Cabaret Whore: More! More! More!

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At no point during Cabaret Whore: More! More! More! does the viewer feel even one iota of affection or sympathy for the cavalcade of fools who parade one after the other across the cramped Underbelly stage. That's a not a criticism – the one-woman show's writer and actor, Sarah-Louise Young, clearly had no intention of making her quartet of characters likeable. Rather, Cabaret Whore is a pointed parody of the vapid has-been, and a biting send-up of low-rent cabaret hacks. From bitchy "diva of a certain age" Bernie St. Clair, with her pathological daughter issues, to prancing Slavic "neo-cabaret" cretin Kasha, Young's creations are carefully textured to rub you up the wrong way.

The delusion and vanity portrayed so extravagantly in Cabaret Whore isn't pretty, but it is funny in a voyeuristic sort of way. There's a finely-tuned raggedness to it all, which comes to a hilarious climax with volatile 'headliner' La 'Poule Plombée' ('The Frumpy Pigeon'). The knife-wielding Parisian diva is violently unstable; wracked by jealousy at the success of "that little sparrow bitch" Edith Piaf, with whom she claims to have worked in the early days. Her musical rage at English loanwords infiltrating the French language offers some of the biggest laughs of the afternoon, while her stage presence—high maintenance, lachrymose and xenophobically snobbish—make her a bizarre spectacle to behold.

Cabaret Whore simultaneously mocks the genre and displays great affection for it. The balance between song and standup-ish stage banter is well done, and while you don't like any of the characters it's a pleasure to laugh at them.