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TarnishedTake four very sassy showgirls, each highly regarded in their specialised fields, and put them together in the one troupe, and you have La La Parlour. Based in Brisbane, and having just returned from Tasmania where they performed at the Australian Circus Festival, the ensemble's resident stunt-grrrl, Tigerlil [formerly of previous Fringe-faves, The Happy Sideshow], is keyed up and ready to return to Adelaide for what she believes to be their most refined season to date. "It's essentially the same show that has evolved more on a continuum rather than a completely new show," Tigerlil says of 'Tarnished'; a sold out event brought to Adelaide three years ago. "As any show gets performed more and more, you then find new places and ways to work it," she enthuses. "And it's the same cast and it's been further developed and so have our individual skills because we've performed it a lot since then. There's some new acts in there and some of the old acts have been revamped," she continues, "and there's some new costumes. Overall, it's now a much tighter and more developed production." Along with the knife, sword and angle grinder wielding, hoola-hooping Tigerlil, La La Parlour also features Kellie Vella, whose wide range of skills include aerial silks, acrobatics, dance and contortion. Australia's queen of burlesque striptease, Imogen Kelly, and Neridah Waters: cabaret, comedy and dance. "Everyone brings their own flavour and my background is sideshow," explains Tigerlil. Kellie's is more circus, Neridah, dance and theatre and Imogen, burlesque. So the show is a combination of all those but more of a theatre experience with circus skills mixed in. It's a theatre production featuring developed characters and there's a combination of groups acts, solos and doubles. Kellie and I had worked a lot together before," she says of the troupe's working history, "and when we first met Neridah she brought a real comedy sense to the show, which has been great. And she's also got a dance background as well, so she's been really instrumental in tightening up the choreography because there's a lot of dance in the show. "And Imogen has a long history of burlesque in Australia," she adds, "and burlesque in its historical sense is about satire and parody, and there's also a playfulness to it. I mean, overall it's a real polished and highly skilled show but we also have a lot of fun with it and we take the piss out of ourselves a little bit." |