Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett | Sheridan Harbridge & Sarah Goodes
Image: Pia Johnson
“It’s a fine line between pleasure and pain.” Few lyrics better sum up the raw, contradictory magnetism of Chrissy Amphlett—the defiant frontwoman of the Divinyls—than that immortal line. In Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett, performer and writer Sheridan Harbridge, together with director Sarah Goodes, conjures Chrissy’s legend with humour, grit, and a pulsing live band that never lets the room rest. This is no jukebox show; it’s a theatrical séance.
Image: Pia Johnson
From the moment the band tears into “I’ll Make You Happy,” bass and drums pounding like a fist on the door of memory, Harbridge inhabits Chrissy not with imitation but possession. Dressed in a glittering jacket and black skirt that nods to the infamous school uniform, she whispers stories with poise, teasing us with complete seduction. Every movement channels Chrissy’s dangerous blend of sexuality, rage, and vulnerability—the cocktail that made her both myth and menace in the blokey world of Australian rock.
The show is structured as a kaleidoscope of stories and songs, threading Chrissy’s own words with the recollections of fans, journalists, and bandmates. Anecdotes tumble out like confessions over a $17 glass of Chardonnay—her terrorising of Molly Meldrum, her unapologetic drug use, her notorious habit of urinating on stage, her survival in a scene that expected women to be decoration rather than detonators. Harbridge holds nothing back, reminding us that Amphlett’s provocations weren’t mere antics but strategies of power. To stand in a school uniform and hear the jeer of “show us your tits” was, for Chrissy, a declaration of war.
Goodes’ direction plays cabaret’s fluidity to its advantage. Gregorian chants dissolve into rock riffs, a yodel shifts into a growl, and moments of comic MC-style banter (“please sign an OH&S form before audience participation”) give way to passages of intimate stillness.
Image: Pia Johnson
The catalogue of songs is thrillingly re-imagined. “Pleasure and Pain” is delivered with stretched-out desperation, drums and guitar pounding against Harbridge’s searing vocals until the refrain feels like a threat. “Boys in Town” becomes a chorus, the band cranking out its feral guitar solo while the audience roars in recognition. Stripped-back versions of “Science Fiction” and “Sleeping Beauty” reveal Chrissy’s under-sung lyricism—its harmonies tender, almost hymnal. And of course, “I Touch Myself” arrives with both cheek and reverence, a song of erotic ownership that still unsettles in its bluntness.
But the show also makes space for silence. In one arresting sequence, Harbridge halts the spectacle to speak of Chrissy’s later life, her battles with MS and breast cancer, and the raw honesty with which she faced mortality. The music drops out, and the audience is forced to confront the woman behind the myth—the one who longed to transcend the rage and glitter, to float away from the chaos she so often created.
If the evening occasionally threatens to spill into chaos—rambling stories, half-mocked asides—it feels fitting. Amphlett herself thrived in that unstable zone between brilliance and breakdown. To tidy her story into a clean arc would betray her legacy. Instead, Amplified embraces the mess with witty anecdotes that show us more than just her music: the school pinafore stuffed with rats, the beer poured over hair like a weapon, the simultaneous invitation and dare in her voice.
In the end, Harbridge doesn’t so much play Chrissy as resurrect her. For two hours, the audience is made to feel the dangerous voltage between sex and fear, mockery and obedience, survival and self-destruction. Amplified is cabaret at its most alive: irreverent, haunting, and fiercely electric. Like Chrissy Amphlett herself, it demands we ask what rock really is—before it spits in our face and leaves us begging for more.
Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett played September 2025 at the Brisbane Powerhouse as part of the 2025 Brisbane Festival.
Image: Pia Johnson
