It’s a Friday or Saturday evening in Adelaide during the Cabaret Festival. Maybe you’ve already seen a show somewhere in the Festival Centre tonight. There’s been some drinking, maybe even a sparkling red wine, as is appropriate for the locale.
You could be in a state where you don’t want to go home yet, and maybe don’t feel the need for too much structure in what you do next, or even a good idea of who you’ll see. The latish Tina Lets Loose will tick these boxes, promising an assortment of lively acts in the Banquet Room, with easy access to a nearby bar, if that’s your thing.
It sure is for our hostess, Tina del Twist, originally from Kyneton in country Victoria. This character is often seen around the Melbourne circuit (at least), such as popping up in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s 40th Anniversary celebrations last April.
Her look isn’t merely retro, it’s … well … more chanteuse from a fashionable club in 1920s Shanghai, judging from the frocks and brimless hat? (Is that a toque? A cloche?) Tina sure likes a drink, glugging from a fishbowl at the start of the show, getting laughs from making a stagehand scurry to catch it whenever, and wherever, it was handed down from the stage.
If you’d only seen del Twist through guest spots, the high-functioning alcoholic songstress shtick seems to have concealed her vocal talent. Tina was still pretty loose on stage to be sure, thanking Auckland for coming out to see her, but she was extremely capable in her selection of songs across the show, usually sprinkled with some spiky asides.
I saw that the list of acts was available online after the show, but it certainly wasn’t at the time of booking. That’s another type of looseness that means who you’ll get in any performance could be a lottery.
Festival Artistic Director Reuben Kaye wandered through the audience without too much regard for personal space. As for Tina, I’d only been able to seen Kaye in short spots before, and missed out on tickets to see him in this festival’s finale: Happy Ending.
Even a cameo shows, very quickly, that Kaye has a powerful voice. Some attempts at smutty comment fell flat, and Kaye’s retort “That joke deserved a better response” seemed to miss the difference in worldliness between this audience and one from a typical fringe.
Maybe Kaye’s game is to challenge how the Pride Community have been forced to self-censor for so long by being as out and proud as possible? It’s valid choice, but it didn’t seem to leave much room for variety or nuance. Perhaps, as for Jordan Gray, a short spot for the uninitiated could be great for shock value, but doesn’t allow for the development of a persona.
Gray, just a few hours after her second show here in the Banquet Room, bounced on to the stage with manic energy. Almost the whole set was drawn from bits of Is That a Cock In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Here To Kill Me.
Clearly a lot of punters had seen that in the last two days, as lines that slayed the Banquet Room crowd around 7:30pm were getting a far patchier reception in the same venue around 11pm. If you had seen Gray’s outstanding solo show this festival, you might have hoped for more surprises in that vein.
Far more surprise emerged from Elaine Crombie taking the stage, as she is probably more well known for comedy festival shows of late. A polished take on Tina Turner’s River Deep Mountain High quickly showed that Crombie had the pipes for soul rock, keeping the energy of the room high.
This demonstration will help Crombie’s name stand out more the next time it appears in a festival guide. She also showed a suitably comedic level of restraint when a duet with del Twist showed that our host had some difficulty in sharing singing duties.
Casey Donovan appeared just a few hours after her single Adelaide night of This Is Me. The quality of her warmup was enough to secure an invitation from del Twist for this line-up. Those who remember Donovan’s powerful vocals as Mama Morton in Chigaco (surprisingly, way back in 2019-20) would surely have appreciated the reprise of When You’re Good To Mama.
It was delivered with a lively mix of flirtatiousness and authority that suited the lyrics. We also got a peek into the life of a touring musician. Donovan wasn’t up for a further song, noting she was just able to squeeze that one out.
I’m not sure how we could describe the conclusion from Tara Boom – maybe Circus meets Burlesque plus snack-time. This proved that the show didn’t want us to just sedately drift out into the early morning. Instead we might be feeling a complex mix of shock and delight with some slippery nudity in the service of a hoop routine. I do hope that the dry-cleaning bills submitted by those sitting near the front doesn’t damage the festival’s profitability too much.
This hectic climax made sure that the a high-energy couple of hours finally delivered on the promise of being a “high-who-knows-wtf-will-happen tasting platter”. (And it was loose too, being advertised with a 90-minute runtime.) Whilst Tina and Crombie gave some context for musical selections, a little more of that would have been nice. Whilst it didn’t all work, the show was still a fun way to put off bedtime.
Tina Lets Loose
The Banquet Room – Adelaide Festival Centre, King William Road, Adelaide
Performance: Friday 19 June 2026 (10:15pm)
Information: www.cabaret.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
Image: Tina del Twist – photo by Joel Devereux
Review: Jason Whyte