Hot Brown Honey | Teatro | til Feb 25th | ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  

Enter The Hive. The Pleasure Garden’s Teatro venue greets it’s buzzing audience with a striking honeycomb in the centre of the stage, ready to introduce its queens.

MC Busty Beats gets the party started, as her booming voice thunders through the crowd and the hive begins to glow. The six stars, including local legend Ofa Fotu, take to the stage with a beautiful fan dance – complete with costume changes – that is instantly reminiscent of Fringe favourite Briefs, the ladies’ sister show by shared producer Linda Catalano.

The performance is certainly of the caliber of their long-travelling siblings, but these ladies have a style of their own that will ensure Hot Brown Honey are a mainstay at festivals across the world as well.

The women explore feminism, racism, Polynesian heritage and more with unique performances that play to each of their strengths as performers. Local chanteuse Ofa Fotu was an absolute showstopper with her transcendent voice, and maintained her energy even when in the background.

The first solo performance framed the rest of the performance instantly, parodying that girl we all know who makes her annual boozy trip to Bali. Each performance throughout similarly carries a poison sting that evokes as much laughter as it does introspective thought.

Props must also be given to the show’s director and star who had injured her knee, but performed a striking dance number in an incredibly adaptable leaf-costume without missing a beat – as well as featuring in each of the group numbers.

Hot Brown Honey oozes femme, queer power – true anathema to all that is wrong with my news feed and the world around me.

To paraphrase another great woman of history; Oh baby, you’ll have a dependency. You’ll be dying for another taste of their honey.

Hot Brown Honey will be at the Pleasure Gardens until February 25th. For tickets and more info head to fringeworld.com.au

Leigh Andrew Hill