![]() ![]() In cabaret, audience interaction can easily be a crutch for a performer to gain control of the stage by humiliating unsuspecting and unwilling members of the crowd. She will not go into the darkness without desperately trying to use every means at her disposal in engaging the audience’s help to keep her show airborne. In the fairy tale, the young girl dies alone in the street because no one reaches out to help her in this show Meow demands, often forcefully, the audience’s assistance. It’s a simple story and the metaphor works. She takes Hans Christian Andersen’s Christmas story of the small girl trying to sell matches in the winter streets and loosely hangs her show on this sad tale. The tale of the Little Match Girl gives Meow the precipice from which to leap. ![]() The thrill of watching her in full flight - and it is indeed a thrilling spectacle - comes from knowing that she could easily careen head-first into the ground. She is flighty, constantly startled, her feathers always a little ruffled. Marion Potts has done a great job keeping things more contained and theatrically legible than past, more chaotic incarnations of Meow Meow’s I have seen over the years.Įlly Varrenti The Age, Melbourne 18/11//11įor a cabaret artiste called Meow Meow, this is a performer who has always seemed more of a bird than a cat. Noel Coward’s What’s Going to Happen to the Tots?, although done with expert requisite camp, felt gratuitous.Ī thrust stage, a brass bed, a band and a massive chandelier that hangs provocatively throughout the show until finally fulfilling its coups-de-theatre promise provide the setting. There are beautiful original love pop songs (Iain Grandage) and her rendition of Laurie Anderson’s The Dream Before and Butel’s O Du, Mein Holder Abendstern (Wagner) are a knockout. Ungainly one minute, elegant the next, this cat will cajole you with her little-girl-lost routine and then scratch your eyes out for caring. She’s a postmodern corseted dame with attitude. ![]() The old ”lighting grid’s exploded but the show must go on” ruse kicks in early and for much of Little Match Girl, Meow Meow is lit by mobile phone torches supplied by the audience (”Light my face not my crotch!”) and makeshift lamps provided by her hapless sidekick (Mitchell Butel does a brilliant turn as the befuddled and ardent fan) who scuttles on and off stage accompanied by his demented diva’s barks and meows.Īmid the chiaroscuro of torchlight, Meow Meow delivers a torch song echoing the best of them – Streisand’s sentiment, Midler’s sass, Minnelli’s angst, Garland’s longing, Ute Lemper’s Germanness and Betty Blokk Buster’s satire. The artist’s signature style is a kind of ”seriousness interruptus”, a determination to disrupt the audience-performer relationship as often as possible so we never get too caught up emotionally she never sings a song right through without undercutting it with a snappy one-liner (”I’m real, not a television!”) or a mock stage-business mishap. Such is the skill and savvy, the wit and watchability of Meow Meow. The show then flies off in all directions, and while such flights of fancy mostly lack any real connection with their original inspiration, they remain cheeky, edgy and entertaining. MEOW Meow takes as a point of departure Hans Christian Andersen’s morality tale about the homeless Little Match Girl. Musical Director, Piano, Cello : Iain Grandage Meow Meow – Little Match Girl Post navigation Previous Nextġ1.
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