Throwing her extraordinary talents for singing, stand-up and strip-tease into a deliciously surreal mix called Absolute Cabaret, the virtuoso ex-Nualas entertainer Karen Egan has created her own unique art form. The show straddles multiple genres with side-splitting, dark-humoured hilarity.
Backed by a superb four-piece multi-instrumented band, Egan uses her beautifully throaty voice to passionately interpret cabaret classics by the likes of Marlene Dietrich (one inter-song sketch sees the bi-sexual Marlene and Karen on a glamorous dinner date).
The show features several of Egan’s own stunning songs, either achingly tragic or outrageously funny, alongside the cabaret covers, which are mostly sung in either their native French (according to Egan, “the international language of love” or German (“the international language of depression”).
Helped by a series of sumptuous and ever more revealing costumes, Egan plays the sultry vamp delighting in sexual ambiguity, whilst occasionally letting slip a very different stage persona, a pathetic, inadvertently funny character who thinks ‘bisexual’ means you’ve had sex twice.
Brilliant comedy, wonderful theatre and an evocative journey to the world of cabaret for both the newcomer and the initiate, Karen Egan’s Absolute Cabaret brought the audience in Whelan's to their feet for an standing ovation. Absolute unmissable magic!