A bold, blistering cabaret of story, song and survival—raw, funny and impossible to forget.
With five Green Room Awards nominations, winning Best Direction, this striking production arrives in Adelaide with new songs and stories. Created by Natalie Gamsu with director Stephen Nicolazzo and writer Ash Flanders, this autobiographical work crackles with wit, vulnerability and fierce intelligence. Gamsu grew up in 1960s Namibia under apartheid, a world away from the artist she would become. From boarding school in Cape Town to performing in underground nightclubs during states of emergency, she searched for meaning in a country that never made sense.
On stage, she explodes that history with razor-sharp storytelling and a voice that cuts straight to the bone. Expect diabolically funny tales of tsuris (the Yiddish word for pain), accidentally eating her mother’s blood, psilocybin spiritual journeys into the past and of course, her shapeshifting days suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. There are also stories of meerkats and tortoises without their shells. And customer service arguments over tinned fruit.
This is cabaret without the gloss: poetic, outrageous, heartbreaking and brutally alive. Anchored by one of Australia’s most powerful performers, A Voice Like Shrapnel celebrates the beauty of being strange, fearless and gloriously human.
Come for the humour. Stay for the truth. Leave changed.
— Originally produced by Kaddimah Yiddish Theatre and fortyfive downstairs. —
★★★★½ “Performed in a way that dignifies Gamsu’s deepest secrets and induces the audience into bursts of laughter through a series of self-deprecating anecdotes and colourful descriptions of her favourite influential figures. Among the most memorable of these are her peculiar first casting agent in Cape Town and the eccentric directors of a cabaret club in Johannesburg. As the recital nears a close, Gamsu describes a fond, long-awaited love from her mother amid her battle with dementia before closing her performance with ‘A Song For You’, affording herself a well-deserved and heart-felt standing ovation.” Amelia Williamson, Its On The House
“Shrapnel is a mosaic of things that have made Natalie Gamsu who she is. Her storytelling style is captivating. Her singing is powerful. And her collection of stories kept the audience laughing or awed or shocked.” Keith Gow, Theatre First
“Natalie Gamsu was once awakened by a zebra’s breath on her cheek in a marijuana plantation, and Shrapnel, an hour-long monologue frosted with music, gave us raw slices of her remarkable life, including growing up during South Africa’s repugnant apartheid years. Her version of being a musical theatre triple threat, she told us, was being fat, stoned and epileptic – yet she still bravely performed edgy cabaret in a police state. Life, she said, is partly about letting go of the need to be special. She might have let go, but she was the festival’s most potent performer.” John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald
“Gamsu’s show is charged, fierce, barbed, funny, ironic…our attention never wavers” Michael Brindley, Stage Whispers
“Gamsu is a delightfully engaging and entertaining artiste who can do it all – sing beautifully, with perfect diction, heart and conviction, and deliver evocative stories. She has us eating out the palms of her hands, hanging on to every word.” Alex First, The Blurb
“There’s silence in the theatre as detailed dark stories of the grief, suffering and violence on the streets of Johannesburg are recounted, but the solemn mood transverses to laughter as Gamsu quickly moves from one memory to the next, alleviating the chance of stagnation settling in. Audiences will learn that Gamsu loves sharing stories through cabaret and musical theatre. There will be laughter and tears but ultimately many may be moved perhaps because of what is going on in their own lives. This is a remarkable show” Mark Morellini, City Hub
content
contact