She’s a bit Shirley Bassey and a bit Dawn French, mixed in with generous helpings of vintage glamour and debaucherous humour.
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The Fabulous Dame Farrar, aka Melbourne’s Carita Farrer Spencer, will feature at this weekend’s Ballarat Cabaret Festival, to be held in Lydiard Street’s Mining Exchange.
Channelling an hilarious lush, every bit the “drunk diva”, Spencer said Dame Farrar had made her first appearance while she was living in Brisbane.
“She’s a character that was three sheeps to the wind when she arrived on stage – essentially physical clowning and comedy. The character sings her way through songs, with drunken behaviour physically manifesting,” Spencer said.
“Over a number of years, I started to write shows just for her and find her stories and her voice. Now she’s an alter ego in a way and she’s an amalgamation of a lot of people I know and a lot of people I don’t know.”
She said Dame Farrar’s appeal was the fact she was so flawed.
“She’s very naughty and risque, but she’s also very lovable and she’s fraught with issues. She’s not a diva – that bitter and twisted diva. It’s more her life has been a major disappointment to her,” she said.
“Her public face is to present the ultimate diva, which she is...but underneath she’s literally falling apart, she’s a train-wreck. So she’s hilarious.
“People say they end up loving her and saying ‘she’s like my spirit animal’. Everyone can relate to things not going your way. She’s full of obstacles, everything ends up going wrong for her.”
While Dame Farrar herself is a bit of a mess, Spencer said she and her piano player took the musical performances seriously.
“The music has a lot of integrity, even though everything is falling apart,” she said.
Spencer said the return of cabaret’s popularity was possibly related to the rise of contemporary circus, led by Canadian troupe Cirque du Soleil, of which her husband works for as a clown.
“I teach performance at NICA – the National Institute of Circus Arts – I direct for them and I see how the two worlds interact. It goes back to the old Vaudevillians days, and the origins of cabaret did involve circus.”
The Ballarat Cabaret Festival will run this weekend, October 7 to 9. For tickets, visit ballaratcabaret.com