Add Category
“I’m the head alchemiser, the ladyboss, the chief,” says Moira Finucane, Melbourne’s indefatigable cabaret Swiss army knife, describing her role in her latest art experience, dubbed FUTURE.JOY.CLUB.
“Young, old, gay, straight, well-heeled, high-heeled mothers and mother lovers, queer as f---: this is your club,” she decrees.
Head diva Moira Finucane.Credit:Jodie Hutchinson
Finucane, who has created the event along with her life and business partner, playwright and producer Jackie Smith, is the face up front. She will greet everyone who wants one with a hug as they enter her multidimensional cabaret extravaganza, a “sultry decadent celebration of golden era burlesque and variety vanguard”.
Finucane has assembled a crack squad of cabaret-adjacent performers who wear almost as many hats as she does, and occasionally not much more. She has just recovered from a mild case of coronavirus and is full of the antibodies needed to complete a month-long run in the plush, mirrored ballroom of The Sofitel on Collins St with the aim of making the Paris end of Collins Parisian again.
“FUTURE. JOY. CLUB. will be like going to your favourite whisky distillery. Every barrel has been ageing for two years, you don’t know what it’ll be like until you open it. That’s us!”
Finucane walked a long road to becoming a national treasure. An environmental scientist and Wilderness Society campaigner, her first gig was for an ACT UP benefit on Smith Street in 1993: she painted herself in fluorescent pink and danced to Tea for Two. After a decade underground, she broke out spectacularly in 2004, creating The Burlesque Hour at Fortyfive Downstairs. It was an unheralded hit that toured dozens of countries, getting rave reviews in several different languages and sending its star to Cuba, Antarctica (on a small Russian expedition ship), Mexico, the Galapagos Islands and beyond.
Then, of course, international travel became so 2019. “I started making marmalade for people. The only stipulation was ‘you can’t pay!’ We made 800 jars,” she says, of her COVID years.
“It was about how much heart we have; we put the idea of a blood red heart on the middle of it. We wanted all of those heartbeats in the FUTURE. JOY. CLUB.”
They also did some theatrical drive-bys in a Mustang convertible. “It was a mini cabaret. We texted ahead, ‘Be out on the footpath, you’ll hear us coming.’ Then we partied hard for 15 minutes.”