Geraldine Quinn – MDMA: Modern Day Maiden Aunt – Adelaide Fringe Review

Producers Warehouse, Sat Feb 14 Geraldine Quinn sauntered onto the stage and blew us away with a great musical opening to her cabaret show last night. She looked fantastic as a satin-clad be-feathered chanteuse and her world-class voice continued to amaze and inspire throughout the show. Weaving her original songs into the storyline, she shared the pros and cons of being a single, childfree woman, a performer and ‘the cool’ aunty to 19 nieces and nephews. The first half of the show had some fun images of her drinking habits, relationship attempts and how she juggled a creative career with the expectations and projections from family and friends, punctuated by her musical-comedy-style songs. From the time Geraldine went into stories about incidents with her numerous nieces and nephews, however, it became a bit like an auntie’s brag book and started to lose its pizazz. The endless tales of children unknown to us became like the indulgence of the very parents she was railing against at the beginning of the show and lacked the humour and sass that was promised by the excellent earlier segments. The song Don’t Put Your Vag On The Net, was a welcome interlude and the poignant moments in The Great Invisible (Great and Visible) Woman were beautiful, but the mood became quite sad towards the end and needed to be lifted with some fun to finish off. Still very worth seeing and beautifully performed by this lovely artist, it was a bit too much like a personal dedication to the progeny of the family to really keep me engaged. Nikki Fort Geraldine Quinn – MDMA: Modern Day Maiden Aunt continues at Producers Warehouse until Fri Feb 27. Book at FringeTIX on 1300 621 255 or adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix. Click HERE to purchase your tickets. Image courtesy of Nicole Cleary