Somewhere between a house party in your queer cousin’s boudoir and a backstage fever dream, Madame Martha’s Parisian Cabaret delivers a night that is both intoxicatingly chaotic and strangely intimate. The setting itself feels alive, dimly lit with fairy lights and muted cloth lamps humming with possibility, all freshly perfumed with camp and mischief.
The production is tucked into a bordélique corner of Darlinghurst at the Old Fitz Theatre, a fitting location for a cabaret. This is not the sleek, satin coated Moulin Rogue of Paris, it’s a touch grittier and far more interesting.
You do not have to wonder for long why this production was crowned Best Cabaret at the 2024 Melbourne Fringe Festival. With creatives like Jens Radda, Lachlan Bartlett, and Meg Hickey delivering standout performances, the show is an incredible demonstration of their triple threat dancing, singing and acting. Throughout the evening, these creatives aim to please omnipresent invisible god-like Cabaret boss Miss Martha, who created the world in seven days and on the sixth created “cheap wine, Donald Trump, and privatised public transport.”
What followed was a swell of ensemble and solo performances, singing, dancing and acting through remixed versions of cult classics songs, the likes of Billie Eilish, Billie Joel, and a purely phonetic rendition of Edith Piaf’s ‘La Vie en Rose’. It had countless costumes changes, mid performance reveals, and enough sequin pasties to make your grand-mère blush. If you thought “this is gayer than Hugh Jackman in a feather boa” was hyperbole, think again. My jaw was on the floor to hear at the introduction that even “Fred Hollows couldn’t save your retina” from the incoming relentless shimmer of sequins, satin, and sexual innuendo. It’s raucous. It’s raw. It’s refreshingly unrehearsed in the best way.
Was it possible for me to hear more live accordion in one hour than I heard in six months living in Paris? Yes.
Some other questions I didn’t know I needed answered until this show:
- Will I be offered to smell the tuck tape of one of the performers? Yes.
- As a career front-row audience member, will I be lovingly mocked? Also yes.
A standout was the stirringly subversive number sung by Iva Rosebud, who channeled a kind of Tim Curry timbre in a haunting exploration of masculinity, slowly refrocking herself and removing her wig to don a masculine blouse. At once powerful and vulnerable, it lingered long after the feather boas had settled. It’s not often a show dares to swing from full frontal nudity to existential gender reflection and back again — but this one does, and it sticks the landing in thigh-high boots.