Clara Cupcakes: Top Bits @ The Ice Cream Factory
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Vaudevillian sassy clown Clara Cupcakes is a long term FRINGE WORLD favourite for good reason: she encapsulates exactly what Fringe is all about. True creativity, stomping on the lines with heartwarmth, loving good times, peppered with chuckles galore in between some hard truths everyone needs to hear. Sadly for Perth, this was her last appearance in our fair city for a while. For those that missed it, Top Bits was her best work yet, and it’s your own damn fault if you failed to attend.
As a self-employed, independent woman, Clara cordially invited the audience to her first and only office party where everyone was a special guest. The audience was invited to participate in her karaoke, party games and quizzes with her characteristic exuberance, making all feel welcome as a guest in a truly fabulous soiree. Thematically consistent as always, she took us all on a journey through an interactive experience where consent was abject, feminism implied and gently applied, and karaoke implicit.
Moments of real, raw honesty abounded, but her gentleness with important messages from a performer and hey, a woman, was to be applauded. And so it was. She is so sublimely likeable and engaging, Cupcakes could be telling your racist nana off for her homophobic comments at Christmas lunch and nan would still be hugging her afterwards. That’s power.
This is not overtly didactical material, but the messaging is clear. Cupcakes is here to lovingly implore you to be better, and she succeeded. Top Bits was joyous and celebratory and just so delightful – just like the lady herself. Be sure to add anything she does to your hitlist in future, if she should deign to return to us.
NATALIE GILES
