CATHERINE ALCORN LIVE AT GINGERS
CATHERINE ALCORN LIVE AT GINGERS, Oxford Hotel, Oxford Street, Darlinghurst. 14 June 2026. Photography by John McRae. Content warning: I've worked with her, and I believe her to be a wickedly underrated talent
Budget? What budget? While the nation is fretting about franking credits and stage three tax cuts, a solution to this angst was right here, all along. Worrying might be all the rage, and yet we’re talking about how Catherine Alcorn just delivered what may be the most joyously, riotously, wickedly entertaining night Oxford Street has seen since, well, the last time Catherine played Oxford Street.
Priorities, people. The only fiscal concern right now is the very reasonable cost of tickets, wine, beer, and excellent food at Gingers, and even when the room is full to busting, with a QR code on each table, supplies can be summoned without leaving your seat. Actually, the only reason to do that is to dance your arse off when bid. Otherwise, Gingers is as pretty and authentic a cabaret room as hasn’t been since the heyday of the Cross.
And it’s exactly the room a performer like Alcorn deserves – intimate enough to feel like a secret, glamorous enough to feel like an occasion, and populated by an audience that arrived primed, ready, and not about to discuss the Medicare levy. Into this gorgeous place walked Alcorn, backed by a band so tight they should be declared a national structural necessity: Oliver Stanton on piano, navigating every stylistic turn with the serene confidence of a man who has been here before and enjoyed it enormously; Tina Harris on bass providing the kind of low-end power you feel somewhere exciting; Jack Powell on drums, keeping them honest and tasty; and Ned Koncar on guitar, adding colour, grit, sass, and moments of musical alchemy.
The first half – in which Catherine reworks the canon and improves it – began with a deliciously reworded When You’re Good to Mama, from Chicago. It set out the evening’s terms and conditions. This is Alcorn’s world, her happy place. We are living in it, and we are happy too.
Take Your Mama Out (a Scissor Sisters classic) bounced along with the kind of infectious, glittery energy that makes you want to ring your mother and apologise for everything, and Pink Ginger Club took Chappell Roan’s brilliant anthem and landed it like a perfectly aimed arrow to the heart.
Then the room held its breath as Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song, was quietly delivered through the one and only iOTA, who joined Alcorn as special guest and proved once again that he’s on a different plane. The arrangement was muscular and tender in equal measure, Cohen’s wry, weary grandeur given new oxygen by two performers who understand that great songs are not performed so much as inhabited.
The Alcorn-iOTA duet on Suzi Quatro’s Klondike Kate was a masterclass in controlled mayhem: two singers who trust each other, playing, pushing, and clearly having a magnificent time. And their new original, Isn’t It Time, closed the half with something genuinely surprising: a song that felt like it had always existed.
After refuelling and a warm-down, the second half opened, appropriately, with Elton’s The Bitch is Back and Alcorn wearing the song as if she’d had it tailored for the evening. The confidence of the band and its mistress became obvious in the “What do you want to hear?” that followed. Verses, fragments, teasers (John Farnham’s You’re The Voice, for instance). Dolly and Miley in a Jolene/Nothing Breaks Like a Heart family mashup was clever, the emotional register shifting beneath before we’d quite noticed it happening.
Blondie’s One Way or Another arrived with all its original menace restored, followed by Brandi Carlile’s The Joke – where Alcorn reminded everyone in the room why she’s a serious, considerable vocal talent. The song demands everything. She gave it everything and then, apparently having more in reserve, gave it a little more.
Dancing on My Own (Robyn) closed the set proper with the kind of communal, euphoric, slightly tearful energy that only the very best pop songs in the very best rooms can generate.
Encoring with Waterfalls. Of course, it had to be Waterfalls. Don’t go chasing them. We didn’t need to. Everything was right there, in the room, on our street, on the night.
Alcorn’s next show is July 24. Surprise guest still a surprise. Tickets via catherinealcorn.com. Commentators will still be commenting. But this is the cost-of-living and anxiety meds relief we need. Go. Get your tickets. You’re welcome.
