Returning to one of our favourite CBD cabaret venues, The Butterfly Club, we’ve become used to baited anticipation of not knowing exactly what we will be surprised with. Canberra’s festival-trotting duo, the Sparrow-Folk, have been around since 2013, and won many awards. This is the first time I’ve had the chance to see them for their show ‘SuBIRDia‘.
Fox and Lark, in cute pink overalls and fanny-packs, mislead us into thinking their one-hour performance would be about the perennial suburban pastime of renovation, except they would be renovating us, with helpful life advice delivered through a collection of hilarious songs. Bum-dialling, road rage, bogan ex-boyfriends, sexting and more; with a bit of audience participation that was always upbeat and good-natured thrown in.
Billed as the ‘sirens of satire’, the sirens bit is apt. We were disarmed by their sweet ukulele-playing, their easy charm, and before we could head for safety (or shout out the safewords we had volunteered at the start of the show), they were desecrating Frozen’s ‘Let it Go’ into a medley-manifesto for the return of pubic hair (‘Let It Grow’). With vagina hand puppets. By then they’d won us over, and we were delighted and laughing too much to pause to reflect on how we got there.
What really makes Fox and Lark stand out is their charisma and the easy fast-flowing banter between the two – supported by a solid amount of experience, musical and acting talent. We particularly appreciated how they could balance quite a bit of naughtiness without it ever feeling crude or raunchy. Definitely catch them this weekend!
– Christian
Christian G. is an international man of mystery, lover of books, cats and the performing arts; moonlighting as a finance professional by day.
‘SuBIRDia‘ has a short run of three shows from 26-28 May at the Butterfly Club in the CBD.
The venue is not accessible.
