Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 8 Jun 2024
Standing ovation.
Fascinating Aida must be used to it by now. They are world-travelling super smarty-pants old-school satirists - and they come to the Cabaret Festival like a zephyr of diabolical eloquence.
These are erudite women, masters of their own dastardly lyrics, all three of them endowed with musical skills and showbiz chutzpah. One could fret about pronouns (as one does so much these days) but the Fascinating Aidas describe themselves as “queens”, albeit with mellifluously androgynous vocal range. They are hats-off fabulous, although perhaps not the entertainment fare for people not up with the zeitgeist of today, tomorrow, and yesterday. Their references are wildly catholic and their targets met, bullseye, with a silver arrow.
They are Dillie Keane, Adele Anderson and Liza Pulman with newish chum accompanist Michael Roulston. For forty years Dillie and Adele have been at it with Liza a mere twenty. She’s the young one, lithe and high soprano.
They laugh in the face of the ghastly aging process singing that we are next in line and what a mess we’ve made of the world for the next generation and, by the way, we haven’t finished.
Their songs are expertly arranged, their harmonies tried and true, their self-written lyrics ever full of surprises for those not au fait with their work. Some songs such as Cheap Flights have been out online for seeming aeons and were among the entertaining comforts we all sourced during Covid lockdown. It is joy to hear it live as their encore.
Oh, the fun they have with a poke to provoke the woke. Oh, how silly they are in the botox send-up. Of course We Go Dogging is beyond risqué, but the Fascinatings are not the market for shy prudes or, for that matter, right wingers. Their bring-down of Trump brings the house down.
They’re comic bliss on steroids. They are Lehrer-esque with non-binary bells on.
If only their season could have gone on and on. One would have seen them again just in case one missed a glorious word.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 9 Jun
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
