It’s quite a splendid affair chatting with cabaret chanteuse Meow Meow. Hers is a seductive wit, and her banter bubbly (with just a touch of decadence).
When I speak to the world-touring artist she is en route to an early-morning rehearsal in preparation for Meow Meow’s Little Mermaid at Sydney Festival, having recently wrapped a long performance run in Boston and now neck-deep in Seven Deadly Sins for the Victorian Opera. It seems there’s rarely a dull moment for Meow Meow, though despite her current proximity to vice, establishing her own favourite sin is no simple task.
“Oh, I wish I could give you a quick answer to that, but because it’s an ironic treatment of these vices it actually subverts your expectations of what those vices are,” Meow Meow explains as she flings herself into an Uber. “And it’s pretty bleak, I have to say; there’s no pleasure to be had. From the start of the journey, these sisters are prostituting themselves to survive, basically. It’s the capitalist dream. So it’s not a joyous exploration of the sins. It’s a journey that just goes deeper and deeper, and I forget while I’m performing – because I love it so much, and love Kurt Weill’s music – that it is such an intense and political piece. They’re quite intense to perform, because the world vision is so brutal.
“I guess when I’m approaching The Little Mermaid, I’m trying to slip between brutality and sensuality. They’re good ways of getting into people’s hearts. So I couldn’t say I have a favourite sin. I’m just awash with them.” Meow Meow has become somewhat synonymous (sin-ominous, perhaps?) with debauched and damaged characters. Damaged not in the sense of being fatally flawed or deranged, but in that there is some shard of their personality that needs redemption or reassurance; something gregarious yet troubled. Though she’s naturally quite a flamboyant figure, you can’t help but ponder her difficulty in slipping into the skin of such creations, and of course, sliding back into her everyday life once the curtain has closed.
“I never really step out of my performing skin, I suppose. I think we all perform all the time, and I’m perhaps just more honest about it,” she laughs. “I like performing in that more heightened way, because you’re not pretending to be normal. I think it’s all costume, it’s all pretend. So there’s a freedom in living in a heightened way both on and offstage. It’s very honest, I think.
“I like the profile pieces where you need to be reintegrated afterwards, because the world there is so dark. At the end of Shakespeare there’s often a dance or celebration to bring the audience some catharsis. Something that brings them out in some ritualistic way, that you show or emote for them yourself. You take them with you. The ‘If we have offended…’ speech. There’s something that features through the history of theatre and performance – you want to have taken people on this journey, you want them to be thinking and feeling, but you also don’t want to send them out so disorientated or broken that they can’t engage. The whole idea is to be able to go out again with new strength into the viciousness of the world. I really do think that’s the artist’s job. However light or deep it is, that’s what you want to do.”
Little Mermaid comes with some notable expectations. In addition to Meow Meow’s usual verve and stagecraft is the knowledge that Meow Meow’s Little Match Girl (which began the trilogy that Mermaid continues) won three Helpmann Awards, including Best Cabaret Performer for Meow Meow herself. It promises to be a rare, dark and enthralling delight, based at least in part on real-world observations and experiences.
“I think you always bring that on,” she says. “It doesn’t mean you have to physically experience something to perform it. I think across all of my work, that comes out in my songwriting and in the topics I’m interested in. With The Little Match Girl, I was very influenced by a documentary I saw of Oasis, the Salvation Army sanctuary in Sydney for homeless kids. That really influenced a lot of what I was writing. Similarly, I’m feeling very affected by what I’m seeing in the world right now when I think of The Little Mermaid story. You can’t help it. In my offstage life I’ve had a lot of grief in the last few years, and it changes you, of course. As much as I’m super heightened onstage, it’s a super honest performance, and I think you still need to keep it based in craft. You can’t make it all into therapy, to be indulgent in that way.
“I’m always trying to provide simultaneous assault of the serious, the light, the beauty, the destruction. And you can’t always guarantee what the audience will perceive as beautiful or ruinous. It’s a juggle. You’re trying to solve the problems of the world in 70 minutes, and you have to come in with grandiose expectations, because what’s the point otherwise? It’s ridiculous, and you’re aware of your ridiculousness. But if you’re not invested, then it is an indulgence. Music is the key all the time, I think. That’s the healing balm.”
Meow Meow’s Little Mermaid hits the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent on Wednesday January 6 and runs through to Saturday January 23. More information is available on the Sydney Festival website, here.
