Little Match Girl

Little Match Girl

Meow Meow has always been someone I’ve been a little terrified of. 

Audience participation and swooning, gleeful over exuberant fans: it’s always been a bit too extroverted for this poorly sighted introvert. The Malthouse is home to Meow Meow's current production Little Match Girl and I have to say I was left swooning with the rest of 'em. 

The kernel for the narrative is Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl, a story of typical Andersen bleakness – a young girl freezes on the street selling matches for her family. Rather than go home to receive a beating for unsold goods, she lights the matches to remain warm and hallucinates beautiful visions from the flames, then dies. 

In Meow Meow's world, she blows out the lighting grid with her powerful pipes and spends the rest of the performance trying to create visions in a darkened theatre through torches and song. 

Using everything at her disposal (mainly the audience), Meow Meow constructs a show that is wryly funny, self depracating and flamingly camp all at the same time. Entirely gifted. In a lot of respects it’s what I love about Australian women. 

Meow Meow is stunning, poured into her red sequined dress like a classic painting with whiskey-hued voice melting you. However she is tough, climbing over seats in said red sequined dress and cracking slightly crass jokes. There is no divide between audience and stage and instead of it making you firmly uncomfortable, it leaves a wide eyed smile on your face. 

Meow Meow (with the very dapper Mitchell Butel and The Wild Dog Orchestra) performs a dazzling array of covers that lull you into a very magical place. At the end, you mourn the light extinguishing as much as the little girls.