By Lia Cocks
On a balmy Saturday night, we packed ourselves into Le Cascadeur at the Garden of Unearthly Delights to see cabaret darling Amelia Ryan’s new show, Simply the Breast.
Accompanied by Michael Griffiths, she takes you on a journey - an emotional, captivating, hilarious and honest one at that- through her life and the ‘breast’ of her previous shows, Storm in a D Cup, Lady Liberty and The Breast is Yet to Come.
To set the scene, she waltzed onstage with a breast pump (my poor husband was mortified when tasked with holding it for her), and immediately broke the fourth wall with candid satire and jest.
Taking us from her unique childhood in small town Bombo, to her stripper university days, meeting the love of her life and bringing her son into the world, Amelia lays all her cards on the table and leaves no stone unturned.
And what a show this makes.
I cry laughed (yes, there was bladder leakage) and got teary, I gasped at her honesty, I was gobsmacked at her life story (you can’t make this stuff up) and most of all, I was moved by her performance. I felt she was talking to me, and only me, and that is the true art in cabaret.
She had the audience in the palm of her hand the entire time, and packed a lot of content in her one hour time slot.
My absolute favourite was her Birth Plan medley; an incredible corker of a mashup of songs to illustrate her labour and birth. I don’t want to give too much away, it really has to be seen (and heard) to be believed.
She is a comedic cabaret genius, with pipes to match and I could’ve sat there for hours listening to her tell her stories.
With only 5 more shows, take your husbands (‘that was the breast cabaret show I’ve seen! Loved it!’), your girlfriends, your mums, your next door neighbour...just don’t miss it. She really is, simply the best.
All opinions and thoughts expressed within reviews on Theatre Travels are those of the writer and not of the company at large.