The Vanguard, Newtown, Sydney
May 3, 2015

Ever wondered what the love children of Mae West and Richard O’Brien might turn out like? Well, if your curiosity outweighs your squeamishness you need to check out Opera Australia star turns Jacqui Dark and Kanen Breen in their filthy, dirty cabaret-cum-biopic (with the emphasis on the middle of those three hyphenated words).

Dark and Breen are the aforementioned strange bedfellows – a pair of long-term best mates who a few years ago chose to co-parent despite them being in many ways chalk and cheese. Under the Covers tells part of that story and a fair bit more if you read between the lines, yet despite their avowed desire to shock and awe us with a comedic tirade of verbal filth and degradation the evening turns out to contain as much painful truth as it does scatological humour. Don’t worry, though – if you go along for the poo jokes you won’t be disappointed!

The structure of the show is relatively clear: Who was she before? Who was he before? How did they make a baby? Alongside that we get a raft of relationship songs, a few gender politics turns and some highly...