Adelaide’s Feast Festival has some sumptuous delicacies in store for November but there is none sweeter than the heavenly senorita Argentina Gina Catalina.
Argentina is the creation of Moira Finucane: the inventor of burlesque macabre and a tentative technician of the absurd.
Argentina came to her fully formed in her mind over a decade ago and has since travelled the world extensively with her.
‘She is incredibly life-affirming; she is wildly adventurous; her appetities are unbelievably erotic and rapacious; she is preposturous and yet somehow believeable,’ Finucane said.
‘She is basically driven by two things; a rapacious desire for adventure and her great love of the virgin Mary or the Guadalope as she is known in Mexico.’
Argentina’s tales are impossibly amazing, her childhood a particular favourite of Finucane’s.
‘Her mother who was forced to make her way as an aerial artist, feared that Argentina would fall to her death from her heaving, airborne bossoms,’ she said.
‘So she left her in the hands of the Virgin in the Artic Circle; then discovered by a pack of wolves who, of course, are overwhelmed by her beauty take pity on her and suckle her through the long, winter months.’
Argentina joined a group of banditos smuggling drugs from the very far South to the very far North before swimming with killer whales, hunting with bears and eventually reuniting with her mother.
Finucane revels in this world of hers, quickly shifting into different characters and voices over the phone; she could easily be mistaken for the diabolical love-child of Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino.
Which is why Finucane’s role in the performing arts is what Dr Frankenstein was to science.
For this year’s Feast Festival in Adelaide, Finucane will present Feast of Argentina Gina Catalina.
This will be the third time ever that this edible masterpiece will be performed, more than an interactive experience for her audience.
‘We use these stories to create this really beautiful menu for people to taste the stories of Argentina and that’s the Feast of Argentina Gina Catalina,’ Finucane said.
‘When people arrive, Sangria is served while chorizo is sizzling on the barbeque; they come in and join Argentina on her wild stories and every story is punctuated by beautiful morsels of food.’
Food porn comes to mind when trying to describe this performance but Finucane leaves amatuers like Jamie Oliver and Masterchef in the dust, like in her tale Miracle of the Market.
‘There’s bursting pomegranates and strawberries tumbling one over the other and even eventually she eats a little cake made of fire and the love of the virgin grows golden wings and ascends to heaven,’ she said.
‘The music is wild as they drink tequila and eat little cakes while she ascends and eats meat while she’s talking about hunting for meat.’
Argentina is just one of Finucane’s marvels in her carnival of fantastic horrors.
Finucane and her partner, Jackie Smith began their flagship performance Burlesque Hour back in 2005 and have since done some 30 sell-out seasons.
‘The Burlesque Hour has toured the world; been reviewed into 10 different languages; its won six theatre awards and been seen by 60,000 people; Feast was one of the first festivals to preview us,’ Finucane said.
‘Our theory was if we took people in and absolutely seduced them, strapped them into their seatbelts with a glass of champagne in this beautful salon, they would come with us.’
Despite her late start in the performing arts at the age of 28, Finucane’s work not only pushed envelopes but stomped all over them in a self-confessed overblown exaggeration of things like love, passion and oppression.
‘Very early in my works, I worked in the nightclubs in Melbourne and quickly got a reputation for the weird, the wild and the wonderful.’
But before Finucane ‘elbowed’ her way into the international arts scene, she encountered some severe criticism for her truly bizzare style which she described as volcanic.
‘When we premiered it, I cannot tell you how many people in the industry told us “Moira, this will never reach more than a fringe or alternative audience,‒ she said.
Finucane’s reponse at the time to this: ‘Poppycock!’
The Feast of Argentina Gina Catalina opens on Wednesday November 17 at the Adelaide Feast Festival untill Sunday October 21. Adelaide’s Feast Festival runs from November 13 to 28, check out www.feast.org.au
Benn Dorrington
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