“They are creepy and they are kooky, mysterious, spooky and delightfully entertaining. Full of innuendo and eccentricity, the sisters will win your heart.“
Kate Stratford
3.5 Christmas chokoes
Riverside Theatre
Certainly crackers, and perfectly at home at any Addams family reunion, the Kransky Sisters Mourn, Eve and Dawn offer up A Cracker Kransky Christmas. The weird sisters – in reality Annie Lee, Christine Johnston and Carolyn Johns – cover music with deadpan delivery, stringing performances together with tales of their (mis)adventures in their home town of Esk in Queensland. Well, Moune does most of the telling, supplemented by Eve. Dawn says almost nothing – why would you when you live in a laundry with a tuba? Possibly explains the blood-curdling scream she delivers at one point.
A morose version of Pink’s Get this Party Started is followed by a tribute to the Queen with Bohemian Rhapsody, and even Britney Spears’ Toxic provides a paean to the pest control man the sexually frustrated sisters trapped in their roof. The fate of the said tradie is never quite elucidated …
The musical arrangements are accompanied by an assortment of odd instruments, many garnered from the kitchen and bathroom. Lagerphones eat your heart out – these domestic goddesses can turn spaghetti spoons and toilet brushes into musical instruments. A male audience member is made an honorary sister for The Twelve Days of Christmas and lusted over by the sisters.
The deadpan delivery of stories and music is the core of their humour. There were some awkward transitions where the energy dropped, but the audience engagement is so complete that these small lapses are forgiven. Many in the crowd seemed to be return Karnsky-ites. The Sisters have a following. The act however, seemed lost in the large venue at Parramatta. It is far more suited to the intimacy of comedy clubs and cabarets.
They are creepy and they are kooky, mysterious, spooky and delightfully entertaining. Full of innuendo and eccentricity, the sisters will win your heart.
Kate Stratford, Theatre Now
