Image: The Butterfly Club website
Comma Sutra is the perfect antidote to the English language carnage we witness every day through shonkily written ads, café menus and social media feeds. This cabaret is a punchy, tongue-in-cheek journey through life from the perspective of someone who’s just that little bit too enamoured with grammar.
Our protagonist, Louisa Fitzhardinge, is a textbook Grammar Nazi. A Grammar Nazi with a voice, charm and warmth that engages the audience from opening line to closing refrain. As soon as she emerges in a pair of punctuation-mark-covered stockings, we know we’re in for a wild ride through the intricacies of the English language. Accompanied by Rainer Pollard on piano, Fitzhardinge effortlessly sings us through the use and misuse of grammar and punctuation.
However, it soon becomes apparent that Fitzhardinge’s love of language is not confined to that of her native tongue; she’s an aficionado of French, German and even sign language.
Throughout this performance we learn about the difficulties of growing up with a penchant for correct spelling and an inability to abide a wrongly placed apostrophe. In her trademark sexy-nerdy style, Fitzhardinge describes the challenges of finding a suitor who will whisper (grammatically correct) sweet nothings in her ear.
Highlights of the performance include a surprising cover of Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used to Know,’ a German rap, and an astounding four-language mash up of ‘What a Wonderful World.’
Fitzhardinge seems at the same time immensely proud of her skills as a linguistic gymnast and defeatist about the possible use of not one, but two arts degrees in the quest for gainful employment (cabaret performance, it seems!)
As with many shows of this genre, the story appears largely autobiographical and features a healthy dose of the self-deprecating. It teeters but does not fall into the ‘pity pile’ that some performers sink into during solo performances. Fitzhardinge evokes the audience’s sympathy at key points in the piece, but counters this with sufficient wit and laugh-out-loud moments to maintain a light-hearted vibe throughout.
She cites her most influential piece of writing to date as a strongly worded letter to Myer, alerting the department store to a grammatical error on their window signage. In this delightful and engaging performance, Fitzhardinge likens the influence she wielded on Myer’s marketing team to that achieved by Dickens through his Great Expectations. We won’t argue with her there.
In a world of LOLs, excessive apostrophes and TL;DRs (too long; didn’t read!), Comma Sutra is a pleasant reprieve from the constant battering the English language receives through social media and the internet; a considered, entertaining and brilliant piece of work by an exceptionally talented Australian artist.
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5


Comma Sutra
Written and performed by: Louisa Fitzhardinge
Accompanied by: Rainer Pollard
The Butterfly Club
18-22 November
