Mother’s Ruin is a beautifully distilled cabaret about the joys and chequered, politicised history of gin, explored through story and song.

^{Libby Wood, Jeremy Brennan and Maeve Marsden. Photo by Patrick Boland}

The show was written by Maeve Marsden with Elly Baxter, Libby Wood and Jeremy Brennan, who are the perfect combo for such an enterprise. Baxter, who did the research, is a gin enthusiasm and runs a blog called The Ginstress. Marsden and Wood, who perform, are founding members of feminist comedy/cabaret group Lady Sings It Better, while Brennan is Musical Director. Anthea Williams directs.

Together, they have crafted a 60-minute cabaret show that combines just the right amount of historical information, feminist commentary, comedy and emotion, along with a fabulous musical set list.

After an opening prayer in praise of gin, the show rewinds to London 1929 and the Gin Craze when the desperate were distilling it from turps and woodchips. In 1751, William Hogarth’s prints Gin Lane and Beer Street were released in support of what would become the Gin Act to curb the drinking of the working classes. While Beer Street is a paean to the merits of drinking beer, Gin Lane is a graphic depiction of the evils of gin – personified by a haggard woman dropping her baby. And guess who paid for Hogarth to create them?

The show highlights various other key incidents in the history of the juniper berry spirit including how, in 1638, it met tonic, containing malaria-curing quinine, and its subsequent role in African colonisation. There’s the tale of Ada Coleman, who joined the Savoy as a barmaid in 1903 and invented the Hanky-Panky cocktail, only to lose her job when American businessmen complained about a woman behind the bar.

In Australia, there’s the story of Merle Thornton and her friend Rosalie Bognor, who chained themselves to the bar in the Brisbane Regatta Hotel in protest at women not being allowed to drink in the public bar. And that was 1965 – shockingly recent history. These and other incidents rub shoulders with more general observations such as lonely women drinking in secret at home.

^{Maeve Marsden and Libby Wood. Photo by Patrick Boland}

The songs include, among others, Jessie J’s Mama Knows Best, Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good, Martha Wainwright’s Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole, a malaria-infected version of Fever, and a touching a cappella version of The Pretenders’ Hymn to Her.

There’s also Oom Pah Pah from Oliver!, Two Ladies from Cabaret as well as a rap about the disputed beginnings of gin and a gloriously funny reworking of I’ve Been Everywhere called I’ve Drunk Every Gin.

Marsden and Wood both have a lovely, easy, on-stage presence and gorgeous, expressive voices, which blend together beautifully in tightly harmonised duets. On the piano, Brennan is the perfect partner in crime, singing backing vocals and leading a crowd-pleasing singalong to Piano Man.

All in all, it’s a cleverly written, thoroughly entertaining show, with a political point to make. I left craving a G and T.

Mother’s Ruin runs at the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent in Sydney’s Hyde Park North until January 15

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