Review: 'Tis Pity

'Tis Pity: An Operatic Fantasia on Selling the Skin and the Teeth
Victorian Opera
6 February 2017
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
to 8 February
victorianopera.com.au

'Tis Pity. Kanen Breen & Meow Meow. Photo by Pia Johnson

The 2015 Victorian Opera production of Die Sieben Todsunden with Meow Meow took me as close to seeing how Brecht and Weil must have imagined their work. It was a highlight of that year and the newly devised 'Tis Pity song cycle reunites Meow and director Cameron Menzies, adds the rather divine tenor Kanen Breen and Richard Mills composing for a full orchestra. And it's about exploring the history of prostitution. All the ingredients are brilliant, so what went wrong?

Of course, Meow and Breen's performances are excellent. Their vaudeville-cum-Brechtian-cum-"Alan Cummings in Cabaret" clowns are backed by red velvet, three male dancers and Orchestra Victoria, with cheap shiny-red cardboard hearts on their music stands. The opening moments are full of hope as Breen sings that sex is both the question and the answer.

Sex? Sex.

What follows is ten vignettes about how women have been exploited by men for as long as records exist. Their order is drawn from a hat in convenient chronological order. This device is only slightly less annoying than the alarm screaching the beginning of each vignette.

There’s no consistent theme. From Ancient Greece to contemporary Hollywood, there are narratives – not structured stories with characters – about "whores", men using prostitutes, keeping wives away from whores, keeping women “subjugated”, evil menstrual blood and hypocritical religion.

The narrative voice is almost always male – even when delivered by Meow. When she does speak as a women, it's confirming the male narrative that working girls (with cockney Pygmalion accents) are selling their souls.

With little exploration of a female point of view and research that feels as deep as a Wikipedia introduction, perhaps Mills's boast that "This project was written at breakneck speed in the month of November" says it all.

‘Tis Pity is under developed and needs to find more heart than those cut from cardboard.

Also on AussieTheatre.com.

What Melbourne loved in 2016, part 13

The "Lovies" will be ending this week, but if you send me some today, I'll make sure they get in.

Today we hear from Mama Alto and the Opera Chaser, Paul Selar.

Mama Alto
diva (in the most magnificent sense of the word)

Mama Alto. Photo by Alexis Desaulniers-Lea

MA's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Hot Brown Honey, at Arts Centre Melbourne, was affirming, daring, excoriating, exciting, irreverent, holy and empowering. It was joyous and emotional for me to see – for a change – so many people of colour, not just on stage but in the audience, too. This show, and the direct expressions of these artists, is a complete revelation. And it provided words to live by: "Moisturise, decolonise… stand up, speak up, rise up, make noise!".

Between Two Lines (Anna Nalpantidis with Elizabeth Brennan), at Embiggen Books,was my absolute pick of the Melbourne Fringe. Intimacy, stillness, presence, tenderness and the astoundingly profound depth of a one-on-one live art experience: the esoteric and curious ritual of bibliotherapy in a bath tub, and the feeling of balancing in an enormous snow globe, floating like a bubble in a precarious world.

Retrofuturismus (Maude Davies, Anni Davies and ensemble) at fortyfivedownstairs, which was equal parts shocking, tender, insightful, powerful and interrogative. A collision of the then, the now, and the yet to come, posing questions and explorations of environmental catastrophe, history repeating, queer possibilities, feminist futures and human nature.

Lisa Fischer at the Melbourne Recital Centre gave us the magic of unadulterated storytelling, with utter focus, dedication, talent, skill and sheer musical honesty. Lisa Fischer pours forth a fluid, breathtaking, all-encompassing and limitless voice with a warmth and generosity of storytelling, empathy and healing that is crystalline and rare.

Honourable mentions:
Blaque Showgirls (Nakkiah Lui and company) at Malthouse: a damning, hilarious, uncomfortable, layered spectacle of the state of this nation.

Lilith, the Jungle Girl (Sisters Grimm) at MTC Neon: a nuanced, raucous and provocative exploration of colonisation, culture, gender and the body.

Meow Meow's The Little Mermaid at The Malthouse: there are no words for the scintillating, glimmering madness of this diva’s unleashed psyche.

Frock Hudson FURRlesque at the Melba Spiegeltent: in the midst of a queer circus of silliness, humour, glamour and camp, Dean Arcuri in a glorious state of disarray delivered a poignant, raw, honest, tragically beautiful, emotional and heartbreaking sung rendition of "Will You Still Love Me When I’m No Longer Young And Beautiful" that spoke volumes about what it means to be queer and in love today.

The Color Purple (StageArt) at Chapel off Chapel: a stunning and passionate rendition of this Broadway icon-in-the-making, with a star turn by Thando Sikwila as Shug Avery. "It takes a grain of love to build a mighty tree – even the smallest voice can make a harmony."

Vanishing Act (Candace Miles and Rosie Clynes) at The Butterfly Club for Melbourne Fringe: a fabulous and unique cabaret journey through life with influences as diverse as Weimar, Grace Jones, Klaus Nomi, Kander and Ebb, and more, but syncretically combined to create a postmodern mishmash spectacle.

Lastly, powerful, eccentric, (rightfully) unashamed, (rightfully) unapologetic,authentic voices from women in cabaret comedy, two highlights of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival: the irrepressible local legend Geraldine Quinn in a brilliant retrospective revue Could You Repeat That at Malthouse, and emerging feminist rabble rousers Pink Flappy Bits in their eponymous shows.

What MA is looking forward to in 2017: Particularly, Pamela Rabe in The Testament of Mary, DisColourNation’s second iteration of The Unbearable Whiteness of Being, and the new Jackie Smith play directed by Moira Finucane, The Exotic Lives of Lola Montez.

And more generally, anything involving the extraordinary talents and stories of people of colour, people experiencing disability, queer people, trans and gender diverse people, non-binary people and women.

mamaalto.com

SM: The Adulteress (Melbourne Fringe) was cool and delightfully camp, but my Mama highlight was last week at Finucane and Smith's Christmas Cocktail party. There were many magnificent performances that captivated the sold-out, overflowing room, but one left the room silent: Mama Alto. One captivating song and the room exploded with pure love.

Paul Selar
Opera Chaser

Paul Selar selfie

OC's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: In my three decades of opera-going that I'm now calling OperaChasing and the piles of opera programs I'm not sure what to do with, 2016 will remain special: 95 opera productions in 21 cities. The memories of many may wilt as they hopefully nourish the heart and soul but others presumably will have everlasting immediacy.

In Melbourne, I love seeing how the operatic pulse beats and I'm always wishing more people would taste what's on offer, from the smell-of-an-oily-rag budget productions to the polished bells and whistles of the hugely funded national opera company. One thing for certain is that the smell of an oily rag is often at least as overwhelmingly affecting and rewarding as any high-end work performed to the more toffee-nosed culture that sticks to opera's heals.

Melbourne staged no less than 24 opera productions in 2016. Adding Gertrude Opera's Nagambie Lakes Opera Festival, a little weekend outing for city dwellers to combine wine and opera, the number swells to 32. Ok, part of that diverse program included three "nano" operas around 15 minutes in length each, but how their succinct attack still penetrates. Apart from the bacchanalian-steered opening night dinner and gorgeously sung operatic arias, Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti directed by Greg Eldridge and The Scottish Opera, a new gripping, shortened and stylised meshing of Verdi's Macbeth in an 80-minute work directed and designed by Luke Leonard still resonate.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the return of Opera Australia's Ring Cycle directed by Neil Armfield surprised me how much more arresting it was than its 2013 premiere (possibly due to that wilted memory). Elements of the everyday, mixed with the symbolic and surreal accompanying detailed characterisation and the year's most extraordinary singing and music-making, came together in a work of astounding beauty. Thank the gods it wasn't staged earlier in the year. I was so emotionally pummelled that immersing in anything outside The Ring seemed completely mundane.

Of the four, I had to see Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung again, and not just because of the allure of the double-dotted diacritics. Let's hope the cycle returns to Melbourne in 2019 so that it can be ticked off many more bucket lists.

But take note Opera Australia. More double-dotted Wagnerian repertoire got a magnificent outing by independently funded Melbourne Opera with Tannhäuser. This was a huge achievement that saw the company take a bold risk while making opera look right at home in the iconic Regent Theatre. Wagner's recurring theme of redemption resonated with glorious singing, expert orchestral support and director Suzanne Chaundy and her creative team's compelling staging portraying the contrast between one world of societal strictures and another of sexual pleasures. Perhaps Melbourne does have the initiative and resources to call itself a Wagnerian city after all. Is there any dream this city can't dream without making it a reality?

Victorian Opera's innovative arm muscled up once again under Artistic Director Richard Mills's tireless efforts in giving a fresh approach to the art. Directed by Emil Wolk, Laughter and Tears saw Mills's powerful reimagining of Leoncavallo's great tragic one-act opera, Pagliacci – the tears – came with a prologue made up of a pastiche of Baroque and Renaissance music imbued with comic abandon and contextual contrast – the laughter. Integrated circus arts handsomely illuminated the stage for one of the company's most compelling recent works that saw opera return to another splendid venue, the Palais Theatre. Certainly a work worthy of revival.

Finally, little Lyric Opera of Melbourne delivered an exquisite three-season adventure headed by the succulently staged, mojito-driven and rarely seen operatic version of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana by Aussie composer Malcolm Williamson. The musical richness of the score – brilliantly sung by many of Melbourne's young artists – the witty libretto and the directorial flesh Suzanne Chaundy gave to this festering black comedy (performed to an audience not much larger than 150), reflects the knack Artistic Director Pat Miller has in unearthing varied and exciting works.

Much further afield, controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito's dark, thought-provoking interpretation of Fromental Halévy's rarely seen 1835 La Juive (The Jewess) at the Bavarian State Opera stood out for its subtlety and strength. Musically and vocally outstanding, it remains for me the year's most powerfully relevant work highlighting the oneness and differences in humanity, the instilled fear of the other as a threat, and of intolerances we harbour but can't see. Much food for modern thought.


Finally, for those interested in the many great contributions made to the art of opera in 2016, I'm running a one-hour Twitter night for The 2nd Annual OperaChaser Awards and Commendations via @OperaChaser between Christmas and New Year. I've given only a little away so come join in and have a drink to find out more to celebrate our artists with me.

What OC is looking forward to in 2017: If you think opera isn't your thing, maybe 2017 might change that. Bizet's ever-popular Carmen comes to town in a new production from Opera Australia so that could do the trick but I saw it in Sydney earlier this year and it's Cuban-set concoction needed a deal of attention I hope it gets by May. Two works at the top of my list are Opera Australia's King Roger – a 1924 work by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski and a co-production with London's Royal Opera House – and Melbourne Opera's second outing at the Regent Theatre for hours and hours of more Wagner with Lohengrin.

Rarely do we see Czech composer Leoš Janácek’s powerful works so Victorian Opera's Cunning Little Vixen, his poignant reflection on the cycle of life, shouldn't be missed either. Make sure you add Tom Waits and William S Burroughs's allegory of addiction, The Black Rider, to the list as well. It's a co-production with Malthouse Theatre starring Paul Capsis with Meow Meow and Kanen Breen.

Lyric Opera of Melbourne will no doubt enchant with a contemporary work by female composer Rachel Portman, The Little Prince. Based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's delightful 1943 book, it premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 2003 with Teddy Tabu Rhodes in the role of the Pilot.

Finally, on the international front, for something quirky amongst so much impressive work that'll be impossible to see, there's a new comic opera based on that botched restoration of a fresco of Jesus likened to a hedgehog. Written by two Americans, librettist Andrew Flack and composer Paul Fowler, Behold the Man will premiere in a fully staged production in the town of Borja where everyone's laughing at how a town's misfortune turned with just a few well-intended brushstrokes. That I'd love to see.

operachaser.blogspot.com.au

SM: I didn't see as much opera as I wanted to this year, but Paul makes sure that I see some. His blog is great; no one else writes about just opera – let alone about opera all over the world. I learn so much about opera by reading his reviews and tweets.

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2012

Review: Seven Deadly Sins

Seven Deadly Sins
Die Sieben Todsunden
Victorian Opera
6 November 2015
Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne
victorianopera.com.au

Meow Meow. Photo by Charlie Kinross

Victorian Opera commissioned four young Australian composers to write Seven Deadly Sins, with a sin for each of seven Australian cities. They were inspired by Bertolt Brecht's assigning of sins to USA cities for Die Sieben Todsunden, written in 1932, with Kurt Weill, in Paris, after they had fled Berlin. The new sins were performed by Orchestra Victoria and seven singers, while the inspiring piece and its sins were owned, and sung in the original German, by the extraordinary Meow Meow.

Directed by Cameron Menzies and conducted by Tahu Matheson, the new work celebrates the sins of our cities, as much as the music and text of Julian Langdon, Mark Viggiani, Ian Whitney and Jessica Wells – and the newly-graduated talent of singers Kate Amos, Nathan Lay, Elizabeth Lewis, Emma Muir-Smith, Michael Petruccelli, Cristina Russo and Matthew Tng.

Highlights were Adelaide trying to fight Gluttony and resist its own “awesome appetite” for Frog Cakes, Fruchos, Beestings and Coopers Pale Ale, and Canberra’s Pride leading to the fall of Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Rudd and Abbott. “I won’t say sorry!” says Howard in a Team Australia tracksuit. “I will!” says Rudd in a suit, before Gillard sings like Evita about men in blue ties.

Melbourne’s Greed is John Wren asking if it was power or glory. Sydney’s Lust wants real estate and brunch. Brisbane’s Sloth is too hot to get a beer, Hobart’s Envy can’t win a game show, and Perth’s Anger is a mini-opera about an aging mining tycoon with a “with a witch to the left of me and a bitch to the right of me.”

After the interval, Meow Meow was Anna 1 (the singer) and Anna 2 (the dancer) in Die Sieben Todsunden. With the orchestra and a male quartet (Michael Petruccelli, Carlos E Bárcenas, Nathan Lay and Jeremy Kleeman) as her judging family, it was like there was no distance between the performer and the composer and writer.

Meow Meow is the cabaret persona of Melissa Madden Gray but the genius of Meow is that she’s never anything but real. And to have Meow playing the Annas has got to be like seeing the piece as Weill and Brecht did. As a character she’s vulnerable but unbreakable, and as a performer playing a performer playing a character, she understands every note, syllable and satirical nuance about being a German work, set in the US, created in Paris and performed so many years later in Australia. She’s astonishing.

The only disappointment is that it was a one-night only concert. New Australian work deserves to be seen, heard and loved. The Seven Deadly Sins is funny and welcoming as it sings about the Australian propensity to celebrate and indulge in our sinning. Let’s hope there are plenty of new ways to let the sins be shared.

And what about a season of Brecht/Weill with Meow Meow?

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Little Match Girl

Little Match Girl
Malthouse Theatre and Meow Meow Revolution
16 November 2011
Merlyn Theatre, The Malthouse
to 4 December
www.malthousetheatre.com.au

What haven't I already said about absolute wonderfulness of Meow Meow? She's at the Malthouse this month with Little Match Girl and her hoards of international fans are squirming with jealousy that Melbourne (and then Sydney) have such access to this must-be-experienced diva who shreds perceptions of performance art.

Meow has recently graced shows like The Burlesque Hour with her glitter-lipped self, but her last full-length local cabaret was Vamp at The Malthouse in 2008. That show was based on Wilde's Salome, while Little Match Girl starts with Hans Christian Anderson's 1845 story of a little girl who freezes to death rather than return penniless to a violent home. Yet even as Meow reminds us that little has changed in civilised society, she still craves a fairy tale ending and looks for her perfect match as her flames fade and burn.

Like any fine cat, she's aloof, rightfully sure of her exquisite beauty (from the right angle), has remarkably flexile legs and appears contentedly independent until she pounces and demands immediate attention and physical love. But never believe those purrs are for you, as there's always a more enticing lap, and she may have found her flame in just-as-sensational Mitchell Butel, her saviour and handbag.

Working again with the delightful Iain Grandage (musical director and composition), it's bliss to hear Meow with a band and there are super new songs by Grandage and Megan Washington, and a too-delightful Noel Coward number, a "The Book of Love" to bring tears and touches of Richard Wagner, Cole Porter and Laurie Anderson for bonus perfection.

Meow resents attention flowing from her, but Marion Potts (director), Anna Cordingley (design) and Paul Jackson (lighting) create a shiny world worthy of her presence – Jackson's creative lighting is especially stunning – although it's doubtful that Meow will ever let us applaud Melissa Madden Gray.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jeff Busby

Review: Meow Meow at TBH

Meow Meow at The Burlesque Hour LOVES Melbourne
Finucane & Smith
21 July 2011
45 downstairs
Meow to 31 July
TBH to 14 August

With my new (unconsciously) Meow Meow inspired hair, I felt a bit fan-girly at last night's The Burlesque Hour LOVES Melbourne. So if you see me wearing too much glitter eyeshadow, you'll know who I'm honouring, but if you see me dancing semi-naked by the water wall at the National Gallery, it's a homage to Moria.

Finucane & Smith's Burlesque Hour  is the blissful, if fit-inducing, antidote to any winter blues. Damn it, it's the antidote to pretty much anything negative and should be compulsory for teenagers and anyone who still thinks that having a body like a Photoshopped model is a way to happiness, and for anyone who has leered at a woman.

With a list of Melbourne-legend special guests that makes choosing which night to go almost impossible, the only solution is to go more than once. If you go before July 31, there's Meow Meow.

The magnificent and obsessive Meow Meow was performing at the Apollo Theatre in London a month ago. For the next two weeks, Melbourne gets lucky as she's purring, hissing and shedding sequins in Flinders Lane.

David Bowie has declared that he never misses Meow. And there's a long line of us ready to push the divine starman aside for a blinding glimpse of this Weimar alley cat.

Like a prowling feral, you know that Meow wants to curl up on a loving lap in front of fire, but the only thing she knows is that sharp claws and loud noise keep her safe. Behind her drag-queen glitter and sequins is a woman so determined to find perfect love that she'll demand a hug from a stranger, but will probably poke out their eye because they dare to be less than perfect and will want to disappoint her like everyone does.

With clear logic that wanting to kiss her means that you think she's pretty, which means that you want to fuck her, which means that you'll never leave, Meow wins endless hearts, but she will never let anyone close enough to realise that she's loved. Neither will she ever let her exquisite voice (or Melissa Madden Gray) get in the way or distract from the singular focus of Meow's deliciously distorted need for love.

Meow is the type of cabaret artist who makes up for any night of theatrical dullness we've endured. Not that there's a moment of dullness with Moira, Maude, Harriet, Holly and Sosina at The Burlesque Hour.

A version of this review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Carnegie 18 part 2

Carnegie 18
Curtains and Contact
Full Tilt
22 January 2011
to 25 January
theartscentre.com.au

Carnegie 18 is four music theatre projects given the opportunity to develop by the Arts Centre's wonderful Full Tilt program. I missed the two program one shows, and if they were anywhere near as creative, original and bloody awesome as program two, I missed out.

Curtains (produced by Maakan Productions) offers the fantasy-come-true cast of Meow Meow, Mikelangelo, Yana Alana and Tina del Twist. Don't expect Melissa, Mikel, Sarah* and Wes; the twisted concept of David Chisholm's creation is delusional characters playing delusional characters.

Telling the somewhat irrelevant story of the 30th anniversary revival concert of the musical Revival with an understudy,  a faded diva and a murder, the characters get to play characters and sing well out of their usual scope. Highlights include Tina singing the torch song intended for Meow (who had to phone and video in her performance; disappointing, but there are few others who are so good that even a video is worth going to see), Yana singing about being famous (and her ongoing reactions to Tina),  Mikelangelo playing Billy Shakepeare singing about The Empty Space and Mikelangelo and Tina's duet as executioners.

The joy of this show lies in knowing the characters who are playing the Curtains characters and at times it's difficult to see the line between the written and the somewhat improvised work. In the post-show Q and A Chisholm said that he hopes to see many different casts, like a UK version with characters from Tracey Ullman and Julia Davies.

Curtains is the third in a cycle of five long form works that Chisholm aims to be completed and presented by the end of 2013 and presented in its entirety.

Contact is Angus Grant's chamber opera about netball, composed for eight sopranos and guy called Bevan.

I'm sure people raised their eyebrows at the idea of a ballroom dancing show that NIDA students developed in the 80s. Strictly Ballroom went to bigger stages and film, becoming an Australian cultural signpost. And who didn't love it!

Contact should be heading on the same zeitgeist-defining path.

The Rangers netball team are from "a suburb not far away" and their finals chances are looking dim as their Goal Shooter has left the team, maybe because "nice boys have sperm too". All isn't lost because  alternative Daisy has moved out from the inner city and her shooting is as cool as her look, but there's no trophy yet as coach Bev is having issues with her past and with her Wing Defence daughter Wendy and Wendy's twin Bevan is dating Goal Attack Gayle.

With a libretto (by Grant and Kate Schmitt) that lets suburban vernacular like "quick sticks" and "I was in with a shot" sound like poetry, a score that will  make school kids pin pictures of sopranos on their lockers, and choreography (by Julia Sutherland) that captures the boredom of drills and the precision of a match without ever looking like a drill or a match, this is a show that bends all the rules to make the a definitive Aussie chamber opera.

And the young cast are no less than perfect.

Contact captures our unique obsession with netball (it's not just women) with plenty of implied jokes for players who understand that it sucks to be WD and that GAs and GSs bitch like first and second sopranos, but the humour is never limited for those in the know.  It's a tale of passion, sport, family, rejection, secrets, love and life in the suburbs that grabbed the hearts and imaginations of everyone in the audience.

Contact has only played a quarter and it will be an unforgivable obstruction if we don't see the full match.


Talk was that program 2 was sold out, but there are limited seats available for the last show on 25 January.


Applications for the 2012 Carnegie 18 series close on 27 May.


* I've seen Sarah's stuff, but never in a review capacity. Sista She were brilliant and Yana Alana and her Parana's should not be missed.

This review appears on AussieThearte.com

A Company of Strangers

ADELAIDE FRINGE 2009
A Company of Strangers
Strut & Fret Productions
11 March 200
The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Spiegeltent

It didn’t take long among the company of strangers (and an old friend) to be reminded of the things that Adelaide does well.

Adelaide’s not just 1950s attitudes with great beer; this city knows how to create mouth-watering salt and pepper eggplant, affogatos and Fringe festivals. The Adelaide Fringe is the biggest on this side the world, because it’s the best. Audiences flock to shows; they see anything and everything – not because they’re among the arty farty “in” crowd, but because they know that taking a punt on a Fringe show is likely to be a lot of fun. And if the show sucks, they will enjoy it anyway, because they’ve paid and there’s still beer drinking and hanging around with the cool folk to be done.

Strut & Fret productions have captured the essence of the Adelaide Fringe in the Garden of Unearthly delights. Teenagers, dressed for nightclubs, line up alongside their grandparents, dressed for a possibly chilly evening, to get into the Garden. The food is delicious, the coffee is great, the bar has plenty of overpriced beer, the craft stalls are worth a look and there are more theatre spaces than you can count on both hands. I love the Spiegeltent when it sits by the Melbourne Arts Centre, but the tent feels at home in the Adelaide parklands.

Melbourne-based and world-travelling Martin Martini MC’s the Garden’s showpiece: A Company of Strangers. He declares Adelaide his favourite place to play – and it doesn’t take long to figure out why. This crowd doesn’t care about deconstructing the artistic merit of the piece– they want to enjoy the wackiness. So this show of strange people performing amongst the company of strangers is the perfect show for this perfect festival.

The company is a collection of wonderfully-odd musical cabaret performers. There’s no theme and no cohesion -it’s just meant to be fun.

The most-loved of the permanent strangers is the UK’s Le Gateau Chocolat. He knows that larger folk can appear svelte in flowing layers of black – so he has a collection of glossy, coloured lyrca body suits. With an opera-trained voice he belts out soprano-favourites as a bass and even has a play with Rhianna’s about an umbrella – whilst looking like a cockless telly tubby on acid. Drag is no longer a drag.

Lady Carol strums a ukulele and professes to be a “’lady” from Ireland. Her husky voice encourages the crowd to sing along, but she needs to decide if she is herself or her character on the stage.

Our own Paul Capsis should never be off a cabaret stage. Resplendent in red velvet he channels Janis Joplin and even sobers the mood with a composition co-written with Tim Freedman about his Nanna’s migration to Australia.

For all of the Strangers’ wonderfulness, none shone quite as blindingly as their special guest: Meow Meow. Lost in her own glamorous time-warp, Meow wraps herself around the audience and demands their support – literally. After forcing the audience to undress her she is carried to the stage with her thighs wrapped around the neck of the best looking man she could find. (I wonder if Mr Gateau is thinking of doing the same one night…)

With a temper rivalled only by her ego, Meow answer a less than modest “I know” to her rapturous applause. She thinks it’s for her, but we know it’s for someone else. Creator and character are so distanced that it’s hard to imagine them as one. Meow is too selfish to ever let us glimpse the woman behind her. She also knows that an illusion fails if we see the sleight of hand, and Meow’s magic would fade if we could see the work, the skill and the understanding of form that creates this exquisite parody.

A Company of Strangers is ideal Fringe fare. There are different special guests throughout the season, but be assured the Strangers will make you feel like you’re one of them in no time.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Vamp

Vamp
Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Opera House
6 September 2008
CUB Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre

What a time for cabaret in this town! The ever-wonderful Burlesque Hour is still running, The Tiger Lillies were scary and wonderful, and now Meow Meow returns to her hometown in Vamp.

David Bowie describes Meow Meow as one of “certain artists you just never miss.” I’m kinda chuffed that have a conversation starter for the time I meet Dave, as I also believe that Meow should never be missed.

Meow has pounced, hissed, purred and sold out in the Spiegeltent; she’s performed at more international festivals than I can list; she’s better known in Shanghai, New York and various European capitals than her hometown; and collaborated with the likes of the Dresden Dolls and John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch).

Vamp was commissioned by Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Opera House, so Meow could work with local wonders including Iain Grandage (composition), Michael Kantor (direction), Anna Tregloan (design), Shaun Parker (choreography) and Paul Jackson (lighting). While Vamp is every moment Meow’s show, the depth and completeness of the piece come from the collaboration.

Vamp was inspired by by Wilde’s Salome. Meow describes it as the “dual empowerment and disempowerment of the body and its sensual or ridiculous dance”. She understands the ridiculousness, but continues to participate and craves the attention. She lets us see that the wild and sexy goddess is really just a bored and lonely woman in a skin coloured body suit and some stick on pasties, but she continues to be amazed at her own stage beauty. This vamp knows how absurd she is, but wants to believe the image. She alternatively criticises her audience, but forces some to hold her close (literally) and help create the facade. To the audience participation men – what was so difficult about the “shape of a swastika” request?

Meow herself is a parody of a parody that takes us so uncomfortably close to the truth that laughter is the only possible release. Perhaps we will all get our ’15 Minutes of Femme’ one day - but do we want it?

The memorable, the incredible and the best stage characters have an independent life, far removed from their creators, while their creators are so much more than their one character. As Dame Edna is to Barry Humphries, Meow Meow is to Melissa Madden Gray.

Gray could grace any musical theatre, opera or dance stage in the world, while earning a fine living from singing on morning chat shows and posing for women’s magazine lifestyle features. We (David Bowie and me) are so grateful that she has chosen a path that is far more dangerous and extraordinary. She creates on the edge, takes risks and chooses creative and original over safe and predictable.

Gray’s outstanding technique, skill, passion and determination clearly support Meow, but Meow is far too self-centred to let Gray share her limelight. Gray doesn’t even get a mention in the program, and Meow herself drinks fizzy wine at the after show party.

Early in the show, Meow tells the audience “You may not be moved, but you will be touched.” This performance touches you and stays with you. Meow is tantalising, seductive and very bendy, but arouses our latent intelligence. Vamp is the real deal. Don’t regret missing it.
 
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.