Neon

There is a lot to be said about fashion and eighties pop songs, but who wants to sit around and chew on about a retro decade when you can saturate your senses at NEON, a great cabaret and Circus OZ rock show directed by Malia Walsh, currently in the Melba Spiegeltent, as part of the Melbourne Comedy festival.

The booming eighties was not just a Wall Street crash or a menacing political cold war; it was also about video killing the radio star and the much loved music prototypes such as Van Halen’s anthem song ‘Jump’, superbly morphed into clownish contortions and dancing acrobatics by the team, parodying David Lee Roth’s showmanship in the original music clip.

Neon is a satirical new glitzy show hosted by the queen of rock cabaret, the lusciously fiery, orange frizzy big hair Geraldine Quinn, along with her combustible cohorts from Circus Oz. They shake the house while paying a zany music tribute to the glamorous iconic fashion / music era of the bizarre and fabulous eighties.

The defining sounds of the era - and while the Walkman has passsed it’s used by date, it has cleverly been put to use with a rewinding medley of songs to the beat by Richard Sullivan’s juggling-trickster act. Hula Hoops might have been a sixties trend, but the phosphorescent Lisa Lottie redefines the magic hoop with acrobatic hula finesse to all round bad boy Billy Idol’s ‘Rebel Yell’. A wild and funny acrobatic parody to Robert Palmer’s   ‘Addicted To Love’ has the majestic Quinn performing a mean inflatable guitar solo.

‘Purple Rain’ (Prince) leaps into flowing aerial silks by the amazing Ian Richardson, while his drum break on acrobatic stilts to Phil Collins ‘In The Air Tonight’ has the crowd roaring with applause. The acrobatic duo Poppy Fairburn and Zion Martyn are a constant raucous physical delight, battling it out with sharp turns and crazed backflips in dripping pathos to Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’.

The hypnotic songstress Quinn - MC also offers a mind-blowing, rendition of David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’, that is spine chillingly magnificent. The costumes are retro bright, innovative and simply fantastic, designed by the original Sarah Seahorse, a highlighted fashion design feature of the show.  Lighting design is spectacularly luminescent and the backdrop set is a fantastic glimmering ghetto blaster.

I have only high praise for such a wonderfully entertaining feast of a show!

Flora Georgiou

Photography: Brig Bee (top) and Jason Lau (lower).