The Legend of Queen Kong. Episode 2 In Outer Space.
Yana Alana is the alter ego of Helpmann award-winning artist Sarah Ward. Her show, The Legend of Queen Kong Episode 2 In Outer Space is not for a faint hearted performer or a prudish audience. It is advertised, appropriately, as being suitable for a 16+ age group. Ward, who has a well-established cult following, makes Yana Alana, her regular main show character for all pieces, the focus; the cabaret star and story teller of this 70-minute creative and courageous show. In keeping with her self-declared fabulousness, she appears clad in a lame bodysuit and made up to potentially take a lead role in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. She is punk, garish, glitzy and compelling.
On arrival, the audience sits in a starlit room, lulled into a comfortable expectation by music from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the gentle introduction, “A long time ago in a galaxy far away…”- but Star Wars it is not!
The story follows Queen Kong, part rock star, part ape and part mythological indestructible, immortal being as she explores what it means to be human. Her mantra is that “Time is not linear and not all things are straight.”
Accompanied by the all-girl band, The HOMOsapiens, she moves between four stage areas in the room, cavorting, accessible, and close to the audience while challenging and delivering totally original songs and music pieces by Bec Matthews, who is also the drummer in this show.
Ward’s voice is powerful and her harmonising with herself, on screen, and the band, is melodic, moving from gentle crooning to powerful, soaring, aria style singing. Her speaking voice is mellifluous and well measured, used effectively to provide contrast and light and shade, thus enabling the audience to cope with what is a “full on” cabaret experience. She even sings and plays the keyboard as part of her tale telling.
The band is worthy of a show on their own as is the seamless movement between live and video characterisation and story telling that includes everything from cartoons to early 20th century film clips melded with current images taking the audience on Queen Kong’s human evolution journey.
The accompanying projection and video work allows movement between the past and the future, and is both effective and entertaining in the story telling. Lighting, by Paul Lim is exceptional, strategic and a key part of the show.
Humour abounds and during Queen Kong’s intergalactic journey she glibly includes Donald Trump as she passes by Uranus. Her parody of biblical creation is slick, witty and accompanied by her casually munching, as the biblical Eve did, on an apple.
Queen Kong is appalled that humans “kill their own kind” and reminds the audience that human evolution is not a “downloadable experience.” Forced to confront her own mortality, she bursts into a strong rock musical style and reminds us that she is “too amazing to die.”
As with all good cabaret, four pre-selected audience members are invited to, and assist her in her “spaghettification” (the process of being thinly stretched like spaghetti) process as she stretches herself across the extremes of space, narrowly escaping the prison from which there is no return, better known as a black hole.
The pace is frenetic, the music is loud and often challenging but the finale is gentle; reminding us, through the words of Joni Mitchell’s song, ‘Woodstock’, that “We are stardust, we are golden.”
Queen Kong is out to save humans from their hypocrisy and self-destructive ways. If you missed Episode 2, the final message was, “To Be Continued.” Let’s hope that she can help humanity get “back to the garden.”
Jude Hines
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