Enter Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes rollercoaster and experience flamboyance, provocation, and utter absurdity – all with a powerful undercurrent of pensive reflection beneath its glittering exterior.
From the moment Meow Meow is dragged onto onstage, the performance announces itself as unapologetically theatrical. The cabaret elements are the driving force— a self-referential comedy, playful defiance of convention, and a sense that the audience is being invited not just to watch but to participate in the menage a toi (or donate a handbag for the communist effort).
The production is loosely based around the retelling of The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen but is intercepted by Meow Meow’s ‘catharting’ (catharsis – but only her for) and the film noir tale of a showgirl and her faun. Once you know where the show is taking you, its completely changed direction.
Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes. Photography Brett Boardman.
Meow Meow’s stage presence is a formidable instrument. She is brash and declarative one moment, then unexpectedly fragile the next. Songs drift between irony and sincerity, literary observations and silliness, sometimes within the same verse, and the tonal shifts keep the audience alert. Not to mention the unexpected arrivals from the fridge and the heavens.
What is equally as striking is the immense musical talent of the ensemble. The operatic vocal ranges, and multi-instrument musicians are equally as surprising. Kanen Breen as the faun/Hans Christian Anderson is a force to be reckoned with.
Visually, the production is multilayered and packed with secrets. There is a small joy in the plastic and curtains being slowly unfolded to reveal the fairytale land. The only set piece – a pile of ‘junk’ – contains its own surprises and activations.
Leaving the theatre, you will feel entertained but also gently unsettled — in a good way. Meow Meow’s Red Shoes doesn’t aim to comfort. Instead, it invites reflection on our burning capitalist trash heap and the sinister musings of Hans Christian Anderson… but also the MAGIC of PERFORMANCE and THEATRE. For a Perth Festival audience, it feels like a fitting offering: bold, intelligent, and just a little bit absurd.