The Spaces Between

Cabaret has come in from the fringes at the Fringe in 2011 with its own section in the brochure. Yet with The Spaces Between, Australian duo The Jane Austen Argument will do little to convince newcomers to the genre that it’s not one overly given to hammy, dewy-eyed self-indulgence.

Tom Dickens and Jen Kingwell might yet present a poster boy and girl for the kind of noirish cabaret to which the likes of Amanda Palmer (whom they’ve toured their homeland in support of) has brought a new lick of indie cred – they’re a talented, striking-looking pair who harmonise tightly and slickly finish each others’ sentences in scripted passages between tunes. But they first need to redress the imbalance of a live show that ramps up the melodrama and camp at expense of genuinely moving and memorable songs – even if it does all come with a post-modern nod and a wink.

Sporting black fairy wings, Dickens is the broken-hearted boy crying Kohl-eyed tears while crooning forlornly over Kingwell’s nimble-fingered piano-playing. Their lyrics draw a narrative broadly exploring the spaces that exist in all of our lives, both physical and emotional, whether too big or not big enough.

The pair shout their booze-slurping, broken-hearted, bedsit-dwelling boho credentials from the rooftops, then have the temerity to sing a song sending-up the “hipsters” in their Melbourne neighbourhood, before knowingly ruffling their asymmetrical hair-dos. They need to shelve the navel-gazing and shine the spotlight on the music.