Meow Meow's Pandemonium

Meow has come a long way since her Sydney Festival shows in the Spiegeltent with a small band. Now she’s in the Opera House Concert Hall with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. 

Her frequent musical collaborator Iain Grandage is the conductor; harnessing the SSO’s power and intricate playing as much as its fun capacity to match Meow’s madly hilarious cabaret style.

A cousin surely of Dame Edna’s, Meow always appears mildly disappointed in us as an audience – even if with a long-lashed wink.  She it seems has to do everything, like bring her own (tiny) smoke-machine, even her own little revolve, the roses for us to throw at her and, when there’s no trapeze for the Act 1 climax, recruit us all to pass her over our heads.  Crowd surfing is her signature, wherever she is. 

Elegantly gowned and naughty, with her big black hair and English accent, Meow is hilariously inventive as she, seemingly, battles to run each act.  And she has a fine soaring voice to justify that orchestra.  She excels at Weimer and French songs, mixed with Radiohead, Gershwin and many more.  

Her encore is a lovely tender song (under her own torch as spotlight) about being careful of girls going stray, and yet she’s a riot doing different national versions of Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, with the orchestra leaping into the air with the last, Avant Garde Sydney Festival version. 

She stretches the show out with a lookalike drag alto ego (Kanen Breen) and the final late arrival of her raunchy dancing boys on crutches, but we’re all with her.  I’m a big fan.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Prudence Upton