Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett | Sheridan Harbridge & Sarah Goodes
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.
Icons Alive! | Access Arts and The Undercover Artist Festival
Icons Alive! is bold, demonstrative, expressive, warm, welcoming, emotional and downright brilliant. This multitalented and gifted cast of performers with disability excelled on every level in pushing boundaries, pushing buttons, but above all, pushing for change. Kudos to MC Karen Lee Roberts – her outrageously gorgeous costumes plus her ebullient onstage persona kept the adrenaline rush at full throttle.
TINA — A Tropical Love Story | Ben Graetz
TINA - A Tropical Love Story is a fun one-hour cabaret showcase of First Nations’ talent that spotlights the talents of Ben Graetz/Miss Ellaneous, and gives a platform for local and emerging artists; great frocks, charming stories, excellent lip sync and interpretation, and solid musical choices.
Gatsby at The Green Light | Caper & Crow
Gatsby at The Green Light invites audiences into a decadent world of 1920s glamour and 2020s spectacle. Brimming with classic Gatsby indulgence and theatrical excess, the show delivers a night of cabaret in a club named after the symbol of Gatsby’s elusive desire: The Green Light.
“Hands down the craziest things I’ve ever done for Strut & Fret.” Spencer Novich on Late Night Vice
“When you don't allow phones suddenly an audience is more engaged. They're less self-conscious and artists are given sort of a pass to do things that they normally wouldn't feel comfortable doing otherwise if it was recorded…”
Divine Trash | GALORE! Presents
The evening is a fever dream of drag, burlesque, clowning, stand-up, improvisation, physical theatre, and absurdist comedy. Framed with the irreverent spirit of filmmaker John Waters - famed for celebrating outsider culture and disrupting mainstream society—the show deliberately smashes conventional norms around gender, sexuality, performance, and taste.
DragSpeare | Jo Loth & Anne Pensalfini
This show challenges your expectations from the very beginning. It was set in a theatre pretending to be an RSL pretending to be the theatre again. The cast plays men, playing women. There were enemies playing lovers and lovers playing enemies and frames within frames within frames … DragSpeare is going to challenge you and give exactly what you need all in one big ball of smouldering pouts, puns, gender fuckery and song.
Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show | Jean Paul Gaultier & Brisbane Festival
Fun, flashy, and fantastical; Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show is a love letter to fashion geeks, theatre freaks, and the super chic everywhere. It’s a spectacular night of entertainment that takes to a world where everything and everyone can be (and is) beautiful. You do not want to miss it.
Dangerous Goods | Polytoxic
If you want to see a subversively hot, femme-fuelled show full of hot babes smashing the patriarchy, go see Dangerous Goods at QPAC. It’s one of the best shows I have seen. Bonus is, there'll be various guest artists throughout this season so no two shows will be the same. You’ve got another three weeks to see this unmissable show.
Twisted Christmas | GALORE! Presents
We’re guided through this seasonal smorgasbord by our elven MC, Maddy – a staunch unionist direct from the North Pole who’s (1) truly and deeply jaded by capitalism’s co-option of the holiday and (2) concerningly quick to guarantee we’re all on the naughty list this year.
Spooktacular | Brisbaret
The night’s hosts Sophie Banister and Thien Pham have been running this event for three years now and so know their comedic style and their audience very well, and it shows.
Siva Mai Club | District41 & Oceanik Village
Siva Mai Club does not just speak to Pasifika and Indigenous people, no matter your cultural backgrounds, it is special to be a part of that communion in that 75 mins with a dash of island style humour.
Bumhole Brunch | Gogo Bumhole, Adrian te Veluwe and The Burrow
On the first Sunday morning of every month at The Burrow in West End rising drag star (or drag gremlin as they’d like to call themself) GoGo Bumhole brings the drag brunch back its underground, community roots. Backed by a cavalcade of Meanjin’s finest cabaret performers, it’s an infectious morning of drinks, feasting, entertainment and dare I say community that’s bound to become a sold-out staple for those in the know.
Rough, Red and Raw | Architects of Sound
As architects of sound, they’re far more important, far more conceptually insightful and artistically refined, percipient guardians of the zeitgeist. They are a whole new level of artiste, and we mere mortals cannot possibly comprehend their brilliance. With a certain vivacity, an ironic holier-than-thou attitude and so much lycra, the group expertly poke fun at influencer culture. In fact, I was just thinking to myself how brilliantly they embodied the wankiness so often found in the art world when they revealed the title of their latest album: “Art Fap”. Perfect.
Brisbaret at Queensland Cabaret Festival
I can see why Brisbaret is a popular feature in the Brisbane arts scene, as a firmly local platform for a wide variety of music, comedy, drag, and cabaret artists. Variety is a tried and tested format—at its finest when hosted by talented MC’s, who program an eclectic collection of invited artists and keep the evening on track.
The Wharf Revue: Looking for Albanese | Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott
The Wharf Revue is an irreverent adventure combining popular culture, cabaret and politics cleverly executed just as much as Scomo ruled the nation singlehandedly and got away with it till he didn’t. This show is just as ambitious as Clive Palmer spending $123 million to win one seat to open another iron ore mine. With such a huge field of contenders to choose from, this show delivers one punch line after the other, meticulously crafted to squeeze out every climate denying, debt defying, corrupted and lying gag possible.
"It shows how much views are changing on sexuality." The cast of Blush on making a 'sexy adult circus' more subversive & inclusive
Some of the reviews we received had a bit of a stab at the male nudity, but not the female nudity, because Australian audiences especially are very used to women being sexualized in that way… And the success of the show sort of shows how much people are changing, like how much views are changing on sexuality.
Blush | Highwire Entertainment
This isn't one of the typical cabarets that tries to sell sexy as performers brushing past each other, femme figures as objects and same-sex desire as queer baiting. Blush makes the titillation of such shows seem like childhood flights of fancy. There is something truly for everyone here, with each performance celebrating love, lust, passion and desire in various forms.
Babushka Regifted | Babushka
Yet, underneath all the laughter, Babushka Regifted included a lot of great social commentary. They delved into love, despair, poverty, consent (sitting on Santa’s lap), and particularly feminism. Some memorable quotes include “a woman’s duty should not be stuck in kitchen”, “ovaries should not be stuck in the oven”, singing ‘We Three Queens’ instead of ‘We Three Kings’ following the Star, and singing from the ‘Hyrrs’ (Her) book instead of ‘Hymm’ (Him) book.
A Very Naughty Christmas | Woodward Productions
This is a clever, funny, adults-only burlesque-meets-musical-theatre. It isn’t high art, it won’t test your powers of concentration, and it’s probably not going to inspire social action—but it gets 5-stars from me. Sometimes we just need an enjoyable night out.