From rap to tap, the Grey Panthers took us on a journey through song and dance through the decades. They challenged views we all hold about seniors. Whether they are singing songs such as  ‘Ladies of the Town’ and ‘It’s Not Unusual to Want Sex at 65’, roller-skating across the stage, spinning on their backs on the floor or presenting a high energy performance of ‘Shout’, this debut full length cabaret shook up those preconceptions.

PHOTO: Yoris Wilson
(Adie and Kay FACE LIFT)

Director

Joanna Barrkman

Assistant Directors and Choreographers

Sarah Calver
David McMicken

Musical Director

Merrilee Mills

Inger Anderson
Kath Baldwin
Ruth Blandy
Adie Bruce
Julie Dowson
Audrey Gorring
Glad Morris
Marie Porter
Lila Prochazka

Greta Quong
Marjorie Reynolds
Jjoy Soullier
Frieda Staats
Audrey Svara
Hanna Stamm
Jean Young Smith
Jo Davies

… laced with youthful enthusiasm

... swept aside traditional stereotypes and given new light to a new side of old age.

… the humour is always quick, and there is no room for prudes on stage or in the audience.

Marney White, Northern Territory News

Response from Maggi Phillips

They enter quietly into the red, lush and gilt décor of entertainment and age in child-like glee before our very eyes; age into crochet and cross-stitch, bonnets and crafted-flowers and the trembling signs of Granny’s doom. It’s a sleight of many spirited hands, because there is little of the granny in these surprising women, and that little the sharp twinkling of eyes, relishing life’s partnership in spite of its whims and false moves; brushing away cobweb stereotypes. Tapping images of senility well under foot, The Old Spice Club Cabaret bristles with wry comic energy and charms its audience. As a group of women they are feminist by force, left or leaving behind their menfolk, though they quickly assure us that male company is theirs for the taking, visiting “john” first thing in the morning, chatting with “Arthur”-itis day in and day out, even rubbing shoulders with “Al”-zimers from time to time. In song, dance, and skit, the razzle-dazzle of cabaret is thus spiced by steel edged tenacity, which conveys the wisdom of experience and their robust appetite for more.

The show “Lambert Walks” through time, turning with nostalgia before rapping the kids off the streets with “Ladies of the Town”. Its vision is expansive and generous, cherishing the past but excited by the rhythms of the future, which is a philosophy for any age, both collectively and individually, to re-examine more, perhaps, than we tend to do. Nothing in the performance, however, is so serious as it ambles “Underneath the Arches” or rocks and rollicks its way through “Shout”, but the younger amongst us must inevitably come to the question of “why is this show so appealing?” On reflection, part of the answer is this comprehensive vision, and, part too the women in their multiple aspects, hopeful young slips of girls anxious and ogling a prospective partner, working women driving trucks during the war, farming and interminably battling the mop and the kitchen, vital female sexuality, “It’s not unusual to have sex at 65”. Such twists take irreverent swipes at age, or at least our cultural perspective of what “the Oldies”, should and should not do. We come patronizingly to give the “old Girls” a chance, and women, strong and gentle, seduce us and hopefully stitch up some of our ragged attitudes.

Along with the vigour and enthusiasm of their performance, two images strike me as the essence of The Old Spice Club Cabaret: the juxtaposition of the women’s energy and colour against the distinguished yet stolid support of the male musicians, and the curious grace of the women toiling together over a patchwork quilt. When they turned the cloth around to reveal their handiwork, I felt the urge to amend their motto, MAKE DO AND MEND THE WORLD, to ASPIRE LIKE US AND MEND THE WORLD. I know their hearts are too unassuming to flaunt grand statements, but visit their cabaret and the statement they make is grand, thanks to the girls, women, ladies and grannies of our time, and those artists who trusted in the elderly integrity of those young hearts, director Joanna Barrkman, Choreographer, Sarah Calver, and assistant to both, David McMicken, and Musical Director, Merrilee Mills.  
Maggi Philips, May 1st, 1992