Adelaide Festival Theatre, Space Theatre
June 17, 2018

White Australia seems drawn irresistibly to its villains of the past, and the further back in the past they reigned, the more legendary they have become. Once christened “the worst woman in Sydney”, Kate Leigh or “Mum” as she was known, was one of Sydney’s most powerful underworld figures from the 1920s until the 1950s. She specialised in ‘sly grog’ (selling booze outside legal licencing hours) not to mention a little prostitution and cocaine in her heyday. Her feud with her rival Matilda “Tilly” Devine was legendary and became the subject of one of the ubiquitous Underbelly television series devoted to the era where Leigh and Devine’s respective ‘razor gangs’ left Sydney’s streets awash with blood. Given that Leigh’s reign coincided with the beginnings of and peak of the jazz age, her story was solid ground around which a jazz singer/composer like Adelaide’s Libby O’Donovan could create a show – and she has done so with aplomb in Libby O’Donovan – Kate Leigh, the Worst Woman in Sydney.

O’Donovan’s vocal talent and stage presence have been a staple of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival for years. Her composing skills are not as well known, but as an owner of one of her CDs full of original tracks, I can testify that she knows how to construct a good melody. She is effective particularly in mining the blues whether it be at a slow or fast tempo (evident in tracks like Mum’s got the Grog, Wandering Girl, and Samuel Freeman). Other than Wandering Girl, the faster tracks were the most effective. The best of these was It’s Snowing in Sydney referring to Leigh introducing cocaine to the Sydney scene followed by 6 o’clock, after which time, sly grog was the only grog, I’m not the worst woman in Sydney, where O’Donovan told some dark tales about other trailblazing killers, and Not Waltzing with Matilda where O’Donovan’s spouse Beccy Cole emerged from the audience as Tilly Devine to add some fireworks to the proceedings.

While she may have thrown street parties at Christmas for the poorer members of her neighbourhood, I wasn’t convinced by the way O’Donovan plants her in the tradition of lovable larrikins or even trailblazing feminists. I suspect that the truth was far more nuanced. Nevertheless, anyone who survived the notorious Parramatta Girls’ Home in the 1960s, let alone the 1920s when Leigh spent two years there, deserves sympathy and forgiveness for any criminality that ensued. Complete with a piano/trumpet/bass trio and a big screen showing backdrops of the real players and the Sydney of the times, this show was brave, thoughtfully constructed and presented with heart and skill.

Libby O’Donovan – Kate Leigh, the Worst Woman in Sydney plays at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival until June 17

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