The Kransky Sisters

Mourne (Annie Lee), Eve (Christine Johnston) and Dawn (Carolyn Johns) are spinster sisters of the seriously dotty variety. Part gothic, part Church choir and part Country Women’s Association, their oddball humour is stirred with a touch of the Addams Family and more than a whisper of Barry Humphries, and the combination is whisked, baked and bedded in the Aussie outback. Theirs is a cloistered, macabre world of giant pumpkins, tea-stained and tear-stained gingham tablecloths, sheep dags, llama-shearing, scone baking, imbibing chiko rolls, rescuing scarcely breathing road kill and a trusty Morris Minor. Insular, scarily co-dependent and broiling with a scary, sexual frustration, their humour is as dry, cracked and fissured as Queensland earth blighted by drought.

It takes a few minutes to surrender to their madcap existence in Esk. These sisters are yesteryear relics; metric conversion and the social media revolution has passed them by. Mourne sets the scene with Eve echoing deranged fragments of whatever big sister says. Initially, I wondered if I’d still find the Kransky Sisters funny, as I’ve been to their shows several times. It didn’t help that the jokes were pinched and stilted at the start. Yet the trio’s persistence and marvellously sustained characterisations eventually won over a crowd that became a spluttering, chuckling mess.

Mourne can be syrupy sweet or hiss like a rattlesnake on the way to a Mardi Gras. Her merciless needling about younger sister Dawn – as if she isn’t there – sends shivers down the spine. Dawn is after all only a half-sister, courtesy of their uncle. ‘In Holland, it was freezing cold,’ says Mourne. ‘We sent Dawn outside to peel the onions for the stew. When she cried her eyelids froze. She couldn’t find her way home.’

In between the gags, double entendres, misremembered proverbs, jibing at Dawn and tales of the absurd, the sisters sing arrangements of relevant songs they ‘heard on the radio’. It’s a madcap band of bowed saw, percussive pots and pans, a toilet brush, a 60’s lap sized keyboard and a tuba. First up is a song ‘by the Queen’ which of course is ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ with all the syncopation ironed out. Forceful, harmonised explosions land on crazy words. What’s left of the lyrics turns into clipped dialogue woven into a slick, seamless rendition that for all the deadpan joshing takes considerable musical mettle to pull off. Johns is a brilliant tuba player who excels especially in ACDC’s ‘Highway to Hell’. Although Dawn never speaks, her eye-popping expressions are an ever changing vista of delight. In repose, the look is startled rabbit.

Cruising through the cabaret styled setting, Mourne and Eve become predators searching for victims for their audience participation segment. Four hapless men are dragged on stage, dressed in the uniform of spindly red necktie and polka dot shirt fastened to the neck, and told to sing. Lee is inspired in taunting her prey. The verdict is yes, the zany, quirky, deadpan magic of the sexually ravenous, sheltered sisters is still very much alive and great fun.

The Kransky Sisters
Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane
2 November