Climb the stairs to the Mezzanine at Plant 4 Bowden and camp classics greet you – Gloria Gaynor, Sister Sledge, the sonic vocabulary of collective survival. On stage, an armchair and a stool flank a high table bearing a setlist, the whole arrangement promising the celebrity interview format the marketing sold. What follows is something different – and, ultimately, something better.
Dolly Diamond opens with a variation on The Muppet Show theme, and the rewrite announces the show’s true proposition: autobiographical stories, comedy songs with surgically altered lyrics, and audience interaction conducted with the precision of a master jeweller. The celebrity interviews promised in the Fringe listing never arrive, and no explanation is offered for their absence. The armchair stays empty; the stool goes unoccupied.
None of which matters once Dolly gets to work. “Tits & Teeth” she explains, is British slang for putting your best foot forward – and her performance is the definition made flesh. Wit replaces cruelty when she despatches the woman who remains on her laptop at the front table when Dolly makes her entrance, and again when tech cues go missing; in both cases, the room laughs with her rather than flinching. Her other operating principle – “no one’s left behind” — holds equally sincere.
Noah arrived late and came in the back entrance, sitting with friends at a back table, presumably believing anonymity was available. It was not. Good-looking enough to become the show’s designated “love” interest, he had no idea what was coming.
First Dolly extracted him into conversation, which reduced him to charmed incoherence; later she deployed “Whatever Dolly Wants, Dolly Gets” in his direction, and his expression suggested he was simultaneously delighted and re-evaluating his life choices. By the show’s end, every person in the Mezzanine felt Dolly had done at least a portion of the show for them alone.
The voice lives up to every word of its reputation – husky, rangy, doing more work than it announces. The lyric rewrites earn their laughs twice: once from the wit of the writing, once from the precision of the delivery. Running jokes accumulate across the hour into something resembling architecture, even where the show’s structure remains loose: comic moments strung with skill rather than built toward a destination.
A performer of Dolly Diamond’s calibre deserves a frame as strong as she is. The gap between the show’s marketing and its content leaves a faint bruise. But put your best foot forward is exactly what she does – and in this room, on this night, that proved more than enough.
Tits & Teeth
Mezzanine at Plant 4 Bowden, 5 Third Street, Bowden
Performance: Thursday 12 March 2026 (6.30pm)
Season continues to 15 March 2026
Information and Bookings: www.adelaidefringe.com.au
Image: Dolly Diamond (supplied)
Review: Daniel G. Taylor