Once again the fabulous Wonderland Festival has arrived at the Brisbane Powerhouse with a cornucopia of treats. I wandered in to see Brisbane’s Happily Ever After cabaret production presented by Little Match Productions in partnership with Brisbane Powerhouse. Never seeing or hearing from them previously, my mind cleared, allowing for the experience of what was to come.
The pianist Sir Lancelot (Luke Volker) played in a staccato piano style reminiscent of Berlin as well as other well-known Cabaret piano performance style movements. The three Babushka Sylphs took the willing audience on a giddy roller-coaster sleigh ride, albeit without reindeers, through the nursery rhyme fears and delights of their childhoods, not without some sprinklings of popular and unknown cultures.
Opening with a paean to the big bad wolf (Little Red Riding Hood) in a few minutes I became a wolf sympathiser and was opening a crowd funder for the wolf online. The Babushka heroines live in Australia in the 21st century but have all the old school skills of theatrical arts which include singing, dancing, playing musical instruments – in perfect pitch – seamless choreography, and ultimately carry with them an air of magic.
The brilliantly imaginative trio even turned Mr. Sandman (popularised by WW2 trio The Andrew Sisters) into Metallica’s Enter Sandman and it was like they had perfect psychic connection. Because they did. Judy Hainsworth had the Ukrainian peasant girl/Cinderella Shrew understudy nailed to a “T”. One moment Hainsworth was syrupy sweet and the next moment turning on her sisters and the audience like a furious sociopathic Persian cat, all the while smiling of course.
The trio frequently launched into the crowd looking for kings, queens and the odd drunk and found what they needed in which they involved as part of the show. They were watching their audience intently and feeling the feedback/response currents and had the rare gift of being able to improvise and micromanage their performance to keep the audience enthralled for the whole 60 minute performance. A rare gift. This is the aspect that separates them from others and will be pivotal in them going international.
Dissecting the Eurhythmics and busting out Beyoncé numbers with a kazoo backing plus an OverSize OG dose of gangsta rap (a perfect mimicry) against an olde worlde backdrop of piano accordion, violin, cabaret dresses and exuding a “I hold the world in the palm of my hand” supreme confidence, it was hard to know where this rollercoaster was going next. None of the audience wanted it to stop.
Happily Ever After was a totally unexpected treat. Far more than I thought possible. Another triumph for the Babushka Cabaret who kindly came back for an encore and brought the curtain down with their version of Kate Bush’s Babooshka. Australia cannot contain these amazing beings – see them before they disappear into the Internationale Circuit.
29th Nov - 01st Dec, 2018
Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse
Donald Gunn