MADAME MARTHA'S AFTER DARK
Madame Martha’s After Dark: The Parisian Cabaret, Old Fitz, (9.15pm), 27 May-8 June 2025. Photography by Solitude & Co
As all good Parisian cabarets should, Madame Martha’s starts with “In the beginning …” and a brief resumé of God’s plan – what She has in mind for us, that is. It’s reassuring to know we’re in such good hands as well as those of éminence grise Jens Rodda, with collaborators Iva Rosebud and Meg Hickey.
Playing on the lightly disguised set of the current main show, Mary Jane (see review here, please don’t miss it), Madame Martha’s is a potpourri of sources, origins, and influences. It’s an award-winning show and arrives with clanking gongs from Melbourne and Adelaide festivals as well as sold-out signs from across the civilised world.
Madame Martha's features tantalising mash-ups of of musics including Bizet’s Carmen and her steamy “L'amour est un oiseau rebelle” – or “Habanera” if you prefer; there’s the melancholy of Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose”; the heart-beat moves of Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy”, Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love” that actually sounds better in this show because it’s reminiscent of Madeleine Peyroux’s sultry version. And so it goes.
Bryn Meredith’s constant parade of costumes is shimmery, glamorous, nicely tawdry, and mostly witty; in keeping with lighting designer Megan Heferen’s successful tussle with the in situ lighting set-up. The colour palette and shadows created for the three beautiful bodies – long legs, graceful hands, Michelangelo-smooth torsos, pert buttocks, and perky breasts – conjure up memories of Fassbinder’s avant-grunge, ultra-sexy Querelle. If you’ve brought in a glass of wine from the bar, you’ll want to drink up.
The nods to Montmartre and Berlin cabaret traditions mean Madame Martha’s is both trashy and glamorous. Drag and burlesque combine with a delicious-looking baguette, which, sadly, goes to someone in the front row. Music is recorded and played live with Jens Radda on electronic keyboard providing drama and lush major chords, Meg Hickey making much of the button side of her piano accordion, and Iva Rosebud singing like a fallen angel (”What Is A Man?”).
The best of old-style cabaret can transport the audience to places of dreams and secret aspiration, where anything goes and sometimes comes. Madame Martha is the chatelaine of just such a joint. (She doesn’t appear and is quite likely a figment of someone’s imagination.) For just 60 minutes, another world, another time, another place, another life are magicked into being. Our brief escape from the everyday is tinged with melancholy as well as fairy-flossed with laughter.
I should probably say that if your heart or sensibilities could have conniptions at the sight of gorgeous bare bodies and a fabulously naughty strip number complete with penis, then Madame Martha’s might not be for you. For everyone else, it’s a rare and delicious treat that will warm your cockles and tickle your fancy no end.
And speaking of delicious treats: the Old Fitz Theatre and the Old Fitz pub are combining to offer a $45 two-course, or $55 x 3 three-course pre-show dinner in the upstairs eatery. The menu (choose from three starters, main courses, and desserts) is irresistible unless you’re on Ozempic, in which case, who cares. Only for theatre ticket holders (Wednesday - Saturday, selected shows). Five bucks from each patron goes to the theatre. A great deal all round.
