Cabaret Festival. Banquet Room. 12 June 2025
The Burton Brothers are an electric class act. Be it vaudeville, physical theatre, clowning, or sketch comedy of the ‘20s era, they execute it with a precision and accuracy as sharp as whistle, and more. The score is era authentic, costuming exact, the dazzling array of accents on point.
It takes a while to realise—as they whip through one of the most bizarre and engaging ‘historic’ hours of 1925—that there’s something stranger than strange happening here.
How clever of them. There’s a clue if you stop a second and think. 1925 – 2025. A century apart. Is there a connection?
The flashback look at the roaring ‘20s breathing in relief and loving gilded age like prosperity post WWI is all there. The excitement, unwillingness to see any negatives or darkness in years ahead ever being possible. No! It’s the best time to be alive and will never end.
But it was ending. Seeds of discontent and decay were already making themselves felt. A lost post-war generation of soldiers without purpose or hope. Better to be in the army. A rising tide of high commercialism fuelled by intense radio advertising bombardment. Heightened authoritarian religious evangelism. Sound familiar?
The boys play it all with a disturbing edge of darkness which both entertains and horrifies. It creates a delicious feeling of attraction and repulsion. An evangelist and his wife present as a terrifying creep show surely not to be taken seriously? Working to boost defence force members is a lads sing along game. The horror movies of the day’s star characters, Nosferatu and Frankenstein meet for dinner (funniest sketch of night), hinting towards the dark underside of Hollywood.
The Burton Brothers, as a friend noted, remind one of the great Australian act Los Trios Ringbaarkus. In method, yes, but in material, direction, and complexity of art they are at a different level and class altogether.
For a bent, twisted almost acid flashback like experience, you couldn’t ask for better.
David O’Brien
When: 12 June
Where: Banquet Room
Bookings: Closed
