Melanie Gall stars in “Stitch in Time: A Knitting Cabaret”
Knitting, along with names like Edith and canning, holds polar popularity between seniors and youth based hipster culture. Both constituencies would find a comfortable home in the Fringe production Stitch in Time: A Knitting Cabaret that begins with an audience handiwork show and tell.
Sporting 1940-ish satin attire and using only a microphone and recorded music, New Yorker Melanie Gall seeks to tie together forgotten World War I and II knitting songs with historical factoids and personal reflections.
Chanteuse Gall’s, AKA That Knitting Gal, controlled and vocal strength speaks to her double-digit years of formal Opera training and it is enjoyable to witness someone of her calibre perform.
The songs as source material are repetitive and of questionable artistry as is reflected in the piece Knit One Purl Two penned by Glen Miller whose musical quality is notably superior.
Gall harnesses her extensive knowledge of the importance of knitting to the war efforts to enlighten the audience, including how knitting was used as a means of recording coded information.
The enduring and deceptive niceness of knitting is a recurring theme throughout and links it to the changing perception and roles of women.
