Adelaide Festival Theatre, Space Theatre
June 17, 2018

White Australia seems drawn irresistibly to its villains of the past, and the further back in the past they reigned, the more legendary they have become. Once christened “the worst woman in Sydney”, Kate Leigh or “Mum” as she was known, was one of Sydney’s most powerful underworld figures from the 1920s until the 1950s. She specialised in ‘sly grog’ (selling booze outside legal licencing hours) not to mention a little prostitution and cocaine in her heyday. Her feud with her rival Matilda “Tilly” Devine was legendary and became the subject of one of the ubiquitous Underbelly television series devoted to the era where Leigh and Devine’s respective ‘razor gangs’ left Sydney’s streets awash with blood. Given that Leigh’s reign coincided with the beginnings of and peak of the jazz age, her story was solid ground around which a jazz singer/composer like Adelaide’s Libby O’Donovan could create a show – and she has done so with aplomb in Libby O’Donovan – Kate Leigh, the Worst Woman in Sydney.

O’Donovan’s vocal talent and stage presence have been a staple of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival for years. Her composing skills are not as well known,...