The G.O.A.T. Show | Shock Therapy Productions
“Sardine?”
“No thanks.”
We sit on fold-out chairs on the front lawn of an abandoned house on Chevron Island. A table piled with iceberg lettuces sits beside a temporary stage. Our hosts, two men in neon coloured suits, are offering pickled onions from the jar, sardines from the can and melons ripped apart with their bare hands. They take it upon themselves to gently whack some audience members with fly swatters, despite the lack of flies. Ah, yes, hospitality.
Image + cover image: BLEACH (supplied)
These men, embodied by Sam Foster and Hayden Jones are the producers of this cabaret: The G.O.A.T. Show by Shock Therapy Productions at BLEACH* Festival. I say embodied because, as with most things in the cabaret, the line between reality and fiction was blurred.
They rattle off quintessentially Gold Coast references in a hilarious opening round of silliness. “Sea World, Movie World, Dream World, Wet ‘n’ Wild World, Battery World.” It doesn’t take long for them to fess up that The G.O.A.T. Show doesn’t exist anymore. One of them embezzled the money. Confused? Doesn’t matter - we have a back-up cast to give us some quick chaotic cabaret that’s as strange as the hospitality. So here we were, watching an offbeat variety show that felt like it was falling apart.
A stand-out was burlesque and danger-act performer Jacqueline Furey. She flung open the fly screen door of the house with an attitude of ‘can we get this over with?’ - a hilarious juxtaposition to her shimmering burlesque costume and lit candelabra in hand. She started off with a sexy and elegant strip tease, which went from 10 to 100 when she started pouring the candle wax all over herself, proceeding to do a knife-swallowing act with the bottom of the candelabra. The audience clapped, screamed, and gasped with astonishment. She came back for an equally astonishing second act but you’ll just have to see her in person.
Image: BLEACH (supplied)
While the show sold itself on offbeat humour, sometimes this left the audience awkwardly not knowing how to react. An act by Goldie the Clown subdued the audience. It took the sad, drunk entertainer archetype a little too far in telling a story about being marginalised by adults despite just wanting to make kids laugh. It had a message of kindness for sure, but lacked the LOLs to sit against.
At 35 minutes, this show could definitely be extended. I got the feeling that this iteration was ideal for the end of a night of seeing things at a festival, not as a stand-alone event. It ended suddenly. A call from the mayor shut down the show with a threat of legal action. He was going to send Gold Coast’s head lifeguard. “Have you seen the chest on that man?” one of the producers declares, “he’s got that old man strength.” They scram, and a melancholy song from Goldie the Clown brings us to… nothing. That’s it. The audience were confused, and I believe this was the desired effect.
