SYDFEST 2016 - MEOW MEOW THE LITTLE MERMAID
MEOW MEOW’S LITTLE MERMAID, at the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Sydney Festival; 8-23 January; Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse Melbourne 28 January-14 February; Perth International Arts Festival, Octagon Theatre UWA; 24-28 February 2016. Photography by Prudence Upton.
Pre-post-modern avant punk goddess Melissa Madden Gray aka Meow Meow is an extraordinary entertainer. She bowled over Sydney audiences in 2011 with The Little Match Girl and now has finally – through overwhelming international public and critical acclaim – been given a place in the last of Lieven Bertels’s festivals.
This show – apparently the second in a trilogy of “little” fairy tales – begins with the lovely but twisted melancholy of Black’s “Wonderful Life”, given a New Orleans funeral band treatment via the promenading Siren Effect Orchestra. (Musical direction by Jethro Woodward.) The song itself encapsulates what follows over 70 ridiculous, profound, magical, hilarious, moving minutes:
“Here I go out to sea again – The sunshine fills my hair – And dreams hang in the air – Gulls in the sky and in my blue eye – You know it feels unfair – There’s magic everywhere – Look at me standing – Here on my own again – Up straight in the sunshine – No need to run and hide – It’s a wonderful, wonderful life – No need to laugh and cry – It’s a wonderful, wonderful life …” and so on.
This show is, as described elsewhere, “rough theatre and high art” – you can take and make as much or as little from it as you choose. Created by Meow Meow, directed by Michael Kantor, with set and costume design by Anna Cordingley and lighting design by Paul Jackson it is a small carnival of delights ruled over by the irrepressibly sexy and irresistibly clever performer.
The audience is never quite sure whether the script and life are being adhered to or whether mayhem is real or engineered (comedy direction by Cal McCrystal). And when she is joined by a “worker” the blur between the worlds is disconcerting until he is revealed as the handsome and golden-voiced Chris Ryan.
Is there ever a happy ending in the search for love? Join Meow Meow on the journey and find out. A glorious and mind-expanding summer treat.
