iOTA and The Beauty Queens

iOTA and The Beauty Queens
15 December 2007
The Famous Spiegeltent

What do you do when you have a full Spiegeltent full of devoted fans, a show dependant upon the sound you’ve spent weeks perfecting on the computer and the gods of technology decide to curse you? You do the show anyway – of course.
 
iOTA and the Beauty Queens (Sharpy & Timmy) didn’t expect to be doing a semi-acoustic show with lots of bass and drum. They did describe the sound they created and it sounded like it would have been amazing. But I didn’t really care and neither did anyone else there.
 
I wanted to see iOTA perform. I’m still chastising myself for missing the Melbourne season of Hedwig and now know that I will need a trip to Sydney to see him as Frank.
 
iOTA is a rare genuine mix of rock, punk, gender bending and pure charisma. You don’t want to take your eyes off him. Combine that with a well trained, honeyesque voice that lovingly embraces the harshness of rock without losing any tone or control. It must be scary to be called enigmatic, but IOTA lives up to his reputation.
 
I don’t know his original music enough to comment on the effect of the technical problem, but I was mesmerised and would have bought a CD if they’d been selling them. I’ll go and find myself one this week.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com