Review: Abbie Chatfield at Perth Concert Hall

Abbie Chatfield’s The Trauma Dump Tour at Perth Concert Hall
Friday, May 12, 2023

9/10

Controversial to some, an icon to others, radio host and TV presenter Abbie Chatfield brought her Trauma Dump tour to Perth Concert Hall on Friday night, and demonstrated exactly why she is an icon, leaving the audience with bellies sore from laughter and hearts full with empowerment.

Unexpectedly, drag queen Cougar Morrison opened the show and impressed with a fantastic routine to ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) including a cartwheel that made the entire audience gasp.

Abbie took to the stage, which was set like a lounge room, with multiple chairs, side tables and a cosy rug, and introduced a text line that we could text in with our own stories throughout the show. She then got down to business, giving us a hilarious history of her life before deep diving into stories about the various “trauma inflictors” she has encountered over the years.

Here we heard stories about previous relationships, told partly as a stand-up comedy routine, and partly as if your best friend had not seen you in four months and was updating you on all the gossip. This was all accompanied by a hilarious slide show that included photoshopped pictures to set the scene, quotes in bold to make them hit home, and meme reactions to what was being said on stage, which almost always mimicked the audience's real reactions.

Although all the stories had comedic aspects to them, some also raised some more serious topics, which Abbie handled with care and grace. The audience felt the sombre nature of these stories, whilst uplifting those around, and Abbie herself. It was like a giant support group, and it was empowering.

Audience members were not afraid to shout out during the show, but it was not the usual heckling you would expect. Many were shouting words of encouragement and admiration, whilst others were just teaching Abbie how to correctly pronounce Joondalup. It truly felt like we were just friends chatting in her lounge room. This is, however, what caused the show to run 45 minutes over time, as Abbie told stories as we all do to our friends, often bringing up side notes and related other stories, meaning there was only a brief amount of time for audience ‘nightmare fuels’ and messages from the text line.

It was fantastic to see someone that is almost always in the limelight being so openly themselves, being candid whilst also being funny, being sombre and admitting to feeling guilty, whilst also being able to laugh at themselves and their previous mistakes, being uplifting and empowering by sharing their stories, and making us feel okay for being who we are, and feeling how we feel.

KIERRA POLLOCK

Photos by Mikaela James