★★★★★
Natalie Gamsu’s cabaret, A Voice Like Shrapnel, is a masterclass in storytelling. Offering a raw reflection on her life and hard-won journey towards self-acceptance, Gamsu delves deep into her past with grit and startling honesty.
Co-written by Ash Flanders and director Stephen Niccolazzo – Green Room Award winner for Best Direction – the result is an unapologetic and powerful work that leaves our hearts pounding. Originally produced in 2024 by Kaddimah Yiddish Theatre and fortyfivedownstairs, it makes its Adelaide Cabaret Festival debut during opening weekend.
Against a backdrop of red and pink roses, Gamsu stands in her black tasselled top and rose-patterned pants. A giant floral embellishment is blooming from her chest. Tatiana Hotere’s set and costume design captures the duality of Gamsu herself. Bold strength softened by vulnerability. Red, the colour of fiery passion, pain and resilience.
Could she have been a flamenco dancer in another life? She begins in Barcelona, playfully repeating the city name, savouring the soft “th” of Spanish pronunciation. Gamsu delights in language, tossing playful asides to words that make her smile.
Her natural humour lightens the heavier material. We learn the meaning of “tsores,” the Yiddish word for pain. The very pain she bears to the audience, only to laugh in its face alongside us. She is brash and unashamed to swear and speak openly of weed and acid in her wilder years.
Her relationship with her Jewish mother, alongside struggles with body image, lies at the emotional heart of the narrative. Unable to grow into her authentic, larger-than-life personality, Gamsu grew outward instead.
Through painful memories and sharply comic impersonations of her mother’s high-pitched voice, she exposes the lingering scars of expectation and shame. Her contemplation and quiet simmering anger towards the absurdity of US clothing size zero land with biting clarity.
From apartheid-era South Africa to Manhattan and Australia, Gamsu traces her daring life. She recounts unruly nightclub performances in Johannesburg, dressed in military uniforms with dildos as weapons.
We are transported into each memory with striking sensory detail, pausing with closed eyes to remember. The smell. The sounds. Standing on a mountain, stoned, naked and utterly free.
Vocally magnetic, her brassy voice is rich with years. Her gestures are precise and poised, beckoning us closer with every outstretched hand. There is an intensity to her storytelling that lingers long after each line.
At the piano, musical director Nigel Ubrihien provides a steady and nurturing presence. Gamsu revels in evocative ballads, demonstrating an impressive command of multiple languages that speak to her artistry and lived experience.
She moves effortlessly between musical styles, including a delightful patter song that flexes her comic instincts. Most affecting is a tender song in her mother’s native tongue, delivered in stillness through haunting a cappella vocals. Her mother, now living with dementia, is remembered on the far side of a video call. In Gamsu’s eyes dwell both grief and love.
Her life emerges as a collage from which she seeks our final meaning. She reflects on releasing the need to be special, instead embracing “sitzfleisch” – to sit on your butt flesh, to endure, to simply be.
In doing so, Gamsu grants the audience permission to embrace themselves with equal abandon. My face wet with tears, I joined the thoroughly deserved standing ovation.
Natalie Gamsu: A Voice Like Shrapnel runs to 6 June at the Space Theatre as part of the 2026 Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
Tickets are on sale now at the website.
Website: https://cabaret.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/whats-on/natalie-gamsu-a-voice-like-shrapnel
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/adelaidecabaret/ and https://www.instagram.com/nataliegamsu/
Photo credits: Claudio Raschella
