From OZ
Meow Meow: Just what we always need, right now
On April 11, for one night only, and after reseting their beautiful facility into a cabaret complete with cocktails, Oz Arts brough us a chanteuse from another time. Meow Meow is not merely a cabaret singer, although if that were her only talent she would be considered exquisite. She is an enchanter, a force of theatrical chaos, a comedian in culture, with a virtuosic voice, a withering wit and a philosopher’s aesthetic in performance art. Watching her perform is like being swept into a beautiful echo chamber of distant cultural memory where the boundaries between performer and audience dissolve and the past melts into the present in a world of “perpetual relevance.” Over the years, she has cultivated a reputation as one of the most daring and unpredictable figures in contemporary cabaret, her YouTube videos with Dame Edna are themselves priceless. And although she has been performing much of her act for several years now, every bit of it still seems fresh and, again, perpetually relevant.
At the center of Meow Meow’s artistry is contradiction. She is glamorous yet anarchic, gently, and intimately musical yet gleefully disruptive, vulnerable yet direct and commanding. Her voice itself reflects this duality: capable of rich, smoky depth one moment and soaring, crystalline clarity the next. She moves effortlessly between genres and the related languages—Weimar-era cabaret, chanson, jazz standards, and 20th century English artsong—without ever feeling like she is simply “covering” songs. Instead, she inhabits them, reshapes them, and often tears them apart emotionally before rebuilding them in front of the audience, all excellently accompanied by pianist Jack Lipton and cellist Daniel Shevlin.
This interplay between control and chaos is central to her approach and appeal. While everything feels spontaneous, even reckless, there is clearly a meticulous craftsmanship underneath—everything is part of the schtick. Timing, in particular, is one of her greatest strengths. A comedic beat lands with surgical precision; a sudden shift from humor to heartbreak catches the audience off guard in the best possible way, and she can maintain multiple, opposing narratives through a song. She understands exactly how long to hold a moment of silence, when to push a joke too far, and when to pull back and let sincerity take over.
Importantly, her humor is not polite or safe—it is biting, absurd, objectifying, and at times derisive. She delights in skewering social norms, gender expectations, and the very notion of performance itself. If you are not careful, your laugh might slip into an uncomfortable awareness that what she is doing can hit closer to home than you would like to admit, and for sophisticated reasons that, at least for me, took some time to unpack and understand.
For example, as part of her riveting performance of the French standard “Ne me quitte pas” she grabbed two men of a certain age and brought them into the “sacred space” of the stage. She has notably described the stage as having “…become a “safe space” rather than a sacred, jubilant space.”
As they ascended onto the stage, in one gentle loving voice she welcomed them onstage and asked them to kneel but then exclaimed “auf die knien!” in a German, Reichsmarschall style, in the next moment. This was barely noticed by the men who were increasingly embarrassed and humiliated (and still laughing as good sports). She dressed them in plastic smocks, rubber gloves, and masks (a reference to the social distancing of covid) and then had the men hug her hips through a brilliant rendition of the song, with much directed mockery between verses.
The song eventually ends with one man on all fours as the seat, and the other as the arms of her chair for the song’s finale. At the surface, the power and role reversal of these white, wealthy (at least middle class) men who are objectified when forced into mere accessories of her performance, was as powerful and discomforting even as it was comedic.
Yet, in reflection, the actual outcome of the performance was the opposite; everyone on the stage was humanized. At the end of the song, she exclaimed that these men had had the “times of their lives,” and she was not wrong. As they left the stage, they were smiling and one reached out to hug her. As she described in an interview in 2016 ahead of her appearance at the Edinburgh International Festival (explaining why she often crowd surfs) : “So it, I think, at its best it(the interaction and human touch in her performance) connects you with humanity, and reminds you of your commonality and your difference…and its survival, for me, it is profound to my existence.” The physical interaction these men had with her, and with each other in the “sacred space” of the stage felt and seemed of great importance to all three, sharing a human, physical, experience.
Indeed, engaging with multiple, separate, emotional ideals and messages in performance is her superpower. As she sang Laurie Anderson’s “The Dream Before,” she interspersed a lecture on Walter Benjamin and the Angel of History (this is what the song is about), but it was also gently and subtly tailored as a criticism of the current administration’s policies and practices on immigration and deportation.
Also, her interpretations of classic cabaret repertoire are particularly noteworthy. Rather than treating these songs as museum pieces, she recontextualizes them for modern audiences. Themes of longing, displacement, desire, and disillusionment resonate strongly, especially when filtered through her distinctive persona. She manages to honor the history of the material while simultaneously making it feel urgent and contemporary, and it is this constant critical awareness that makes the performance compelling and, remarkably, historically informed.
In Weimar, Germany, at the end of World War I, from the tatters of Berlin’s intellectual elite, a movement emerged, titled the Neue Sachlichkeit, that rejected the Romanticism and Expressionism of the previous generation. This movement sought, instead, a focus on objective practicality—the term Neue Sachlichkeit is traditionally (and imperfectly) translated as “new matter-of-factness” or “new objectivity.” This rejection of the nostalgia of the romantic movement led to the creation of popular and American influenced works by Kurt Weil (“Mackie Messer”) and other artists especially in the Weimar-era cabaret.
This popular styled music and its accompanying nostalgia became a forum for political satire, social critique, and sexual liberation, reflecting the era’s economic instability and decadent cabaret culture. There is a similarity to our current zeitgeist, in the 21st Century, with a society in the throes of a political movement as nostalgic and romanticized as that of “Make America Great Again,” and stumbling over the debris of a failed “me too” movement. Of course, this art, and its performance, would create discomfort and challenge the status quo—it was built for that purpose.
Naturally, then, her style is not for everyone. Some viewers may find the level of audience interaction uncomfortable, even invasive. Others might struggle with the tonal shifts, which can be abrupt and disorienting. Her humor, too, can veer into territory that feels deliberately provocative or confrontational. But these qualities are inseparable from what makes her work distinctive and beautiful. To smooth out those edges would be to lose the very essence of what she offers.
At the end, in a cultural landscape saturated with polished, predictable acts, Meow Meow stands out as something rare: an artist who is unapologetically herself, who takes risks, and who trusts her audience enough to bring them along for the ride. Her work is messy, brilliant, challenging, unforgettable, and perpetually relevant—everything that that we need, and all that great cabaret should be.
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Joseph E. Morgan is a father of two, husband, teacher and recovering guitarist in Middle Tennessee.
That sounds absolutely lovely – I adore a good cabaret and a singer with a vintage vibe. It’s great to see arts organizations putting on such unique shows.