Update 16/03/20: Grey Arias has been postponed due to the cancellation of the Melbourne International Comedy festival over COVID-19 concerns. Malthouse Theatre will be in contact with ticketholders to arrange rescheduling and refunds.
Adrienne Truscott and Le Gateau Chocolat are two of the most provocative cabaret artists working in the world at the moment (if you want a sense of just how provocative, one of Truscott’s most successful shows was called Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It: A One Lady Rape About Comedy).
They also happen to be very good friends and are collaborating on a new show in which they’ll together approach tough political questions with an appropriate degree of sparkle and explore their own identities – Truscott as a cisgender white feminist and Le Gateau Chocolat as a gay, black English-Nigerian drag queen.
“They have a very complicated sense of their own identity: what’s perceived, what’s projected onto them and what they live,” Malthouse Theatre’s artistic director Matthew Lutton says. “They want to create a work that’s using Broadway showtunes and a lot of entertainment, but a lot of political debate to discuss where we’re up to in 2020 with political correctness, and is that line really possible to draw or not at the moment.”