Bette MacDonald is still the Queen of Comedy.

By Stephen Pederson - The Halifax Herald Limited.

Her show with Symphony Nova Scotia in the Maritime Pops Series in the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium on Friday night breathed fresh air into a series that, while always presenting a valuable opportunity to showcase Maritime traditional musicians and singer-songwriters, had gotten itself into a bit of a rut.

MacDonald created an interactive show in which the symphony and its new conductor-in-residence, Dinuk Wijeratne, had a role to play other than that of Atlantic Canada's most sophisticated backup band.

But getting assigned a role in MacDonald's charmingly gentle satiric view of the world is not without its dangers. She is a superlative ad-libber, a polished actress who can react to an opportunity like a gas leak reacting to a match, making an audience howl with delight by a lift of her eyebrows, a shift of elbow or hip, or a single word.

What makes her even more irresistible is that she can do it without the slightest hesitation, either as herself or as one of her stock characters, each of them as much alive to an audience as she is.

Friday night, one of those characters, Wayne, got to take the first shot.

Following a fiery opening performance of von Suppe's Light Cavalry Overture, the swaggering, beer-swilling ne-er-do-well in ball cap and workboots came on, walked back and forth, eyed the orchestra and delivered the first of many howlers to come: "Aw my jeez that was awesome!" he said. "I friggin love classical music."

No other pops guest artist has so successfully seen the symphony as an opportunity for invention and seized it so brilliantly.

After a series of Wayne-ish observations, including how hard could it be to wave your hands to get the orchestra to play, Wijeratne called his bluff by offering him a baton. Wayne accepted the challenge, climbed the podium, and created instant chaos with the opening measure of Johann Strauss's Radetzky March. The piece only sorted itself out when Wijeratne, standing some small distance away, guided the musicians behind Wayne's back. Then Wayne's cellphone went off.

MacDonald's comic trademark is to create recognizable caricatures of Cape Breton gossips, drunks and braggarts, and invest them with her very own laser wit. Thus, they hold their own, and, since there isn't a mean bone in their bodies, we can't get enough of them.

As Mary Christmas, MacDonald flawlessly performed her small-town gossip bit - there would have been a riot had she not. But just before the end of the first half, Mary returned to announce she liked all kinds of music, including rap and hip-hop.

Then, flipping a vegetable grater out of her coat as her "bling" she took on a Mary Morrison character she called Lil T Bag and, while the orchestra softly intoned the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen, she convulsed us with hip-hop bios of Verdi, Puccini and Tchaikovsky - all accurate as to the facts, by the way.

That's the way the night went: the orchestra playing two engaging movements from William Walton's Facade Suite as well as Smetana's Dance of the Comedians (at a smoking tempo) on its own; Bette playing cymbals with them during Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 5 (extremely well, I must say); Bette singing Makin' Whoopee and Whatever Lola Wants (she's an extremely fine pop singer); hilarious stand-up comedy bits from Maynard Morrison; and set pieces, like opera diva Isabella Luciana Mofiolepti addressing a class of school children on her career; and a hilarious version of The Swan from Jules Styne's Funny Girl with Bette as the Swan, heart throb Rejean Cournoyer as The Prince and Halifax Dance ballet dancers Victoria Diamond, Nicole Pelot, Sophie Brauer and Angela Miller as the corps de ballet, choreographed by Mary Lou Martin

Cournoyer came back to sing Baby It's Cold Outside with Bette, and the show ended with Bette as the solo artist in Piano Concerto for One Finger, which was compiled, orchestrated, and written by SNS second bassoonist Chris Palmer. This clever parody went well beyond tongue-in-cheek.

You just have to give it to Bette. No other pops guest artist has so successfully seen the symphony as an opportunity for invention and seized it so brilliantly. Endearingly and characteristically, she made fun not so much "of" as "with" the process, and all without the least sniff of disrespect.

As for Wijeratne, should he ever lay down his baton, a brilliant career awaits him as a straight man

Copyright © 2007 The Halifax Herald Limited. All rights Reserved.