Winehouse wanted to do musical theatre, like Kreveld, before jazz.
Kreveld is also keen to rectify some misconceptions about Winehouse in the show. “We were so used to just seeing her as this crazy party girl, wandering down the street looking beaten and bloodied,” she says. “But she was so much more than what the media portrayed. She wasn’t just a crazy party animal – she was funny too and witty and self-deprecating – so the show is a holistic portrait. She was a real person, not just a messy beehive wandering the streets of Camden drunk. And who more recently has surpassed her musically or vocally? Her musical legacy is phenomenal.”
It’s unsurprising that Kreveld has developed a shrine to Winehouse in the form of her musical – Winehouse hit her hard from the outset. “I can still remember the first Amy song that I ever heard,” Kreveld says. “It was Rehaband I was in a shopping centre – I assumed that she was a black woman, as I think everyone did before they found out about her. I liked her voice and she had a different sound, like I did.” It didn’t take long after that until Kreveld was playing Winehouse’s stellar first albums, 2003’s Frank and her 2006 release Back to Black, on high repeat. Winehouse’s approach to life’s vagaries touched a chord with Kreveld. “Hearing songs about heartbreak and the witty way she approached her lyrics made me love her all the more.” Sadly, she remembers too exactly where she was when the news that Winehouse had passed away broke. “It was a Sunday, and I was very hungover and stayed in bed for a day in a forlorn state listening to her albums.”
Now at the fifth anniversary of Winehouse’s death, it’s an opportunity not only to celebrate her music, but reflect on her demise. Let’s face it, watching Amy Winehouse unravel was an international past time for the media and members of the pap-reading public – and you can’t entirely blame them: revelling in the Winehouse shambles was like rubber-necking at a car-accident. Kreveld has some views about the morbid fascination.
“Part of it stems from the obsession with celebrity. Amy didn’t behave in the way that was expected, she spoke out and played up to the paparazzi. People liked the freak show that they perceived to be Amy Winehouse. I think the tragedy is that she was actually just like any other normal girl who found herself being famous as opposed to a pop star who sought it out. She was discovered when she was 15, so she never even had time to grow up outside of the limelight. Fame found her – she wasn’t looking for it and just wanted to be left alone. Apparently, she sometimes put flour on her nose before leaving the house so the paps would think that she’d been snorting – she just didn’t give a shit, ever.”
BY GEM DOOW
