Beer Drinking Woman

Image by Arianna Bosi. 

Themed cabaret shows with a confident performer and the courage to take risks are pure delight.  Beer Drinking Woman fits firmly in this category, with its clear mission to showcase the highs and lows of wine, beer, whiskey and a nationalistic celebration of goon. While the classic cabaret song list provides many titles that touch on some of these topics, Christa Hughes is thorough in her preparation and only selects those which have the most potential for thorough debauchery as well as providing her own honest contributions, through original songs and modified lyrics.

As ever, the venue’s cosiness works both for and against it, but the performers are aware and keep things simple in terms of lines of sight. Hughes’ venture out among the tables with her ‘Child Prodigy’ piano accordion works far better than it should, her stylish grace while moving through the awkward layout impressing right until the last moment of return to stage.

The dynamic between the pianist and singer plays well. Leonie Cohen’s relatively subdued manner contrasts nicely against Hughes’s antics, but Hughes in turn respects the skills of her accompanist by allowing the audience to pay attention to instrumental breaks, the sparkling keys given full measure by Hughes pausing and not hogging the stage throughout.

Highlights include the clever change to lyrics of familiar tunes, providing her own cheeky list of ‘Favourite Things’ complete with a Julie Andrews-worthy rousing finish and moving from a drawl perfect patter opening to ‘Is That All There Is?’ through several increasingly original and entertaining verses that bring the laughs. Many original songs by Hughes are sprinkled through the set, ‘Pig Flu Blues’ featuring retro vocals courtesy of a megaphone and eyebrow-raising references to all sorts of ‘pigs’, ‘The Stink of Desperation’ ringing far too true to not be partly autobiographical and ‘Whisky Trail’ a rollicking number that deserves to be covered in many more cabaret shows.  Hughes is no egomaniac, however, and encourages a spontaneous audience singalong to ‘Cheap Wine’.

Beyond the songs, an extended lipsyncing demonstration accompanied by a dizzying number of cheesy lines about alcohol from movies covering nearly a century of cinema, sees Hughes bouncing from part to part: male, female, high, low, tipsy, sober, sloshed… an impressive feat of memory, physical control and comedic timing.

Comedy aside, Hughes impresses with her sheer vocal talent, with the shine on her ringing notes, her sultry croon drawing us in, and the most snorting I’ve seen on a non-pantomime stage. The continued immoderate consumption of various tipples throughout the show more than lives up to the title song’s sobriquet.

Entertaining, not too shocking, avant-garde or even original, but so well presented and with such sympathetic delivery that it doesn’t matter.