A Storm in a D Cup

Amelia Ryan is all ringlets and sparkle as she presents her one-woman show.

Ryan, a 2012 Australian Cabaret Showcase Prize Winner, is a generous performer who invests great energy and passion into this performance. The show begins with the childhood discovery that her father is gay, and his relationship with a transgender step-mother, before we are led through a litany of personal mishaps, parking fines, driving debacles, pole dancing injuries, romantic exploits and physical ailments.

The witty songs, penned to the familiar strains of well-known show tunes and popular songs, are densely written with a generous serve of expletives, and masterfully accompanied on piano by Cameron Thomas.

The Butterfly Club, one of Melbourne’s more eccentric venues, is a narrow space with room for about 60 patrons, and Ryan does well to connect with the crowd, some of whom are enlisted to contribute during the show.

A change of pace later in the performance could have brought the show to a stop, but it is a credit to Ryan that the dramatic buoyancy was maintained before the final frivolous fling. 

While Ryan is an undoubted talent, this show’s basic problem is that the material is so narrowly limited to the writer’s experience, leaving an impression of self-obsession. Theatre is never fully removed from life, and it was unfortunate that the “storm” metaphor and several references to “Dorothy“ and “the rainbow” were in full flight on the day of the horrific Oklahoma tornado. Personal disappointment must be put into perspective in the face of such a catastrophe.

A Storm in a D Cupruns for 90 minutes without interval.

Lucy Graham