For more than a decade, musical theatre and cabaret performer Queenie van de Zandt’s alter-ego Jan van de Stool has been a cult favourite among a certain subset of Sydney theatregoers. Jan, who dubs herself an “international musical therapist”, extensively toured a solo show (or “workshop”, as she would call it) called I Get the Music in You in her early years. In the time since then, she’s popped up to host countless major corporate and theatre events – including the Helpmann Awards – but this new full-length show feels a long time coming.
In her last show, Jan was running her courses out of a Scout Hall in her adopted hometown of Woy Woy, but a lot has changed since then. She’s since found celebrity thanks to a number of appearances on reality TV, including one incident on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here that she’d rather forget about. But reality TV tends to play fast and loose with the facts, so she’s here to set the record straight. She starts by telling us the story of how she came to journey from Schiermonnikoog, an unpronounceable island in Holland, to Woy Woy and discovered her gifts for healing through music. And then she introduces us to her new gift: as a psychic medium who’s so good she’s known in the industry as a “medium rare”.
The first half of this show is Jan’s origin story, which will be a delight for anybody who’s enjoyed her schtick over the years and an enjoyably perverse musical tale for anybody new to Jan’s world – including her unusual relationship with her husband and cousin Pieter. She invites the audience to journey back to her Netherlands and hear about her ill-fated friendship with her cousin Wilma, which saw Jan flee to Australia with Pieter in tow.
The Sydney opening performance was plagued by microphone problems so severe they would’ve derailed a lesser performer, but van de Zandt took it in her stride, soldiering on through constant sound issues and pulling plenty of humour from Jan’s technical mishaps.
Jan is a beautifully observed comic creation who feels on par with Kath and Kim or Norman Gunston, but there’s a callous wickedness beneath the surface that cuts through any sort of complacency. It also helps that van de Zandt is a spectacularly good singer – much better than Jan, although she’d never admit that.
Jan is a truly monstrous character, whose funniest trait is her unshakeable belief in her own gifts and benevolence. As in every appearance, van de Zandt entirely transforms into van de Stool, but it’s when van de Stool then transforms into the deceased people she’s channelling as a psychic medium that this show really starts to soar. Not just because it’s an impressive showcase for van de Zandt’s chameleon-like talents as a performer, but because it offers a new perspective on Jan.
There are still some pacing issues to be ironed out – a video segment that allows for an elaborate costume change in the show’s final moments is just too long – but the way van de Zandt has built Jan’s world is irresistible. It’s utterly, bizarrely brilliant.