Meow Meow is a cabaret treasure who could prosper satisfactorily mining the Weimar Period and the Great American songbook. However, she refuses to take the easy road and continues to explore new territory through collaborations with diverse artists from Barry Humphries to Amanda Palmer and the Dresden Dolls. Meow Meow’s latest collaboration for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival with Jherek Bischoff and August Von Trapp is a nine-track song cycle of original songs penned by Bischoff that forms a tribute to Adelaide’s oldest surviving live theatre, Her Majesty’s Theatre: Meow Meets the Grand Old Dame – one who is due for an upgrade. So there is perhaps a commercial push behind this show.

Perhaps wary of the gravitas of the song cycle, Meow Meow warmed the audience up for what was to come with her usual amusing schtick and audience participation walking over people’s seats and getting a hapless man in the front row to get her wine and potato chips. Backed by the Orchestra der Kleinen Regiment and the ten child Lilliputian Opera Company, Meow Meow saved the best for first with a song entitled Dancing at the Edge of the World, hearkening back to the theatre’s origins in 1913...