CHRISTMAS UNWRAPPED - a very Naughty Variety Show
CHRISTMAS UNWRAPPED: A Very Naughty Variety Show, Redline Productions at the Eternity Playhouse, 11-13 and 18-20 December 2025. Photography by Phil Erbacher
If you were at Gaga’s gig on Friday night, you missed a very special event: the first ever, and hopefully not last, Christmas Unwrapped: A Very Naughty Variety Show.
Directed by Blazey Best, the show is a non-stop 100 minutes of talent that’s both naughty and top of the line. And it’s a very high line. In a delicious setting of a giant glittery Chrissy tree, drapes, gift boxes, and lots of hanging baubles (Hailley Hunt), the theatre is lit in warm washes of colour (Brockman), and the minute Host Courtney Act sashays onstage, the night is off to an exhilarating start. She’s a star whose lightning wit has the audience either cackling or quaking; a fine singer, and is eye candy enough to fill a great big box. She may soon be available on Medicare.
Variety is said to be the spice of life, and it’s especially true when Nat’s What I Reckon is on the bill. He was a lifesaver during Covid lockdown when he advised “fuck jar sauce” and insisted on proper food. (His Bolognese ragu is the fucken best.) Since then, he’s become a household name, in discerning households, written books, done music and comedy and is a mental health ambassador. Basically, he’s a total fucken champion. To the Eternity, he brought a usefully hilarious Christmas gift guide for those on whom you don’t want to spend more than five bucks, and actually, it would be good if they fucken died before the day anyway. Nat is a brilliant original.
Next up: the divine Elanoa Rokobaro in satiny ballad mode, backed by a tight and tasty band of keyboards, drums, bass and musical director Glenn Moorhouse on guitars. The show’s singers are blessed to have this band behind them.
Magician Adam Mada didn’t need the band, but he did make use of members of the audience – in a glass of milk trick and another involving a helium balloon, a wine glass, a light globe, a small table draped with a small tablecloth, and Ms Act to help him somehow get it to float off by itself. You have to love a magician.
Variety has traditions, and Sydney variety has traditions of glamorous drag queens. For this show, it’s Hollywood Sun, and she’s a dazzling performer who conjures memories of the city’s pre-Priscilla heyday. Also raising lush memories is Hannah Raven. This time it’s burlesque, Mae West and all. Whether tassel-tossing or teasing some hapless audient, Raven is a vision in diminishing scarlet and contradictions, singing of wishing for a boob job for Christmas, and making saucy use of a snatch of “O, Fortuna!”
Unwrapped bit by bit as Courtney Act does her thing in between introducing each new performer, the evening zips by in a kaleidoscope of paradox, deep dives and laughter. Inevitably, out of that, in the dark, comes iOTA. Dressed in black garments of silly and serious, he sidles to the mic and begins a searing, soulful version of Leonard Cohen’s 1988 song “First We Take Manhattan” which begins, typically, “They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom.” Not on this night. It’s spellbinding.
Downstairs, after the show, drinks in Nick’s Bar (named for Nick Enright) and temporarily reassigned as Bar Humbug. It sort of sums up the disgracefully handled Eternity Playhouse in the hands of the City of Sydney. That billionaire body, which, since 2024, and with no help offered at all, has left it to independents such as Redline to give it occasional life.
Meanwhile, you have four more chances to catch the starriest and sassiest variety show Sydney’s seen in a long time. Do it.
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