Angelique Cassimatis is brilliant, dangerous, and empowering. In this one-woman show she takes the audience on an hour long journey through the stories of six women as they deal with love, tragedy, and death.
Cassimatis is extraordinarily talented, utterly owning the characters she creates, each one with their own motivations for the actions they commit, and the production as a whole is a knock-out. Amy Campbell’s choreography is beautiful and flowing, and Cassimatis utilises it elegantly, ensuring smoothly flowing scene changes which allow for creative costume and character changes. Her singing, accents, and comedic timing are fine-tuned, and ably supported by musical director Lucy Bermingham and four musicians playing piano, percussion, bass guitar, and acoustic/electric guitar.
The show starts off with Cassimatis telling the story of a southern American housewife who shoots her husband with his shotgun in frustration, saying ‘His brains looked bigger on the wall’. Brilliant lyrics are intertwined throughout the whole performance, and foreshadowing is tastefully delivered in a subtle way.
As the performance progresses, the audience is immersed in the lives of a New Yorker’s wife who gets tangled in the business machinations of a mob, an awkward all-American stalker who takes a liking to her beau’s painting, an Eastern European sex slave who loses the only man who’s ever loved her, a jealous little girl who tries to help her parents raise her baby brother, and a young Jewish woman who has a proclivity for cooking with rat poison.
Guilty Pleasures features a refreshing variety of musical styles, allowing for a unique twist that is uncommon in most modern musicals. In covering the lives of these women, its themes range from naïvety to domestic abuse and even cold-hearted revenge, but one thing is constant throughout: strong women who are not afraid to take control of their own destiny. It’s a breath of fresh air.
Following performances in Melbourne and Sydney, Brisbane is lucky to have been chosen as the next location to host this show. It will be interesting to see where Guilty Pleasures goes next. Its further success will depend on eager audiences, but seeing as the audience gave Cassimatis a standing ovation on opening night, its clear Brisbane at least is in awe of this truly amazing performance.
Rating: 5 stars out of 5Guilty Pleasures
Presented by Blue Saint Productions
Writer: Josh Robson
Composer: Robert Tripolino
Lyricist: Hugo Chiarella
Musical Director: Lucy Bermingham
Choreographer: Amy Campbell
Cast: Angelique Cassimatis
Brisbane Powerhouse, New Farm
21 – 25 October 2015
