This titillating variety show is positively spilling out of its corset with up-close and personal cabaret noir, neo-burlesque and freak show antics. A menacing mistress of ceremonies guides you through the ultimate night in entertainment, divulging your senses with live music, seductive circus and much, much more.
Wonderfully Terrible Things is taking to the Sydney Spiegeltent in Moore Park this January.
This naughty affair is created, produced and cheekily wrangled by seasoned cirque songstress Christine Ibrahim (who has worked under the pseudonyms Mesuline Wilde and Alysia Rose). She has assembled a world-class clique of intriguing and highly skilled performers who evoke wonderfully terrible feelings within anyone who bears witness to their crafts. Meanwhile, Ibrahim delivers hilarious, sensual and occasionally heartbreaking original songs and clever covers with extraordinary vocal prowess (you haven’t lived until you’ve seen an operatic performance of ‘WAP’).
If you’re at all squeamish about audience interaction, crass humour, nudity, fire-breathing, leather whips, proud sluts and expressions of sensuality from a range of beautiful bodies from across the gender spectrum – think twice. Or better yet, just strap in for the ride. Actually, a “safe word” wouldn’t have gone astray on the night we sat in – not even audience goers sitting towards the back of the 150-seat theatre were safe from being playfully, probingly questioned about their sex lives.
A content note, also, for references to reproductive rights, sexual violence and “women’s issues” in general. But boy, the mistress will have you singing along valiantly to lyrics like “I wish my c*nt was a gun” before the night is through. It’s a good time for those of us who long for those stolen evenings at Dracula’s cabaret restaurant on weekend jaunts to Melbourne (RIP).
The Spiegeltent-based line-up comes following a series of intimate shows performed at 5 Eliza – Newtown's artfully reimagined venue housed in the former Newtown School of Arts Library building – back in July 2023.
Wonderfully Terrible Things plays at Sydney Spiegeltent from January 17 until January 21. 18+ only. Tickets start at $69 and you can snap them up over here. Time Out readers can use the promo code WTT241 for a 2 for 1 discount.