Combo Fiasco/The Swing Band/The Twang Dynasty

By JOHN SHAND
The Sidney Morning Herlad

Time is fast running out for those yet to visit the Spiegeltent.

Its legacy will have been not so much the undoubted charm it brought to this town's music scene for six weeks, as the gaping hole it exposed. Sydney desperately needs a venue of comparable size and flexibility, presenting a similar range of cabaret, jazz and other musical exotica.

This night epitomised that range, with the stylish and wacky cabaret of Combo Fiasco (celebrating its 10th anniversary) followed by, firstly, George Washingmachine's String Band (a Hot Club de France homage), then his Twang Dynasty (a country swing extravaganza).

Cabaret's in and Combo's going

By FIONA SCOTT-NORMAN
The Age
January 23, 2004

It is blinding how quickly change can occur. Over the past nine months from when The Storeroom in North Fitzroy lost its cabaret room - Melbourne's cabaret landscape has undergone seismic alteration. The flurry of births, deaths, and transformations has been at a level usually reserved for a season finale of EastEnders.

Venues have changed hands like tazos in a schoolyard. In August, Matthew Grant, the founder and artistic director of The Butterfly Club in South Melbourne, handed over his eclectic cabaret venue to a consortium of four former customers, and the programming has changed completely. In November, the artistic director of Chapel Off Chapel in Prahran for eight years, Nancy Cato, quit her position, and in December, Paul Baden and Patrick Smyth left Capers in Hawthorn after running it as a cabaret venue for more than six years. The only designated cabaret venue to make it to 2004 without new management was The Kitten Club in Little Collins Street.

Meanwhile, experimental rooms and daring new players are popping up everywhere.

Life after Cato at the entertainment venue

By ROBIN USHER
The Age
January 20, 2004

The Prahran production venue, Chapel off Chapel, has endured the most tumultuous few months in its eight-year history, culminating in the departure of its founder, Nancy Cato, earlier this month.

But the chairman of the venue's interim board of management, Stonnington councillor Claude Ullin, is keen to stress that everything at the venue is operating as normal after a two-week closure for minor repairs and touch-ups.

"The changeover has not damaged us," he says. "The venue is fully booked except for a spot in March where an act dropped out. Tickets sales generally have actually increased."

Dolly Diamond

By JOEL CROTTY
The Age
February 2, 2004

Midsumma is a festival that re-connects and re-creates that sense of community by bringing back known performers. But at the same time it revitalises itself with new acts.

Known cabaret artists that are returning include Andrew Threlfall, Combo Fiasco, Kaye Sera, David Rogers-Smith and Peter Hurley.

Tina C/Enda Markey

By JOEL CROTTY
The Age
February 17, 2004

Tina C, (the creation of British comic Christopher Green) returned to Melbourne last week for a three-night stint at Chapel Off Chapel, and it was one of the best cabarets I've seen in a long while.

Kooky Tunes, Kabarett Voltaire

By JOHN SHAND
The Sydney Morning Herald
February 18, 2004

I'd never have believed it possible. The little Kabarett Voltaire stage had always seemed a densely populated piece of real estate with just a baby grand and one singer on it. Here it was accommodating the same piano and four singers doing dance steps.

Written by Keith Thompson, Kooky Tunes appeared in 1988...

The Burlesque Hour

By HILARY CRAMPTON
The Age
July 19, 2004

Moira Finucane, Azaria Universe and Yumi Umiumare deliver powerful performances, drawing on contemporary popular song, from the schmaltzy sob of love-gone-wrong, to hard-core thrash. The costumes range from extravagant gowns, to next-to-nothing; after all, as long as a girl has her pearls on, isn't that enough?

Stories Like Ours, Kabarett Voltaire

By JOHN SHAND
The Sydney Morning Herald
August 24, 2004

They are good at the fine art of being themselves on stage. Their show has been carefully scripted, without ironing out the scope for spontaneity, and the songs have been better integrated than they are in any of the welter of lame jukebox musicals.

Cabaret bizarre

By FIONA SCOTT-NORMAN
The Age
July 05, 2005

Moira Finucane creates a voluptuous Gothic wonderland in her new show.

Immaculate Confection

By JOHN SHAND
The Sydney Morning Herald
July 04, 2005

The future of music theatre and cabaret in Australia looks very rosy indeed, if Matthew Robinson and Lucy Durack are any guide.

La Clique a Sideshow Burlesque
by HILARY CRAMPTON for the Age

This show captures the celebratory and playful spirit of the festival, delivering high-class acts and below-the-belt-humour in equal measure ranging from voluptuously saucy to downright raunchy, combining elements of circus, vaudeville and Berliner Kabarett.

...

The breathtakingly beautiful, blond-haired, tanned Ceasar twins are a male acrobatic duo. They perform with skill and daredevilry in a circular arena not much bigger than a Chinese banquet table.

published: October 18, 2005

Chanteuse gets her Irish up
by PATRICK DONOVAN for the Age

"If you say cabaret, people think fishnet stockings, smoky bars, Liza Minnelli and Marlene Dietrich," she says in a sultry Irish brogue. "It's very easy for any woman to play that out. And I enjoy being the femme fatale, but I also like to turn it right on its head … I need to get rid of some devils on stage."

published: October 15, 2005