Cabaret: The Beautiful Losers

Performed by Mark Jones, Mike McLeish and Karlis Zaid

Downstairs at the Maj

6 – 9 July, 2011

Mark Jones, Mike McLeish and Karlis Zaid, the Melbourne-based comedy and musical veterans who brought their dark revue, The Beautiful Losers, to the Maj Downstairs as part of its Cabaret and Comedy Carnivale, have the voices, the musicianship and the experience to do songs like Randy Newman’s revoltingly hilarious My Life Is Good justice, and the wit to turn them to their own purposes.

So what’s not to like about the Beautiful Losers? Plenty, unfortunately. There’s an unpleasant undertone to the whole endeavour that many critics have praised as brave and confronting but I found merely sour. There’s a great deal of obscenity, in word and deed, in the show, but it lacked either the irony or the twinkle in the eye to redeem it.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian