THE BONDI FEAST : SOME EARLY HIGHLIGHTS

It’s certainly my idea of a cheap theatre menu. Tickets are $10-$20 and one can choose from delights sweet, spicy or salty.

First on my plate at BONDI FEAST?

STORY CLUB SOLO: ZOE NORTON LODGE, a storyteller who knows how to pull you straight from a wintery beach into the warmth of a loving family. Put your hand up who here is not my mother? Why are you here? She asks of the large audience show of hands … It’s really cold. More disturbing perhaps is the number of people who yell and raise arms to the question, Who here is my mother? Feels like a family.

And what a family! Not quite what we think a good Greek girl who grew up in leafy Annandale might be standing on stage talking about. Aberrant grandparents who hate each other, dodgy neighbours with whom to pull cones and a surprisingly coherent 2 and a half year old hell bent on ruling the pre-school.

Norton Lodge is a supreme raconteur. She has 2 musicians with her on this particular outing and Emily Irvine & Al Dente (Alyx Dennison) provide a guiding and interlocutory soundscape to four cleverly written and delivered stories of her life. The Story Club Australian (which she started with Ben Jenkins) is part of my own soundscape and it was deliciously sweet to see her live.

Spicing up the next cold night is a murder … a vicious, cold blooded, operatic murder. FANCY ME DEAD is the most fun you can have watching two divas battle it out ‘Friday nights on the ABC’ style. Cora and Dora are both of an interior design bent and their business is flailing. One is classic and one is colourful.

Enter a man … da da da dum. We never really see Manuel the Spanish intern but he is evidently the fly in this piquant soup of accusation and absurdity. .. a cabaret offering which is more who will do it than who dun it.

Jermaine Chau, Taryn Srhoj and the Sirius Chamber Ensemble appear to be having a great time as the very excitable potential murderesses manage to fill the stage with discarded fabric swatches, rolls of material and hurl-to-the-floor antics. One is so swept away with the fun of the story and the zesty genre bending that the superb singing and orchestration might slip by unnoticed. But this delicious confection is quality all the way.

There’s a quartet of desperate aspiration to limited quality in the salty titbit FOR LOVE OR MONEY. Served on a platter of leopard print, Ginger and Tonic’s badass business bitches just want … They don’t really know but they are frantically throwing everything at it. Singing, a Capella no less, dancing, one handed no less (the other holds a mic) and inspirationally Oprah-spouting, these four are hilarious. At one stage I threw my head back in laughter so violently I shook the whole row.

The understated brilliance is in the voices, beginning with an ‘Eye of the Tiger’ that just won’t let go! The comedy and the odd individual stories from clearly created and realised characters carry the show, but the rich blends where they get down from the sexy soprano to some cruel bass booming with multi-vocalism, rap and beatboxing and diction beyond words is the tasty tasty sweetmeat.

And the dancing … vagina led choreo and cygnet inspired moves, these BFFs are have a deceptively well-rehearsed presentation which rollicks along and my highlight of the BONDI FEAST so far. These chicks have sass and class.

The shows are quick and gone like salt on the tongue before the wash of tequila but keep an eye out for them in other places and have a look at the rest of the Feast offering to see what treats wait to be tasted.

Bondi Feast
http://bondifeast.com.au/
Zoe Norton Lodge – Story Club Solo
https://www.facebook.com/events/1898472073734554/
Fancy Me Dead
http://www.blushopera.com/fancy-me-dead
For Love or Money (Ginger and Tonic)
http://www.gingerandtonic.com.au/

For more about Titbits from the Bondi Feast, visit