Limelight’s review of Amplified at the start of its Melbourne season in mid-2025 suggested that this Chrissy Amphlett tribute cabaret looked under-rehearsed. 

The good news is that it still looks that way. The show is run-in and confident, but Amplified wears its rough edges with pride. Sheridan Harbridge, wily performer that she is, knows how to blend the chaotic with the considered. 

Sheridan Harbridge: Amplified. Photo © Brett Boardman

Co-created with director Sarah Goodes, Amplified is an unabashedly celebratory account of a life lived hard, beginning with Amphlett’s tough childhood in Geelong (her father a returned POW) and skimming her wild-child years. We follow her to Kings Cross, where she worked as a backing vocalist in the 1970s. It’s in Sydney she meets guitarist Mark McEntee, an encounter that sparks the turbulent creative – and romantic – partnership that was Divinyls. 

Structurally, Amplified is more collage than chronology, made up from autobiographical details, Harbridge’s reflections on Amphlett’s life in different kinds of spotlight (she slides between speaking as herself and as her subject), and songs performed with a tight four-piece band led by guitarist Glenn Moorhouse. 

Sometimes the patchwork nature of the show seems a little loosely stitched but Amplified makes a strong argument for celebrating Amphlett as a survivor and trailblazer. The grinding sexism of the Australian music scene – and Australia in the 1970s and 80s more generally – is one of the show’s more consistent threads.

Sheridan Harbridge: Amplified. Photo © Brett Boardman

You may be persuaded that Amphlett’s “monster” persona was a form of adaptation to a hostile environment; you may not. What can’t be argued against is Harbridge’s expansive talent – as storyteller, singer and indefatigable stage animal. She frequently roams the aisles, provocatively writhing in peoples’ laps, though the effect is rather more comic than transgressive. But think twice before allowing her to waltz off with your handbag.

Eyes veiled behind an Amphlett-style bangs, she’s equally powerful as a stage presence and as a singer, subtly capturing Amphlett’s distinctive vocal style. And she rocks pretty hard for a musical theatre performer in Spanx (her confession; not my observation) who has to front up night after night. The opening bars of I Touch Myself are teasingly deployed in a start-stop fashion. By show’s end, the audience is in an anticipatory lather. The Easybeats banger I’ll Make You Happy is the standout, however.

Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett plays at Belvoir, Surry Hills, Sydney until 8 February.