Cabaret - Bite Me Harder - The Arts Centre
You’ve only got three more days to check out Bite Me Harder , one of the best cabaret shows to ever come out of Melbourne in recent years. It’s wickedly entertaining, hysterically funny and chock full of vulgarity. You’ll see the kind of arts that you had thought were completely lost in the mists of time, and revel in the practices you’ve always found abhorrent. It’s part burlesque theatre, part circus, and two parts smutty comedy club. Yes, this is everything that good cabaret should be.
Bite Me Harder stars Yana Alana, the character creation amazingly talented Sarah Ward (who you might know as MC Sheila from comedy duo SistaShe). She looks like a cross between Snow White and a dominatrix. She performs ventriquilism, vicious poetry, and awesome biting comedy with precision timing and flawless delivery that makes it all seem so authentic. She has an incredible range on that singing voice of hers.
She also beautifully resurrects the lost arts of diva-ism, tantrum throwing and cast intimidation. She clashes with her other on stage companions in her ditch effort to be the star of the show. She is such a bitch to the rest of the people she shares a stage with, but still you can’t help and root for her. It’s wonderful to watch.
Starring along side her are an equally multi-talented all-girl band The Paranas. Together with dance duo the Town Bikes, they create a twisted vision of life that is utterly captivating. Theirs is a world that is lost in time, where anything can happen. Yana weaves stories beautifully, sometimes even silently, making you hang intently on her every word and gesture. There are stories about love, life and relationships. There are songs about tram conductors, Young Liberals and the notion of Australian celebrity. And then there are the songs about her pussy.
The language and the stories will shock you as much as the circus-like acts that take place on stage. But that is the point. And none of it is vulgar for the sake of it. On the contrary, this show and its content is very intelligent and clever. It’s what you came to see, and it’s done so much better than you could ever have expected.
The strength of this show comes from an exceptionally talented cast and the exquisite attention detail that is apparent not just in the foreground where all the action is, but in the background and the sidelines too. Some intelligent and carefully crafted directorial decisions have made even the most ordinary moments, extraordinary. Director Anni Davey has done a wonderful job taking this already winning show up a notch to the next level.
There’s never a moment wasted in the show – there’s always something happening, whether it be Yana on stage eating a banana or preparing to do her big number, or the Town Bikes backstage bitching about her.
What isn’t said is just as important as what is, and everything is open to getting turned on its head. At one point the drummer does an amazing drum solo sideways, floating in the air meters above the stage against a wall.
Big bold gestures and wild costumes are cleverly woven with subtleties of human behaviour. The threatrical fabric this cast creates is a testament to the many unseen hours they have put in, and their dedication to creating something genuine. Bite Me was the winner of the 2007 Melbourne Fringe Cabaret Award. It was nominated for seven Green Room Awards in 2008, as well as winning Best Director. It’s not hard to see why they won all these awards, and are destined to win more. Bite Me Harder is the expression of a very unique working relationship between the cast and its director.
Bite Me Harder is utterly brilliant and presented by the Full Tilt initiative which supports works by the brightest and most daring independent performance artists from around the country. I can’t wait to see what else comes out of the Full Tilt incubator. In the mean time, don’t miss Bite Me Harder, or you will regret it.
Bite Me Harder plays at the Fairfax Studio at The Arts Centre until July 26. Click here for more information.
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