The Kransky Sisters
by Catherine Blanch

Returning for their second Adelaide Cabaret Festival after the success of We Don’t Have Husbands are those spinsters of music and comedy The Kransky Sisters. Once again Mourne, Eve and the reclusive almost forgotten sister Dawn, will share their darkly funny stories and uniquely homespun versions of popular tunes heard on the wireless. Their popularity has afforded them as extra night to present this year’s offering Three Bags Full.
Rip It Up speaks to eldest sister Mourne, who confesses her age to be a hair past a whisker – on the whisker side of things, and asks if there is a meaning behind the title.
“Oh well, we’ve got our bags full from travelling. Actually, I was just speaking to a young lad who was referring to us as bags but I didn’t understand what he was getting at. We weren’t carrying anything at the time.”
Where has your sister Arva gone?
“She’s joined the Hornbell Military Marching Band (HMMB). When we were at the Edinburgh Festival where we won some awards a couple of years ago, there was a Military Tattoo on at the same time. They were all playing brass instruments and wearing kilts. Arva was so taken by the band and kept disappearing to go watch the show. It wasn’t long after we got back home that she was exchanging sheet music with a member of the HMMB and before we knew it she got a job with the Army band. The food is free there.”
So now you have enlisted the services of your relatively unknown sister (to us) to take her place.
“Yes. For years Dawn has worked as a trolley librarian at the Esk hospital. She’s always lived in Mrs Evermore’s house (in her laundry) across the way ever since her and Arva returned from studying Tuba at the Toowoomba TAFE. Usually we would only see her on a Sunday when she would pop over for a roast dinner, but now she travels with us so we see her all the time.
“It’s going to be very nice to be in Adelaide again. It’s such a nice place to come down to and we can take our Morris out for a spin. There are a lot of people who do spins in Adelaide – young boys who hoon around. Their mother’s must be worried sick. Heavens!!!”
The Kransky Sisters will perform Three Bags Full at Adelaide Festival Centre’s Banquet Room at various times from Wed Jun 11 until Sun Jun 15. Book at BASS.

JEFF DUFF
by Robert Dunstan

Outrageous Sydney-based entertainer Jeff Duff is heading to town to take part in Adelaide Cabaret Festival with his show, Cooler Than Cool… Hotter Than Hell. It’s a show Jeff’s been doing for a while with the Ed Wilson Big Band – which features a 10-piece horn section - and he’s pleased that its now coming to Adelaide. We speak to Jeff over the telephone about Cooler Than Cool… Hotter Than Hell.
“It’s been two years since I was last there [with Ground Control To Frank Sinatra] and that was a lot of fun,” Duffo, as he was once known, says. “But Cooler Than Cool… Hotter Than Hell is a completely different thing because it’s such a huge wall of sound with the big band. I’d done an album of the same name with Ed Wilson a few years ago which was classic Australian pop songs done in the big band style. So it was stuff like Love Is In The Air, Men At Work’s Who Can It Be Now?, Sherbert’s Howzat! and even a Little River Band song and an Air Supply song.
“But they sound completely different,” he quickly adds. “It’s quite amazing.”
Trombonist Ed Wilson comes from the famous Daly-Wilson Big Band of the ‘70s which boasted such vocalists as Marcia Hines, Doug Parkinson, Kerrie Bidell and the late Ricky May.
“And now Ed’s got me,” Jeff laughs. “Ed’s about 62 or 63 now, but still loves playing.”
Wilson is also regarded as one of the best arrangers in the world.
“Yeah, so Ed has written some pretty challenging charts for everyone. But on drummer Andy Davis’ chart for Love Is In The Air, Ed has just written, ‘Play as fast as humanly possible’. And I’ve actually got Ed back into arranging songs and he’s even re-arranged Bowie’s Space Oddity as a swing number for me. And Ed is threatening to do a big band arrangement of Procul Harum’s A Whiter Shade Of Pale.”
Jeff is working on a new solo album – said to be a contemporary dance-style affair – but also features as a guest vocalist on a recently released blues rock affair by The Hoochie Coochie Men called Danger - White Men Dancing.
“I did that with some of the guys from Deep Purple,” Jeff surprisingly says. “Ian Gillan and Jon Lord are on it as well as [bass player] Bob Daisley [Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne and Gary Moore]. And even Jimmy Barnes sings a couple of songs.”
How did that come about?
“The manager of Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore had heard me singing at a concert down in Melbourne and said they were looking for a singer. So I ended up speaking to Bob Daisley who now lives north of Sydney and we recorded the album at his studio last year.
“I also did a gig with Bob Daisley in Sydney and it was really, really loud,” he then laughs. “We did Smoke On The Water and Hush together and it was the loudest thing I’ve ever done. I think Bob thought he was doing a huge stadium rather than a small club. But I think all those heavy rock guys are deaf these days.”
Pardon?
“I said, ‘I think all those heavy rock guys are deaf these days’. So that’s why they play so loud.”
Jeff Duff & The Daly Wilson Big Band will present Coller Than Cool… Hotter Than Hell at Adelaide Festival Centre’s Dunstan Playhouse on Wed Jun 11 and Thu Jun 12. Book at BASS.

The Burlesque Hour
by Catherine Blanch

Multi award winners The Burlesque Hour (TBH) have been travelling the world with their various and ever-changing productions and receiving rave reviews from critics and audiences alike. The brainchild of Jackie Smith and Moira Finucane, TBH are once again presenting a show at Adelaide Cabaret Festival called The Burlesque Hour… Sizzles!
Rip It Up speaks to Moira, the mistress of Grand Guignol (meaning graphic, amoral horror entertainment) about her latest mind-blowing production.
Have you performed Sizzles! before?
“No. The thing about TBH is that it keeps morphing and changing, and the wonderful thing about the show is that it’s our biggest line-up ever. Everywhere TBH goes we have a different guest star, but exclusively for Adelaide we’ve pulled out all stops and got a plethora of guests joining us.
“Gabi Barton and Carla Yamine of The Town Bikes have just returned from Paris and will perform some wild work with nunchuckers. Maude Davey is reprising her absolutely infamous and fabled strawberry act which she originally premiered in Melbourne’s underground clubs in the early 1990s - very few people have seen it but it is legendary. We also have the fabulous award winning Clare Bartholomew who does a beautiful male clown called Pierre! Magician and love machine!”
Is the show entirely new?
“There’s a mix of new and the old favourites. Returning is The Queen Of Hearts, The Red Velvet Bikini, Three Inch Spikes and One Hundred And Fifty Balloons.”
Will you be performing the act with all the blood?
“Yes, that one will be in there too [laughs]. There’s a very iconic piece that I’m doing that’s not been in TBH before which involves very hardcore techno and a coffee pot. Maude will premier two new pieces created especially for the European tour. The Italians gave it 10 standing ovations in one night and it was all over the national news in Slovenia, which was just fantastic.
“People who’ve seen the show before are in for an absolutely tasty treat, and those that haven’t should definitely come along. Leave your inhibitions at home, grab a glass of champagne and relax. The show runs the gamut from the breathtakingly moving to the absolutely silly and fabulous; old style and wildly contemporary. Every artist has their own individual take on Burlesque so audiences will always be taking a step onto the unknown.”
The Burlesque Hour performs Sizzles! at Adelaide Festival Centre’s Space Theatre at various times from Thu Jun 5 until Sun Jun 8. Book at BASS.

Intimate Apparel
by Catherine Blanch

Intimate Apparel stars Michael Dalley (Bigger Than Tina and Vaudeville X) and Paul McCarthy (Comedy Inc: The Late Shift and Totally Full Frontal) and takes a swipe at the poor deluded souls who try to get intimate with the paying theatre-going public. Nominated for three Victorian Green Room Awards, Intimate Apparel features an array of musical numbers that would make Noël Coward blush. After speaking to Michael, we understand why.
“We did this show at Melbourne Fringe Festival last year. The reviews were quite overwhelming considering this show is a parody of various post-modern and modern performance styles.
“The interesting thing is even those who aren’t privy to the world of performance really enjoyed it; they completely picked up on the parody and satire. I guess maybe they’ve seen things like bad gay and feminist theatre or even worse suburban theatre productions, all of which can make you cringe.”
What happens in the show?
“We play Kevin and Kevin, two asexual performance artists who have ridden every wave of new-art theatre from the ’80s onwards. We’ll meet the audience in Adelaide Festival Centre’s foyer and take them to a secret location where we’ll perform healing rituals in an attempt to mend the rift between punter and performer, because we know audiences are so damaged by years of bad theatre – as we all are [laughs]!”
How does the title apply to the show?
“There’s no lingerie to be seen [chuckles], instead we’re both wearing very unflattering boiler suits, goggles and masks. It’s more about creating intimate relationships between performer and audience, which can often end up very dysfunctional and quite funny.”
But, why wear overalls?
“It’s sort of the archetypal ’80s outfit but I guess the joke is that even though the show is called Intimate Apparel, we’re wearing protective gear. Although we’re getting intimate, we’re also getting highly defensive because if you put yourself at the mercy of the arts, you really need to protect yourself.
“There’s 12 songs in the play including Will You Still Love Me Despite My Lack Of Spatial Awareness? God We Were Amazing In The ’80s, How Do You Engage The Paying Public When You Can’t Engage The Lover In Your Bed? and Nobody Queer Wanted To Watch My Queer Performance Art. Some of the songs are pretty cruel [laughs], but my rule of satire is only send up someone if you’re willing to send up yourself.”
Intimate Apparel will be performing at a mystery location after meeting in Adelaide Festival Centre’s foyer at 7.45pm from Wed Jun 11 until Sat Jun 14. Book at BASS.

1927
by Catherine Blanch

Multi award winning UK theatre company 1927 specialise in combining performance and live music with film and animation in an innovative way of telling stories in the old silent film-type tradition. Think Tim Burton and David Lynch meets Brothers Grimm in a series of seriously fractured fairy tales with a Weimar cabaret twist. In an Australian premiere, 1927 are bringing to their first Adelaide Cabaret Festival the strangely beautiful Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea.
Rip It Up speaks to writer, director and performer Suzanne Andrade who is at home in Britain.
“We put this show together from a series of cabaret skits using film projections, piano score and strange stories. We’ve performed pieces of it in cabaret venues all over London and then we started piecing it together before taking it into a more traditional theatre context.
“From there we formed an hour-long show for the 2007 Edinburgh Festival where we had a really successful four weeks, completely sold out and won five theatre awards, which was great. It’s all gone a bit mad since then and the show has been booked for the next 18 months which includes Adelaide.”
“The whole show is set against a large screen where animations and films are projected while the actors interact with what’s happening on the screen. Paul Bill Barritt is the animator and set designer and has toiled with quite a long process of creating the images and then having to recreate them to suit the positions of the actors on stage. Luckily he’s very patient and doesn’t have a huge ego. He’s happy to make changes where they’re needed.”
Others involved in 1927 are Esme Appleton (performance, costume and design) and Lillian Henley (piano and musical composition). Would you call this a comedy piece?
“Yes, although some of the comedy is quite deadpan and dark, so some the audience responses vary between loud laughter to a more inward response – depending on the type of audience on the night.
“It’s definitely funny, quite satirical and has plenty of irony within ten short stories that tend to interlink. Although there is the combination of animation, film, music and acting, it all harks back to the simple naïve times of the 1920s making the whole combination quite original.”
1927 perform Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea at Adelaide Festival Centre’s Artspace at 7.30pm from Wed Jun 11 until Sat Jun 14. Book at BASS.