Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2013

Presented by Tommy Bradson and Adelaide Cabaret Festival

At last year’s Cabaret Festival Tommy stormed the Artspace with his one-man show The Men My Mother Loved.

This year he pays tribute to Australian stage legend Reg Livermore with a retrospective on his illustrious career.  From The Betty Blokk Buster Folliesto Firing Squad Tommy will revisit all your favourite feared and revered characters with musical numbers from Reg’s acclaimed catalogue of solos shows.

Also featuring the music of Elton John, Leo Sayer, Billy Joel and The Kinks this nostalgic trip down Reg Livermore lane will make you laugh, cry, clap your hands, stamp your feet, thrill to his music and chill to your bones.

Musical Director John Thorn

Dramaturg and Choreographer Sheridan Harbridge

Get tix here

THREE SHOWS ONLY!!!

7th JUNE @ 6PM

8th JUNE @ 230PM & 630PM

Trotting around Northcote Town Hall in a pair of yellow heels and green printed dress with fat suit underneath, Tommy Bradson looks comfortable.

He’s used to it, of course – his latest cabaret show, Sweet Sixteen or the Birthday Party Massacre, is the third in which he dresses in drag. Bradson plays June Whitlam, the harried mother of Lula, guest of honour at the sweet sixteenth.

He also plays June’s third husband and Lula’s stepfather, the beer-chugging Garry, and Johnny, Lula’s unfaithful boyfriend.

”The show is an homage to my domestic upbringing,” says Bradson, a Sydney nativSet in the 1960s, it’s a story of ”big Aussie families and barbecues and only seeing people three times a year”. Inspired by the nostalgic glow of old family photos, Bradson says he wanted to capture the colour, music and attitudes of that period.

”It can be quite racist and homophobic – and fearful of all these things – and yet welcoming of everyone at the same time.”

It’s not the first time Bradson has explored the theme of family. He was born in New York to a Spanish painter father and Irish musician mother, who returned here after their honeymoon. Last year he recounted, in semi-autobiographical fashion, the dalliances of his rock groupie mum in The Men My Mother Loved.

First and foremost, Sweet Sixteen is a rock’n'roll show, with Bradson performing songs from Elvis Presley, Wanda Jackson and the Kinks, among others.

Audience members, too, will be recruited to play various guests at the party, though Bradson insists it’s nothing to be fearful of.

by Annabel Ross for The Age

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by Celeste Macleod for Inpress

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Award-winning theatrical-cabaret performer Tommy Bradson has multiple talents and personalities. With an open invite into the Whitlam home and Lula’s surprise party, family members are found within the audience trying to avoid another obligatory family gathering – but goes anyway!
Parties in the ‘60s means short dresses, short shorts, free-flowing beer, pig-on-the-spit and a jukebox of songs to take you back to when. Mother June manically practices her surprises, searches for the missing fairy bread and breaks your heart with Cry Me A River. Gary is drunk, crude and full of lame Dad Jokes. The unfaithful boyfriend can’t stay but belts out Be Bop A Lula in a declaration of love and Lula couldn’t be happier with her surprise.
Accompanied by his three-piece band, Bradson rocks the stage as all four characters with unbelievable ease and a tirade of euphemisms and metaphors that will blow your mind. Talented, frantic, emotional and endearing; a must-see!

review by Catherine Blanch for Rip It Up

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How best to write about a show in which you were pulled up on stage for? Of course, it radically changes the way you perceive the show: vast chunks of it get sieved through thoughts preoccupied with “what is my face doing” and “will I be asked to strip naked.” Even when these sections are over, and you’re back down in the relative safety of your seat, the rest of the show becomes somewhat blurrier.

It’s not quite a feeling of adrenalin. Or, maybe it is, an uncomfortable adrenalin you don’t know how to place. “Did I really just do that?” you think, when, of course, you didn’t really just do anything at all, but stand on stage and over-think every action you could possibly do with your body and try desperately not to laugh – from nerves, more than anything else – while a young man in white stage makeup and panda eyes of blue eye shadow stares into your face, and speaks of that time you striped naked in front of him, diving into the clear pool water under the moonlit sky and he found himself in love with you, and then he sings.

In Tommy Bradson’s Sweet Sixteen or the Birthday Party Massacre we’ve been gathered for Lula Whitlam’s surprise sixteenth birthday party. In the Campanile Tent at the Garden of Unearthly Delights, the audience starts the night looking upon the birthday table at the foot of the stage. By the end of the night, more than half the audience surrounds the table  – Bradson brought us up in a collection of uncles, cousins, and friends. The lolly bananas, party hats, and party poppers are shared freely, as several of us crack open a beer.

Bradson slowly introduces us to Lula, first through her mother, then her father, then her boyfriend. The jokes they crack are often crude and almost exclusively uncomfortable – the discomfort only heightened by the familial setting the audience is asked to take on around the party table. A persona of politeness is assumed. A relationship established between you and these people, you feel your judgment must now come through sideways eye glances and giggles of disbelief – there is no reason to provoke a family brawl.

And yet through these jokes, often vulgar and best and highly offensive at worst, Bradson is surprisingly charming. Or do I just think that because he told me he was in love with me?

Accompanied with a band led by the boredest looking keyboardist in Adelaide show business, Matthew Carey, Bradson croons his way through old rock songs, constantly playing with that balance of holding his audience in the palm of one hand, and slightly repelling them with the other.

At the end of the show, Happy Birthday! wished to Lula, we’re released into the night air. Somewhat giddy on birthday party excitement, and reliving those moments on stage now only seen through a haze. Everyone loves a birthday party, and despite the odds, the Whitlam’s throw a good one.

by Jane Howard

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Australia’s suburban culture is a frequent target for parody, which means it takes something special for it to stand head and shoulders above the rest. “Tommy Bradson – Sweet Sixteen or the Birthday Party Massacre” certainly does that.

Think Kath & Kim meets John Waters – the US writer/director of “Hairspray” and “Pink Flamingos”, not the Australian performer – and given a healthy hit of backyard methamphetamine.

Bradson takes on four roles in this suburban birthday celebration at the Whitlam house (pig on the spit, cheese cubes, Coolabah casks in both red and white): the hostess, June; her lacklustre husband Garry; the birthday girl, Lula; and her boyfriend, Johnny – all of whom talk almost non-stop, a wonderful poetic barrage of exposition both insightful and inflammatory. You have to listen carefully, but it’s worth it.

His characterisations are nothing short of astonishing; at one point I had to remind myself that they were all being played by the one performer.

The wacky, tacky Whitlam family’s rapid-fire commentary is hilarious enough to make a show of its own, but Bradson doesn’t stop there, breaking into song throughout – and he’s got a hell of a voice, alternating between gravelly rock/blues numbers and crooner tunes. In this he’s backed by a great three-piece band: ubiquitous cabaret maestro Matthew Carey on keys, Sam Leske on guitar and Holly Thomas on drums.

It is coarse, vulgar and offensive to just about everyone – while at the same time outrageously funny and fiendishly clever; a truly gifted performer in a brilliant, unique show.

5 stars

review by Jamie Wright for Adelaide Theatre Guide

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Those fossils old enough to remember the cabaret heyday of Reg Livermore are likely to find a resonant nostalgia in Tommy Bradson. But while Reg played an unbelievably solid eight-month season at the Balmain Bijou in 1975, with Bradson it’s a case of ‘where’ve you been all our theatrical lives?’ We like to think of ourselves, I suppose, as increasingly sophisticated and permissive, yet Reg was rockin’ ‘n’ shockin’ the mainstream in a way that’s rarely possible today. So, in short, we’re bloody lucky to have Bradson and Sweet Sixteen (or The Birthday Party Massacre).

It’s a typical outer suburban scene. Or what once was.Garry’s getting progressively pissed. Actually, he’s pissed already, which probably explains why the pig roasting on the spit turns out ‘as black as a Townsville Abo’. That’s right. If you’re uncomfortable with gross political incorrectness, this may not be the show for you. Then again, if you don’t understand that when it’s pushed to and past the limit, it’s ironic, you shouldn’t be there in any event.

June, Garry’s wife, is practicing her ‘surprise!’s, anxiously rushing around, making sure all the loose ends aren’t. She flies into a panic when she realises there’s no fairy bread. I mean, what’s a party, without fairy bread? (Though I’m a bit surprised she wasn’t more concerned about little boys.) Realising there’s no bread, or fairies, she charges off to the shops. Which affords time for us to meet the rest of the family, many of which have been recruited from the audience, including the critic from the SMH, who’s more or less pressed into drinking cask wine. Still, he needs it, ’cause his wife just ran off with a wog.’ Well, not him. But the character foist upon him. The cultural milieu, I s’pose, must’ve come some way, after all: back in the day, the SMH refused to send a critic to Betty Blokk Buster, saying ‘we don’t review drag shows’. Like Betty, June and family cultivate some colourful language.

The party’s in honour of (Be Bop A) Lula, a come-of-age, corkscrew-curled, bottle blonde who wears way too much makeup, but precious little self-esteem. By the time she arrives, it’s all gone horribly wrong. Everything one dreads and delights in is all laid out on the trestle table. There are the whoop-whoop whistles, balloons and party hats. Importantly, there are chips. And the cubed cheese June’s rescued from a spill all over the floor. And there’sJohnny, Lula’s BF; a kind of tragic, ghostly, Jimmy Dean character.

There’s a live three piece (Alon Ilsar, drums; Mick Stuart, guitar; Sean Hennessy-Brose, piano). They immerse us in golden oldies that, if you’re one yourself, will bring to mind Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Wanda Jackson, The Coasters. Even James Brown. The band’s playing as we enter. Unfortunately, when Bradson follows, his mic is dead. Stuart has a crack at restoring it. Bradson careens up the aisle to enter the box. He makes do with another mic until, finally, someone emerges from the box with the original, now working. If this sounds awkward and tedious, imagine what it did to the momentum of performer and show. There were one or two ‘take it from the top’ moments before it really got started.

Bradson should’ve been better prepared for such an eventuality. By better prepared, I mean he needs to learn to keep calm & carry on, like the t-shirt says. Improvise. Or do a song. Still, it’s testament to the man’s talent that he moved past his disappointment and annoyance and, as a result, we were able to also. But there’s another issue. He pushes through his lines at such a pace his diction can’t, or doesn’t, keep up and, I suspect, many of his best lines are obscured. Frustrating. So we must rely on the gist and pick up what we can.

Having had that little spit, let me affirm that TB’s characterisations (or caricatures, really) are redolent of the kinds of people I knew growing up and who are still around, here and there. And while his voice can stray a little far from the key now and again, his rock ‘n’ roll singing is the real deal, with a raw, raunchy aesthetic that recalls, say, Little Richard, or Chubby Checker; on a local level, Johnny O’Keefe, or Thorpey.

What works here is the script (the parts I was able to decipher), the characters, the scenario and, for the most part, the songs. But speaking of saliva, there’s room for a bit of spit and polish. A promising show could become a great show. Dare I say, a blockbuster?

Oh, the cupcakes June proffered as we left the theatre went down a treat, too.

by Brad Syke for Australian Stage

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WHAT: The Men My Mother Loved (Part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival)

WHEN & WHERE: Sunday 30 September to Friday 5 October, Lithuanian Club

In his third solo show, Tommy Bradson narrates how Aussie rock legends played substitute for his father. Simon Eales gets the full story.

Tommy Bradson’s sold-out 2011 Melbourne Fringe show, Pirate Rhapsody, Mermaid Requiem, netted the Sydney native the festival’s award for Best Cabaret, as well as a whole raft of Green Room nominations. He returns to the Fringe this year, show-casing his extraordinary lyrical and idiosyncratic brand of cabaret, with The Men My Mother Loved. Bradson’s shows challenge and entrance, just as Fringe shows should.

The concept of The Men My Mother Loved seems simple. “I wrote it for my actual mother,” Bradson says, “and the show is sort of loosely based on her, and also on the great music that I listened to as a kid. As a child of the early ‘80s, my parents were really into Aussie rock’n’roll; they were into AC/DC, the Skyhooks, Cold Chisel and bands like that. It’s kind of the first music I knew and it affected me in ways I didn’t really think of until much later in life.”

His influences are super eclectic, from Hans Christian Anderson to stand-up comedy. Musician-poets like Nick Cave, Paul Kelly and Tom Waits have had a big influence, particularly on this show. “I have always approached [my shows] from a place of poetry. That’s where something will start for me, even before I have any links or ideas of how a song will be structured. I feel like a lot of these guys are the same, or at least they finish with a product that has great literature to it.”

Bradson’s shows are known for their ballsy lyricism, grotesque beauty and their trash-glam aesthetic. But The Men My Mother Loved, he says, presents something different. “This is a much nicer show than I have ever done before. I’m not fooling around as much. It’s from a son to his mum; there’s not a lot of violence or craziness,” he laughs. “I look at photos of myself as a kid and it just looks like a nicer time. There’s no sort of foggy haze over the photos, but everything looks kind of happy and easy.”

And he is loath to let historical accuracy deaden a decent yarn. “My father is still around, much to the fiction of the show. There’s potential for some new truths, I guess. I like leaving a lot to the imagination.”

Coming up to Fringe time, Bradson’s a case-study in what you should look out for within the packed program. He’s a skilled artist, intelligent, emotive, audience-focused, and he takes risks. All that doesn’t make it any easier to sum up his ultimate goal though: “To remind us of our follies and to not be blind-sided by that which doesn’t really matter in the end. That’s kind of how I spiritually approach all these things. But a lot of the time I am just wearing knickers and swearing at people,” he laughs. “So maybe it’s somewhere in the middle.”

It might be his process of “puzzling together” that produces such enthralling theatrical poetry. Talking about his mermaid character who sang of irreconcilable loss, in Pirate Requiem, he says, “that was really just me talking – only I was wearing a coconut bikini, a fish tail and talking in a strange voice. Whether people know that or not, is not important, but somehow it really works in the end. It’s a strange, unfinished puzzle.”

Interview by Simon Eales

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Multiple award winner Tommy Bradson (Sydney Fringe 2011 Award for excellence) is back with a much anticipated one-man show Sweet sixteen – or the birthday party massacre. With show notes indicating “there should be cake. There might be blood. There will be rock’n’roll” it certainly seemed like a sweet sixteen party not to be missed.

Sweet sixteen is captivating from the very first second. As you walk into the Reginald Theatre a talented three-piece band, consisting of Alon Ilsar on drums, Mick Stuart on guitar and Sean Hennessy-Brose on keys, churns out relaxing instrumental music behind a colourful, wonderfully cluttered set. A dining table set for 8, comfy sofa, birthday presents and a blown up pool filled with balloons give the small stage area a festive yet comfortable homey atmosphere that puts the audience at ease straight away.

Bradson makes his first entrance in a purple poncho, introducing himself and belting out a hearty rendition of Let’s have party before gliding off stage. In his absence a classic BBC radio voice can be heard outlining the plot of the coming production, a surprise party for one Lula Whitlam, as the voice fades away Bradson returns as the first of his four main characters, Lula’s mother June. June is determined to have a successful surprise party for her daughter with everything from fairy-bread to cheese cubes, because everyone knows “you can’t have a party without cheese cubes.” Aside from June Bradson also takes on the personas of Lula’s beer guzzling father Gary, also responsible for the pig on the spit, her boyfriend Johnny and finally Lula herself.

Each of the four main characters is given the chance to enhance their narrative by performing songs chosen to showcase their individual plights. From June’s soulful rendition of Dead end street to Gary’s Demon Alcohol, and Johnny’s Be-bop-a-Lula Bradson manages to draw the audience into the characters world and capture the spirit of Australian suburbia in the sixties.

Though I don’t remember any of this era myself the music composition, arranged by acclaimed Melbourne musician John Thorn, really struck a chord with me and again added to the general atmosphere of the performance whilst giving weight to the characters and allowing Bradson to showcase his musical talent.

The intimate scale of the Reginald theatre was perfect for this performance, confining the audience to a manageable area when the inevitable “audience participation” segment of the production commenced.

Although I’m not usually a fan of audience interaction, in fact it makes my heart speed up just thinking about it, I found that in this instance it added an extra dimension to the play and enabled the audience to really connect with the story being told. In fact by the end I was almost wishing I did get pulled on stage…almost.

A couple of minor hiccups with the microphone and placement of props proved the only downsides to the evening. These mishaps could easily have thrown off the performance but instead seemed to lend themselves to the absurd nature of the entire experience. This I believe is a testament to the professionalism of Tommy Bradson and his supporting cast (audience included).

Overall Sweet sixteen – or the birthday party massacre is a show not for the feint-hearted. It is a no holds barred take on Australian suburban life in all its glory, complete with gasp worthy non-PC remarks. My advice – check your judgement at the door and sit back and enjoy the pure frivolity of it all.

review by Anne Laidlaw for Theatre Junkies

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With several costume changes to be negotiated backstage, Sweet Sixteen falls into holes of its own making sometimes and Bradson’s quick-firing delivery tends to snuff out some of his best lines prematurely. Even so (and even from my vantage point) it’s an entertaining fusion of cabaret and character comedy, with a rock and roll edge.

by Jason Blake for The Sydney Morning Herald

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